With about 85 seconds left in the game, Doc Rivers drew up a beautiful inbounds play. Paul Pierce drove, the Magic collapsed, and Pierce made a beautiful pass to a cutting Tony Allen. Last season, this would have ended with Tony Allen exploding to the hoop and throwing it down hard. Instead what we got was a feeble attempt at a layup. This would turn out to be a huge missed opportunity as the ball would go out of bounds, Kevin Garnett would be forced to give his sixth foul on the inbound, and the Celtics would go on to lose by 2.
Allen's layup was by no means the sole factor in the defeat. Certainly, we can point to the fact that the team did not make its first three pointer until the fourth quarter. We can point to the fact that this team had dug itself into such a huge hole that they trailed by 20 points at one point in the second half. We can point to Paul Pierce's decision to pull up for three instead of driving to the basket on the final possession. However, Allen's mishap illustrated how much his knee injury has affected his style of play. I can only hope that as the season unfolds, Tony will get more confident going up on that knee.
In the end, I still love what we've seen from this team so far. Not only did we see a great deal of character from them tonight, but we also saw how effective our bench can be if we need to lean on them. If this team goes deep into the playoffs, people everywhere will be talking, and rightfully so, about the acquisitions of Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett. However, anyone who has been watching knows that they will not be able to reach that point without guys like Eddie House, James Posey, and Scott Pollard (who was hilarious tonight after swatting the ball out of Dwight Howard's hand). The Celtics couldn't have played much worse tonight, and yet they still took one of the best teams in the East down to the wire. I'll take that. Between watching the Giants come away with a huge win, watching a great contest between two Eastern Conference powerhouses, and thinking about how last years Celtics team would have fared against this year's Magic team, I'm feeling pretty good. I hope that tonight's game will eat Tony Allen more than it's eating me.
As a postscript, I would just like to point out that there is no announcer in sports who causes more awkward silences during the broadcasts than Tommy Heinsohn (except maybe Cedric Maxwell). There was a great example tonight after Hedo Turkoglu knocked down a three and Tommy said "you know what I'd like to do............take away his green card!" Silence on the other end. How are you supposed to respond to that?
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