Celtics Down Atlantic Leading Raptors 95-87

In a game where the Celtics led almost the entire game, they showed teamwork and a strong effort from start to finish. Doc didn’t hang the bench out to dry and played them mixed with the starters and we saw good effort throughout the game without the customary let ups.

Rondo was huge in this game and finished with 16 points on 4-6 shooting and he hit all 8 of his free throws. He also had 5 rebounds and 8 assists. He kept the tempo up and constantly found the open man. Perk made a huge difference with his defense in this game and played Bosh very well holding him to 5-19 shooting. Perk had 2 points, 6 rebounds, 2 assists, and 1 block while basically shutting down Bosh.

West played 43 minutes and finished with 18 points (6-17), 3 rebounds, 2 assists and 1 steal. Telfair played 12 minutes and didn’t score but pulled down 4 rebounds and dished out 1 assist. Allan Ray played just the last 16 seconds of the game and had 1 rebound.

Al was again dominant in the paint and finished with 22 points, 9 rebounds, 1 assist, 2 steals and 2 blocks. At one point in the 4th quarter, Garbajosa hit Al hard as he was going up for a layup and came down wrong on his ankle and it looked to be broken. Al couldn’t bear to look at it and I imagine it brought back bad memories of ankles past. As hard as Garbajosa hit him, it could just as easily been Al getting hurt. Gomes still seems to be struggling to get back to shape after his injury and finished with 0 points on 0-4 shooting with 2 rebounds and 1 assist.

Green played well with 10 points on 5-11 shooting to go with 5 rebounds and 1 block. 2 of his points were on a spectacular dunk on a fast break. Earlier in the game he missed an alley oop dunk but made up for it with that one. Powe again played well in his limited minutes scoring 4 points and pulling down 5 rebounds and 1 steal. In the midst of talks of shutting him down, Pierce played 37 minutes and finished with 23 points (8-20), 5 rebounds, 8 assists, and 2 steals.

It was a good win for us and more and more I like the starting lineup of Rondo, West, Pierce, Al and Perk. Al and Perk play very well together and so do West and Rondo. Game by game, Rondo improves and is showing that he is indeed our PG for the future. Doc even had a break through in this game in that in his post game interviews he mentioned that he was going to call a play and then stopped because he realized that Rondo was doing well out there and what he was doing was working. Now that is a step in the right direction.

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