Boston Celtics (14 - 14) @ Golden State Warriors (20 - 10)

Start time: 7:30 PM PST @ Oracle Arena
Local TV: CSN Bay Area
Nat TV: NBATV

Probable starters for the Golden State Warriors:

C - Festus Ezeli
PF - David Lee
SF - Harrison Barnes
SG - Klay Thompson
PG - Stephen Curry

Probable starters for the Boston Celtics:

C - Jason Collins
PF - Kevin Garnett
SF - Paul Pierce
SG - Jason Terry
PG - Rajon Rondo

Team leaders:
PPG - S. Curry (20.3) | P. Pierce (20.2)
RPG - D. Lee (11.2) | K. Garnett (7.0)
APG - S. Curry (6.4) | R. Rondo (11.7)
SPG - S. Curry (1.6) | R. Rondo (2.0)
BPG - A. Bogut (1.0) | K. Garnett (0.8)

Some really good matchups today. Curry vs. Rondo, KG up against Lee, and I'm assuming that Green is going to cover Pierce for the majority of the game although Barnes will open up on him. The last time we played Boston, Lee had this intensity about him and was barking back and forth with KG. I'd love to see that again.

Gonna be a tough one tonight against a veteran team and we're on a back to back. I still believe that running a fast paced game will be key. Youth is on our side!

Rondo is out.

Too many weapons

BRING ON THE CLIPPERS!!!!

Go dubs, see what happens when you depend too much on one player, Rondo means alot to the Celtics, when he is not playing the team pretty much falls apart.

Not like Rondo would have made too much of a difference tonight.

warriorsstepup wrote:Go dubs, see what happens when you depend too much on one player, Rondo means alot to the Celtics, when he is not playing the team pretty much falls apart.

Not like Rondo would have made too much of a difference tonight.

Celtics have been bad all year.

Their offense was really bad last night, though, I doubt we lose even with Rondo in, cause teams don't lose when they shoot the ball like that.

Great game overall. I'm just not used to seeing Harrison being our top rebounder, and Lee grabbing just 5 boards.

I look at the Celtics and I see a team playing like their age, Jarron Collins playing center ? I mean really. They have so many holes, on their roster and their bench, especially on their wings. Shows me the warriors are on the up and up foreal, while certain dynasties are falling below the waist side.

Rondo makes a HUGE difference. The guy is the leader of that team and one of the best players in the league. The Warriors still might have won the game, but don't go saying a healthy Rondo wouldn't have made any difference. He's the one that makes that team go.

J1000 wrote:Rondo makes a HUGE difference. The guy is the leader of that team and one of the best players in the league. The Warriors still might have won the game, but don't go saying a healthy Rondo wouldn't have made any difference. He's the one that makes that team go.

Warriors won by 20, the point is Dubs would have won regardless if Rondo plays because they have so many holes on there roster.

Rondos lack of offensive production has really hurt his team, he needs to carry them on that sense as well. Piece is 35, Garnett 36, they are still depending on those guys, but those guys can only produce so much at this stage in in their career.

I think warriors blocked season high 10 times.
Explains well how old the celtics are.

Game notes:

- Boston looked ancient. Garnett, Pierce, Terry... They all looked like they were relying 100% on the refs to bail them out on every play. The old guard combined to shoot 29%. Courtney Lee, Jared Sullinger, and Brandon Bass were impressive in spurts, but even Jeff Green looked bad without Rondo. Solid defense by the Warriors because you have to believe Boston isn't really as bad as they looked offensively.

- Better late than never: Festus Ezeli, whom I've been hesitant to anoint as a true shot-blocker (despite admitting that he's an A+ defender) had a coming out party of sorts to the tune of 5 rejections! Perhaps overshadowed by Klay's 2 block night, if Ezeli can continue to give Golden State more block than fouls, his minutes should take an enormous spike upwards.

- You know what undeniable, piss-scared respect looks like? Answer: a constant double-team without the ball. DLee may be making the all-star bid, but teams are blitzing Curry hard lately. Did nobody tell them that he played through constant triple-teams at Davidson and is exceptional at finding the open man? Not to mention, his range does out to 27 feet (no joke).

32 wrote:- You know what undeniable, piss-scared respect looks like? Answer: a constant double-team without the ball. DLee may be making the all-star bid, but teams are blitzing Curry hard lately. Did nobody tell them that he played through constant triple-teams at Davidson and is exceptional at finding the open man? Not to mention, his range does out to 27 feet (no joke).

GREAT point. I think it started off with Miami and Boston tried to do the same thing. Here's the beauty of it all though. Curry's teammates realize that they're able to get off because of the focus on Curry. I didn't get a chance to watch the post game interviews for Boston, but after the Miami game, this was the first thing Jack mentioned when interviewed by Ric Bucher (i think). He said that the reason why he was able to get career high in points was because everyone was focused on Curry and that allowed him to get better looks.

Another thing worth mentioning is that even though Boston was blitzing Curry, he still had a strong showing. Not sure what his line was and I'm not going to look at it but I swear it could've been something like 22 points and 9 assists or something.

This team is doing great things and it's basically because of 4 things (in no particular order):

1) Curry's emergence and health. He's bringing his shooting averages up from the beginning of the season and he's staying healthy.

2) Lee's consistent play. He's answering his critics by doing what he usually does on a good team. He's not just a stat sheet stuffer, he just needed some supporting cast as anyone would.

3) SOLID rookie play. Barnes isn't consistent, but he doesn't need to be just yet. He's giving us spurts of energy when we need it. Ezeli is giving us great interior presence although he has solid rock hands. Dude needs to work on it. And my personal favorite is Draymond Green. He is absolutely atrocious in terms of shooting, but watching him play defense is a thing of beauty. I mean it. I'd rather watch this guy play defense than watching highlights of that Barnes over Pekobitch poster dunk, but that's just the type taste I have.

4) And this is a big one and everyone knows what I'm going to say already: Carl Jack. These two has been absolutely HUGE for us. It's nice when you can take two starters from a competitive team last year, and put them in as your 2nd unit. The way these two performed off the bench has won us many games and we're not even half way through the season yet. Their impact doesn't end on the basketball floor either. Jarrett Jack is a flat out leader. He says the right things, he brings us down if we're too high, and he brings us up when we're too low. He's like our medication if the Warriors had bipolar disease. There have been countless times where he was chosen to give the post game interview and many times he cites Brandon Rush as his/his team's source of motivation. You can't coach that type of camaraderie and I flat out love it. It pains me whenever I think about us losing him next year.