Keep following plan B


The Celtics lost the game yesterday to the Knicks. New York was glad to accept the gift from us.

It won´t happen again.

For three full of thrill quarters the Celtics frustrated any single attempt from the isolation plays by Carmelo Anthony to overpower us. It didn´t matter how offensively talented the hosts were, we always fought back and punched them in the guts right away. It didn´t matter either that the referees made it impossible for any player to slightly touch Melo without being called a foul. Bass and Green were superb on Melo despite his numbers.

NBA, where Foul Magnet happens.

The truth is that we just lacked some clear heads at the end. Pierce and Garnett didn´t have their most efficient nights in attack and Green was under control by NY´s defense at the end. We just needed some inspiration, guidance, playmaking.

Maybe fans were not the only ones checking on Rajon Rondo at the bench, because the team screamed for the return of its star at the end.

While Rondo won´t be back on the court any time soon, the Celtics have learned the lesson the hard way and will be ready to continue displaying plan B. Plan B has been on since Rajon got hurt back in January. So far the Celtics managed to find ball movement through and from other hands and the results hadn´t been dissapointing.

The ball needs to move, the game needs to flow on offense.

Plan A is not happening, people. We can´t beat New York playing Rondo style offense. As you could see Bradley is not Rondo and the team seemed to be waiting for that somebody to make something happen. You could feel as if they were just waiting for Doc to insert Rondo out there in order to create some magic out of nowhere. We were all ready for Rondo time, but his street clothes remained on while the Knicks stole our chances to win game 1.

We needed more from Terry, Lee and Crawford last night. Maybe Doc should have tried something different at the end, to try and salvage our poor play in the last minutes. Why not trusting Williams or Randolph for some inspirational awakening in the end? How about giving Wilcox a chance to get something done in his still to play first career minutes in the playoffs?

We have actually learned some very valuable things from game 2:

- We can and we will beat the Knicks. And we can surely do it for four times to advance.

- We can´t expect to do so by playing through an offense designed to suit Rajon Rondo.

- Jason Terry and Jordan Crawford will be huge in game 2. There is no way these two have another dismal performance in these series.

- Doc needs to be more open minded and less stubborn when things don´t go as expected. There are more players in the bench

Plan A was to win it all with Rajon Rondo. Plan B was to win it all despite not having Rajon Rondo.

Bring on Plan B again, guys.

Celtics will win on Tuesday, let´s go Celtics