The Outlet #1: Ham Down, Man Down
So, we haven't 100% planned out how we're going to deal with game-by-game coverage this season. We've got a tentative goal to do an in-depth, hardcore recap of at least one game out of the week. We also will have the usual oddities you've come to expect from us -- strange aesthetics essays, outlandish fiction, and statistical curiosities abound. But for now, we're going to test out doing semi-daily pieces reacting to the games we watch, or portions thereof. Won't usually cover all the games. Most days, though, between the two of us we'll cover quite a few. Today, however, Alex was engaged in family matters for much of the day and Aaron spent (quite literally) six hours of the day in a plane with no access to the games. So we can only really cover certain portions of each game. But here are our reads and reactions from the day's game-time jams in our new work-a-day feature, tentatively titled "The Outlet." Enjoy. Merry Season, everybody.
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I managed to catch about one half of this game -- the first half, in an Atlanta airport. My favorite part of the game had absolutely nothing to do with the game itself, but to the people milling around the airport bar I was sitting at. Some guy was talking to his wife, and kept pointing to the Knicks and saying "Hey! Honey! There's the new guy, he's Chandler, he's so good!" and kept tugging on her even though she obviously didn't care. It wasn't funny on its face, except that he apparently had absolutely no idea which Knick was Tyson Chandler. I'm serious. The first Knick he pointed out was Landry Fields, but he had this kind of "wait, that's not right..." look on his face as soon as they did a close-up of Landry. So then he decided on Jared Jeffries being the Real Tyson Chandler, which lasted for about 10 minutes (replete with him yelling "CHANDLER!" at everything positive Jared Jeffries did), until finally there was a closeup on Jeffries where you could see his jersey. He got really confused, asked for another drink, and seemed existentially distressed that he had no idea who Tyson Chandler was. I had to leave on my flight shortly thereafter, but it was great fun. As for the game itself? Looking at the box score, I clearly missed something special from Rondo in the 3rd. But I feel I have a good sense of it from watching the first half. Rondo was playing like a man possessed, and usually, the Celtics are pretty unbeatable when he plays like that.
Except for the big problem -- they didn't have Pierce. In the first half I commented on Twitter asking how the Celts are going to win ANY games where Pierce, Allen, KG, or Rondo sat. I don't think I'm altogether off in asking that. Rondo's game today was insane, and pretty incredible. But he won't do that every night. The fact that it took that kind of an incredible effort from Rondo just to keep this game CLOSE doesn't say good things about the Celtics. What doesn't say good things about the Knicks? The perimeter defense, which was expectedly abysmal in this game. Toney Douglas is active on the perimeter, but that doesn't mean he's good -- same with Shumpert, although Shump shows more promise from the minutes I saw. Amare is still as he's always been on defense. He'll have a single decent defensive possession, then follows it up with three liquified atrocities. Just absurd. Part of it was early season issues, but I don't see how a perimeter defense that lets the Celts' second unit stay in the game and can't close out properly brings the Knicks to a conference finals, even with Tyson Chandler there to back them up. They can figure it out, they have the pieces, but a two point home win over a Pierce-less Celtics doesn't inspire much confidence in me. In the Celtics case, it's not great news for them either -- they needed essentially a god-tier Rondo game just to have a chance, despite the Knicks defense. A sort of middling game all-around, with positives and negatives for both teams. But God, I'll admit -- it was incredibly exciting to watch real basketball again. Even if it was in an airport bar near a guy bowing under the alter of Jared "Tyson Chandler" Jeffries.
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