MVN - Most Valuable Network

Celtics Buck Trend, Win

Boston 117 Milwaukee 97

To quote my friend JMost on the Celtics 17 Message board, “phew.”

The Celtics needed a win and they got it. Plain and simple. Paul Pierce was fantasic, Wally Szczerbiak returned to the line-up and chipped in 14 points, Gerald Green had perhaps his best game of the season and Al Jefferson turned in another double-double to give the Cs an easy win. The team can now take a load off as they break for All Star weekend, instead of carrying the burden of what had become a franchise record for futility, both overall and on the world famous parquet. The season is not going to suddenly turn around. However, Boston Celtics will not be going into the record book next to most consecutive losses and the team can now sit back and cheer on Gerald Green to become the story this weekend instead of actually being the story themselves. Carrying a 19 game losing streak into Vegas would have brought some attention. A lot more than a one game winning steak will.

Heading out Sin City where he’ll get a chance to show of his athletism, Green figured he’d show off the other areas of his game and he did that just, scoring 21 points, missing just one shot along the way. Gerald made eight of nine shots including all five of his three point attempts, playing one of the best games of his young career. The fact that it helped the Cs break this streak has to be a tremendous confidence boost to the youngster.

The best game of the night was played by who else, Paul Pierce. The captain was determined to get a win before the Cetlics embark on a very tough five game trip after the All Star break and he delivered with 32 points. Pierce joined Gerald Green by sinking five from beyond the arc (he took eight), helping the Celtics to a season high from distance with 15 total.

It hardly mattered as the Cs coasted to the win but Pierce amazingly had no rebounds. I bet he’s never scored 30 and failed to get a rebound in his life. Just one of those crazy stats that will happen if you play long enough. Overall, great game by Paul.

Solid game for Big Al and I’m as happy for him as I am anyone that the streak is over. He has played too well to be involved in something like this. They showed his stats during the last 18 games during the telecast and I want to say he is averaging 14 and 12 over the stretch. You can’t ask for much more from a third year high school player. Jefferson had another impressive night with 17 points and 10 rebounds. You could see the relief on Al’s face as it became evident the Cs would prevail. This kid is a class act and we are lucky to have him. Keep it up Big Al.

Solid return to the line-up by Szczerbiak which was sort of a surprise. Wally has come back a few times already this year and each time it seemed like he took some time to get his legs back. Tonight was different. He looked close to the Wally of old. Perhaps the short amount of time he was out, compared to his other injuries is a factor. He was looking better before the latest tweak of the ankle and he picked up where he left off, scoring 14 points.

Early in the game it looked like the same old, tired story as the Bucks jumped all over the Cs, shooting their way to a 32-19 first quarter lead. But in the second, mostly thanks to Paul Pierce and Gerald Green the Cs stormed back with a 39 point second quarter to take a four point lead into the half. The Cs validated the strong second quarter with a 31 point third quarter to add 11 more points to their lead. From there they cruised home to award the brave souls who took on the snow, ice, sleet and wind to make their way to the Garden for the game.

The weather was so bad that Mike Gorman missed the game. Filling in was FSNE studio host Gary Tanguay. The over under is two years on how long it will be before he allows us to forget it.

Good luck Gerald. Go get em!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 14th, 2007 at 11:07 pm and is filed under Celtics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.