Maverics (56-11) at Celtics (20-48) 3/23

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Dallas Mavericks (56-11) at Boston Celtics (20-48)
Friday, March 23, 2007 • 7:30 PM ET
Regular Season Game #69 • Home Game #34
TD Banknorth Garden • Boston, MA





Probable Starters
PG #13 Delonte West PPG 11.7 | APG 4.6 | RPG 3.0
SG #34 Paul Pierce PPG 24.7 | RPG 6 | APG 4.1
SF #44 Brian Scalabrine PPG 4 | RPG 1.9 | BPG 0.3
PF #7 Al Jefferson PPG 15.6 | RPG 11 | BPG 1.5
C #43 Kendrick Perkins PPG 4.3 | RPG 4.8 | BPG 1.4

Off the Bench

Green/Rondo/Gomes/Powe/Ray/Telfair/Kandi

Injuries
Ratliff - back
Szczerbiak - ankle
Allen - knee

Notes: Doc seems to have gone back to his starting lineup with Scal as SF and West starting at PG. I really liked the lineup with West and Rondo in the back court and Pierce at SF and Perk and Jefferson in the front court. That group seemed to be playing great together. If Doc is indeed working toward next season, he should be starting Rondo at the point and Scal should be coming off the bench. Perk played one of his best games this season, garnering a double double in 3 quarters before he was sent to the bench. I look for more of the same the rest of the season.





Probable Starters
PG #31 Jason Terry PPG 16.4 | APG 5.3 | 3P% .433
SG #34 Devin Harris PPG 9.9 | APG 3.6 | SPG 1.2
SF #5 Josh Howard PPG 18.9 | RPG 7 | APG 1.8
PF #41 Dirk Nowitzki PPG 25.2 | RPG 9.6 | BPG 0.9
C. #25 Erick Dampier PPG 7.5 | RPG 7.7 | BPG 1.1

Off the Bench

Stackhouse/Croshere/Diop/Barea/Mensa-Bonsu

Injuries
Buckner - knee
George - knee
Mbenga - ACL

Notes The Mavs are the best team in the league and are playing hard to finish strong down the stretch. They are coming off a win in Cleveland and are going to be very hard to beat. We almost beat them in Dallas but I expect them to come in and try to put us away early. We will have to play a perfect game to beat them.

Key Matchup
vs

Keys to the Win
Defense We need to improve our defense. Defense is what wins games and championships and more often than not, we play very weak defense. We still haven't learned how to defend the pick and roll effectively. We need to play good team defense and get stops, especially down the stretch.

Share the Ball When players try to do too much themselves, the offense breaks down. When we pass the ball and find the open man, we can score on anybody.

Rebound We need to be aggressive on the boards. When we hustle and get rebounds, it transfers to all areas of the game as well. When we give up second chance points, it is hard for us to win.

We played these guys real tough last time and almost come out of it with a win. Leon Powe was great covering Dirk and lierally shut him down for the first half. Pierce will most likely play limited minutes and if last nights tanking was an indication of anything, were gonna see alot of Allan Ray, Leon Powe, Sebastan Telfair & Gerald Green.

The people from Product Sales at my company were able to come up with some tickets for me so I'll be at this game rockin the Gerald Green Jersey. Section 8, Row 6, Seats 3-4-5 & 6. I'll snap some pictures and upload em here later

I was at this game and first off I just want to say that this was the most selfish performance I have ever seen by Paul Pierce. I counted 15+ times that Gerald Green outran the Mavs defense and was the first player up the court wide open on the wing, and Paul Pierce decides to try and take it coast to coast and drive to the basket. His play tonight was unacceptable. He was more interested in dropping his 30 Pt's then in getting the rest of the team involved.

Al Jefferson was completely shut down on offense, but he continues to crash the boards.

Allan Ray had a decent night, its just too bad that most of his shots came when the game was already far out of reach.

I'm seriously disappointed by Paul Pierce's play tonight. He was looking more like the Paul of old then the Paul that we saw last year. And I don't wanna hear that he's hurt and trying to get his groove back because he was down right selfish tonight and didn't give a damn about any of his team-mates on the floor.

Thanks for the first hand report from the game. Things look different when you see them live. Green played well tonight. Doc said before the game that Powe would get Scal's minutes but Powe only played 10 minutes and Perk only played 15 minutes. Perk was playing good defense on Dirk too.

Powe had a pretty tough time tonight, as well as Perk. Our inside was the worst its been all year. You could tell Gerald was getting frustrated because on the offense side of the ball he ended up spending most of his time wide open on the wing waiting for Pierce or Rondo to dish it out to him, but they didn't get him the ball all night. I'm really hoping Gerald takes the step to becoming an elite player next year and finally realizes that he has to create his own offense, because seems like every time he gets the ball in a 1 on 1 situation he gets rid of it instead of trying to get by his man.

Here are some of my pictures from the game tonight

Looks like you had some pretty good seats Mike

MikeDead wrote:I was at this game and first off I just want to say that this was the most selfish performance I have ever seen by Paul Pierce. I counted 15+ times that Gerald Green outran the Mavs defense and was the first player up the court wide open on the wing, and Paul Pierce decides to try and take it coast to coast and drive to the basket. His play tonight was unacceptable. He was more interested in dropping his 30 Pt's then in getting the rest of the team involved.

Al Jefferson was completely shut down on offense, but he continues to crash the boards.

Allan Ray had a decent night, its just too bad that most of his shots came when the game was already far out of reach.

I'm seriously disappointed by Paul Pierce's play tonight. He was looking more like the Paul of old then the Paul that we saw last year. And I don't wanna hear that he's hurt and trying to get his groove back because he was down right selfish tonight and didn't give a damn about any of his team-mates on the floor.

talk about different views.
I'm on this other site and dude is talking about how well PP played last night and how he really was putting forth effort etc etc..
so I replied that I knew someone at the game who said PP was being selfish like he used to be and ignored an open Green etc etc.
I said it must be different perspectives TV vs live.

Dude replied, live or on TV we see the same game.
Paul has NEVER played seflishly and that I must be nuts to insinuate that he ever has.
I mention this because this dude an another appear to be complete nut huggers to not acknowledge that Paul has played selfishly in the past like he didn't give a shit.
I just don't look at the C's with such rose coloured glasses I guess.

TV and watching to live so is much different

QuenteK25 wrote:Looks like you had some pretty good seats Mike

Yea the people at Product Sales reaally hooked me up for this game