North Station Sports

Tonight’s opening tip was witnessed by tens of fans as people were filing in (or out, hard to tell) to bear witness to the dismantling of one of the most underrated defensive teams in the league 108-90.

Charlotte (7-10) came into the game allowing only 87.9 PPG on 43 percent FG shooting, both better numbers than Boston (14-4) sporting a 91.3 OPPG and 44 percent OFG.  Their defense is legit and rank in the top five in the league in almost every (relevant) category.  Too bad their offense isn’t nearly as good.

After the opening Bobcat basket the teams traded buckets until it was 6-4 Charlotte.  That would be their last lead in the game.

The interior ball movement by Boston was incredibly fluid.  It’s usually feast or famine with that sort of play but tonight everyone was looking to rack up the assists.  Eddie House was the beneficiary of most of a few open looks as the team is very obviously trying to get House’s stroke back.  His game has been on the side of a milk carton all year with just a spark in the 4^th quarter that it’s returning finishing 5-9 from the field and nailing a couple of threes to snag himself 12 points mostly in garbage time.  Even after missing a wide open tre he hustled to mid court and drew a charge.  Good defensive play from someone who needs it to ease the pain of his sluggish offense and Eddie knows it.

Kendrick Perkins notched his second double double in as many games before halftime.  Perk ended up with 21 PTS on 9-10 shooting, 11 REB and 3BLKS.  Ray Allen found his range after an off night in Miami with 27 PTS going 5-6 from behind the arc, 6-9 from the field and mixed in a block for good measure.  KG chipped in with 14 PTS and a little extracurricular activity with Charlottes Nazr Mohammed after Garnett was called for a ticky tac offensive foul that could have gone either way.  Mohammed was knocked down and took great offense to it for no particular reason, getting in KG’s face so much so that the refs had to separate them.  Mohammed continued to bark after the break with no repercussions yet Rasheed Wallace collected a technical for saying something to a ref after being subbed for and was making his way off the floor.  That was his 8^th T if you were counting.  At this rate, he’ll be sitting out a game February.

The game got completely out of hand by the end of the first half as Allen buried a three with one second before the break to make it 62-29.

The Celtics bench took over in the second half much to the relief of C’s fans as the starters rested their legs for their upcoming tilt at the Spurs.  As with all blow outs (on the good end or not) we had a nice look at the bench with Sheldon Williams motivated to show that he should still get minutes with the looming return of Glen Davis by hustling on the defensive end and coming up with 2 blocks.   Marquise Daniels helped out by doing a little bit of everything grabbing 4 boards and 4 points.

Charlotte had no offensive rhythm to speak of as evidenced by only assisting on 12 of their 31 buckets whereas the C’s had 24 AST on 36 FGM.  In what very well could have been a trap game with Boston looking ahead to San Antonio, the Celtics were more than up to the task.