C's/Hornets - 11/01/06

1. I love Bob Cousy, you love Bob Cousy, we all love Bob Cousy. However, anyone announcing a NBA game has to know who Chris Paul is. And you can only refer to so many players as “kid”. Does Cousy know any non-Celtics player outside of Shaq, which does not count because they were in a movie together?

2. How about the tension between Tommy and Cousy? Cousy was even bitching after made Celtics baskets. I thought Tommy was on the brink of senility until Cousy completely recalibrated the scale tonight. And for the record Cousy’s field goal percentage was .375. Yes Wally shot terribly tonight from the field (.357) but Cousy should stick to criticizing foul shots and point guard play.

3. Lots of travels and cheap fouls. Just throwing that out there.

4. The C’s are a bad rebounding team and a suspect defensive squad. The sooner I come to grips with that the better.

5. I’m not sure if it was the lack of a rotation (knew that going in), the inability to run plays out of timeouts, or approaching pick and rolls as if they were completely foreign, but at some point tonight it hit me – the Celtics might not be a well-coached team.

6. I am concerned by how much better the Hornets’ chemistry and offensive cohesiveness was tonight. There’s not a lot of history between Chris Paul, Bobby Jackson, David West (I thought he was bigger), Peja, and Tyson Chandler. I mean they are not the Pistons who happen to be making their way to Boston on Friday.

7. I’d blame the loss on the C’s foul shooting but the Hornets were just as bad.

8. Telfair looked lost at times.

9. Overall the Celtics have to win games like this if they want to make any kind of run at the playoffs.

10. It makes me nervous when Gomes is the center, Pierce is the power forward, and Wally is the “quick forward.”

Around the NBA:

- Usually when a player is questionable for a game due to a bad surf and turf dinner it would be the strangest reason for such a development in his career. But Corey Maggette already has that ill-fated pedicure on his resume.

- I don’t agree with Bill Simmons’ recent assessment of Gilbert Arenas. Arenas does not have the typical NBA posse and I really don’t believe there is anything contrived about #0. Meanwhile, between last year’s playoffs, opening night, and the fact that Arenas plays with the Cavs on video games, Lebron James is dangerously close to owning Gilbert.

- Some legitimately interesting stat lines tonight: Emeka Okafor (6 blocks!), Eddy Curry (minus the turnovers), and Larry Hughes. And yes Hughes taunted me for several rounds in my fantasy draft but I just couldn’t pull the trigger.

- Speaking of my fantasy draft. Chris Paul and Paul Pierce were lights out tonight to the point that I already regret passing on them for Chris Bosh in my fantasy draft. Of course Raef LaFrentz does not start at center for Celtics Bandwagon. That’s important.

- Jamal Mashburn still gets a check from the Sixers. Really.

- It is sad to watch Amare miss dunks. Microfracture knee surgery is evil. However, based on what I saw last night don’t jump off the Amare bandwagon yet.

- Whoever put together the “It takes 5ive” ad campaign probably quit watching TV just to avoid “the Lebrons” commercials. This deserves a separate post at some point.