It took a bit longer than usual, but this is no ordinary season for the Boston Celtics, who look like they’re playing on their last fumes of gas entering the final couple of weeks of the NBA season. Jeff Green continues his fantastic form with some exceptional scoring while Paul Pierce glues all the imperfect, not to mention flawed pieces together, in what looks like a successful escape of being the 8th seed in the East.
Green finished with 34 points on only 19 shots, including a corner 3 with 45 seconds left in the game to give the Celtics a five point lead and the eventual 98-93 win over the Detroit Pistons. Green is simply on fire over the last few games, averaging 23.2 points while shooting 56.8% from the field, being the main reason probably the Celtics are still above .500 and probably more importantly at this point, ahead of the Milwaukee Bucks in the race that the winner of it gets to avoid playing the Miami Heat in the first round of the postseason.
Paul Pierce came back from his “personal reasons”, adding 17 points and 5 assists on a bad shooting night, but it’s pretty useless trying to explain just how important Pierce is to this team on offense, being the only player who can act like a point guard on the floor, preventing chaos from ruling the land, with not a single one of the guards the Celtics have on the roster & available to them – Avery Bradley, Jason Terry, Jordan Crawford, Courtney Lee and Terrence Williams have the ability to be a decision maker for more than 2-3 minutes a night.
Without Garnett and the dubious big man duo of Chris Wilcox and Brandon Bass, the Boston Celtics struggled against the rebounding of the Detroit Pistons, but still managed, thanks to some hot shooting from Green down the clutch, to avoid letting those 25 offensive rebounds (8 of them by Greg Monroe) to interfere with getting the much needed win, making it into the playoffs for the sixth consecutive time, something that didn’t look too certain during some stages this season.
We knew we were a playoff team before the season started, despite the injuries and everything. The playoffs is a totally different game; it’s nothing like the regular season. At least these guys will go out there and get their feet wet, see some shots go in, rebound the ball and get some experience.