The Pacers, amazingly, are good this year. How, I still don't understand. They start Rasho, who I would have sworn would playing in the Bulgarian second division if you asked me last year. Additionally, Rasho's backups are as follows: Josh McRoberts, Jeff Foster, and Roy Hibbert. Josh McRoberts' career highlight thus far has been hanging out at his mom's house with Greg Oden. Jeff Foster is basically Chris Dudley with the face of the guy that played Scarecrow in Batman Begins, and Roy Hibbert is a rookie that may be the slowest player in the NBA. And it's not as if these guys are even liabilities! In fact, they're all pretty good! Amazing.
Danny Granger is a legit stud, and I'm still a little bitter that the Celtics barely missed out on drafting him (they got Gerald Green instead, one pick later). However, Marquis Daniels basically didn't miss (11-16 from the floor). I thought I was only going to talk about Marquis Daniels this year when there was a handgun incident of some player got a horrible tattoo. (Remember, Daniels has a tattooed map of the state of Florida on his back and a dude shooting himself in the face with a shotgun on his arm. Moving on.) Anyway, Troy Murphy is a good player and a very difficult matchup (although not for the C's), and the PG combo of TJ Ford and Jarrett Jack is very good. And probably the most amazing thing about the Pacers is that their second best player is Mike Dunleavy, who despite being pale and having a Herman Munster face is a stud at the game of basketball, and he was out with an injury. The Pacers are definitely no fluke, unlike those pansy-ass Trailblazers. I don't care that their record is 7-13, if the Pacers played the Blazers 100 times this season, they would win 100 times. Don't argue with me, it's science.
That being said, you need to be a lot better than "very good" to beat the Celtics this season. I dare say that the team looks even better this year with a much-improved Rondo, Perkins, and Ray Allen (who saw that coming?). Pierce has been a little spotty but he could be relied on to drain the game-tying three in the last seconds of regulation. The combo of Powe, Tony Allen, and Eddie House coming off the bench is devastating. Two out of three of those guys, at least, will have great production in whatever amount of minutes you give them. Against the Pacers, Eddie House grabbed a huge rebound that led to the game-tying assist. I just don't see any exploitable weaknesses for Celtics' opponents. While the Celtics aren't perfect (they did give up a ton of points), they can cover up their shortcomings with schematic adjustments. I still don't think the C's have an answer for Lebron, but they have all season to figure that out.
Great win for the C's. Scals got a three, Doc drew up a nice end-of-the-game play, the C's stepped up right when they needed to, and Danny Granger, the one that got away, gave some satisfyingly bitter quotes in the postgame. The only letdown was Big Baby not reprising his crying on the bench, which has given me hours of amusement. Nobody's perfect, and Scals promised me via text message after the game that he was going to steal Big Baby's Nutter Butters at halftime of the Wizards game on Thursday.Source URL: http://ledger-heath.blogspot.com/2008/12/celtics-squeeze-by-pacers-big-baby.html
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