What a game! Either your defense really didn't show up tonight or Amare and the Knicks are the real deal. Great game.
Best regular season game of the year so far - you could feel the energy. Even if it was mostly from those fairweather New Yorker fans, given the average NBA fan down there has likely been priced out.
As for the game - as a Celts fan, I wasn't concerned about the closeness of the score at all really. The fact is, we're extremely banged up right now. We're missing Perk, Shaq, JO, and Delonte. Not to mention Rondo was clearly hobbled last nite. You're talking about us missing 5 quality players.
And with the bigs is where we missed them most. I won't argue with you that JO would've been worthless last nite, b/c I haven't seen anything from him in preseason or his rare opportunities this year that say otherwise. I do know some Celtics fans disagree and thought having another big in there and moving KG to 4 in and of itself is of value. That I can agree with.
When the Celtics have gone small over the last few years, it generally has poor results. The importance of Perk to this team cannot be understated, and I am certain we'd be gunning for 19 this year if he hadn't blown out his knee in Game 6 last year. KG at the 5 is bad news.
And Semih is just below a JAG. I recently saw some +/- numbers on him that suggest he's basically by far our worst player and a huge detriment to the team when on the court. I don't think he's that awful, but he's not great.
