Posts tagged ‘Houston Rockets’

In today’s episode of Celticscast…

The Starting 5

• *C’s end the Rockets 22 game win streak
• *Who was the hero: Pierce, Powe or KG?
• *Monday Night C’s Sneak Past Spurs
• *It Happened to be St. Patrick’s Day
• *Ray Allen and Tony Allen hurt

Plus…

• *We take a look at the bracket because…how can you not?.
• *We give you our top 10 upsets to look for from our brackets
• *The Heat look worse and worse every day

And…

• *We weigh in briefly on the KG/Glen Taylor episode as well as looking forward to the Mavs and Hornets games coming up.

All this and more just a click away on Celticscast! Remember to send us an email at hosts@celticscast.com to be a part of the show.

The C’s had a bone to pick yesterday with the Rockets - maybe not a personal one, but a national one. The idea that the Rockets were the best team in the NBA because of their status on top of the Western Conference and historic 22-game win streak wasn’t good enough. The Celtics needed to prove it wrong. In my eyes here were the keys:

1. The last 2 minutes of the first half: the Celtics turned Houston over several times and flew into the locker room tied instead of down 5 like they were just 100 seconds prior.

2. Kevin Garnett getting the ball on the post: KG’s been playing well from the outside recently with a 20-foot J that just won’t miss. The Spurs went after him and proved it’s tough for anybody to make a jump shot from anywhere with a hand in your face. So Doc and the Gang put Garnett on the block (mostly on the left side) against Luis Scola and he dominated in the third quarter to break the game open.

3. Leon Powe: The Celtics Agent Zero played mostly when Dikembe Mutombo was out which surely helped his numbers (21 pts. in 20 minutes) compared to Perk’s (6 pts. in 20 minutes) but because of Houston’s thin bench in the middle, Leon took over and led the Celtics out of a grinding first half of play with momentum.

4. The defense: It was tremendous, giving up very few open jump shots which plagued the C’s in the first quarter at San Antonio. It also held McGrady to just 8 points (!).

Chris and I will be back Thursday to break it down and look forward to Dallas and New Orleans. Until then, Go C’s!

I’ll take the heat for one of these…I was wrong about Bruce Bowen’s suspension.  Clearly, as you all saw, he was not suspended for last night’s game, instead it was the Detroit game on Friday.  That game snapped his 500 game streak for consecutive games played.  At least he ended on a nice round number.  Tayshaun Prince is the new active “iron-man” at 339 straight games played…in case you were curious.

As for the other misstep, it was downplaying Ray Allen’s injury.  Andrew and I both agree this may be a case of Doc being extra cautious, but he was “50/50″ for last night, didn’t play, and now it seems will not play tonight either.  Sans Allen, the C’s take on the Rockets…should be a good one.  Stay tuned for daily updates to Celticscast.com and a new episode on Thursday.

Go C’s!

In today’s episode of Celticscast…

The Starting 5

• *C’s easiliy handle the Bucks to start roadtrip
• *They do it without Ray Allen because…
• *he hurt himself in the loss to the Jazz the night before
• *Deron Williams a star in the making tears up Celts
• *C’s clinch Atlantic Division to celebrate St. Patty’s Day

Plus…

• *We look at the next four games on the Texas Three-Step (plus New Orleans).
• *The Nuggets score 160+ points is just one of the hot-button issues Around the NBA
• *We look at our mailbag - shoot us an email at hosts@celticscast.com for anything you’d like to hear on the show or about the Celts/NBA/other topic.

And…

• *A special performance from the way-back machine of the Celtics Rap (if you can call it that). It’s after the second block of the show - you can’t miss this.

All this and more just a click away on Celticscast! Remember to give us a call at 617-934-0268 or email at hosts@celticscast.com and be a part of the show.