C's Buck Recent Trend, Finish Strong Against Milwaukee: 96-92

In a game featuring many of the same exciting and frustrating characteristics that they've displayed through the first five, the Boston Celtics proved that when they focus on the kind of defensive effort that they delivered in the fourth quarter against the Milwaukee Bucks, more often than not they'll leave the other team staring back at them like a deer caught in the headlights.

 

I won't go into too much of a rehash of the past few posts -- blah blah blah "The Captain, The Truth" Paul Pierce did it AGAIN, scoring 25 with 9 rebounds, 3 assists, a steal and a blocked shot and solid "D"...yadda yadda Rondo, double-double with 10 points, 10 assists, streak still alive...Kevin Garnett, defensive powerhouse, 18 points, 6 boards, 3 assists -- but I will say that they were great again and really anchored the defense down the stretch when they made their run against a Bucks team that led by 4 heading into the fourth quarter behind a massive you-knew-it-was-coming breakout game from guard Monta Ellis, who scored 32 and dished 8 assists in a losing cause to counter his relatively quiet showing in the previous tilt against the C's.

Ellis was joined by center Sam Dalembert who scored 14 points and pulled in 8 rebounds; old-pal and former Celtic Marquis Daniels, who scored 12; up-and-comer and former fictional talk show host (not!) Larry Sanders, who hung a double-double on the C's with 10 points and 14 rebounds; and Ersan Ilyasova who put up 10 for Milwaukee.

The Celtics continued to make incremental improvements, both on offense and defense, with Jason Terry netting 15 in a starting role and Jeff Green supplying the kind of defense that will undoubtedly earn him more court time. Green, along with Pierce and Garnett, helped turn back the running of the Bucks with timely scoring and tenacious defense to help put the game away in the final minutes and seconds. Chris Wilcox continued to show signs of a return to his pre-open-heart form in fifteen active minutes.

Box Score

THE BUZZ:

Next up for the C's are the flower-less (No Rose...get it? No? Okay!) Chicago Bulls and then the Utah Jazz, Brooklyn Nets and Toronto Raptors. Should be an interesting week with more answers about how the chemistry experiment is coming along for the Doc(tor).