Tonight was the low point of the season so far as the Celtics were abused by the Knicks 101-77. We were out played in every category. It was so bad that the Tommy Award went to David Lee on the Knicks. We didn't even have a player that was worthy of the Tommy Award.

This season, we have seen more improvement from Perk on the court. He was fouling too much and studied tape and learned what he was doing that caused him to foul and corrected it. He had only 1 foul in his last game.

“There’s nothing for anyone to point their finger at here,” said a bristling Kendrick Perkins. “It’s not coaching that’s the problem here, and it’s not our offense - it’s us and our commitment.

“If everyone comes in with the same mindset, and isn’t just out there thinking of their offense, then we’ll be all right,” Perkins said. “We can’t win games where a team is shooting 53 percent on us.

“That’s a matter of pride - deciding not to let them take those open shots. I came in with the pride in my defense tonight. I just couldn’t let somebody from the other team get off. We’ll put up points, everyone knows that. But we have to do both - defense and offense. I’m not just talking about pick-and-roll defense, but straight-up defense. All of us, me included, have to get better. You can’t go out there with just two or three guys thinking that way. Everyone has to say, ‘I’m not letting this guy get off.’ ”

"We came out like we already won a championship," said Perkins. "We were too laidback. We came out like we just knew we were going to win, like they were just going to give us the game. . .I didn't think we respected them like we should have. I don't know why. It's just consistency. The things we were doing in the three game winning streak we stopped doing. We started getting on our own agenda."

"No disrespect to the Bobcats, but we should have won that game," said Perkins. "Honest. [That game] was valuable. I don't think people understood how valuable it was."

Celtics 3 game win streak ended tonight as they lost to the Charlotte Bobcats 92-83. We didn't seem to have the energy we needed tonight to win. The starters seemed sluggish all night on both ends of the floor. They settled for too many jumpers and quick shots and didn't get their offense going. The second unit came in with energy and brought us back a couple of times, but the energy seemed to leave when the starters came back.

We settled way too much for the outside shot and those shots weren't falling. We only had 2 players in double figures: Pierce with 28 and Gomes with 12. Wally was 3 of 13, Pierce was 8 of 20 and Telfair was 3 of 10 but did have 7 assists. When the outside shots don't fall you have to go to the basket. The coach should have called them on it. If the players on the floor aren't getting it done, sit them and bring others in.

According to Steve Bulpett in the Herald, both Perk and Al participated in the shootaround and should be playing tonight.

Both went through shootaround, as did Delonte West (sprained left big toe). West is still a game-time decision, according to Doc Rivers. Jefferson is supposedly uncertain, as well, but he gave a rousing “Hell, yeah'’ this morning when asked if he’d be working this evening.

The Lenovo Stat shows the power of teamwork. It's a way of showing the best-engineered/best combination of players on the court. The Lenovo Stat is a plus/minus statistic that looks at the point differential when players are both in and out of the game, to see how the team performs with various combinations. The Lenovo Stat can look at a variety of combinations – including the best two-player, three-player and even five-player combinations for each game.

The Celtics starting five of Pierce, Wally, Perk, Gomes and Telfair tops the list followed by the Rockets and the Nuggets. Here is what they had to say:

The Celtics have won three games in a row and the Lenovo Stat points to the five-man combination that has counted most for that success. Paul Pierce, who is averaging a career-high 9.4 rebounds per game in his 10th season, teamed with veteran twine tickler Wally Szczerbiak and the young trio of Kendrick Perkins, Sebastian Telfair and Ryan Gomes to jump to the head of the pack. Houston's top five dropped from first place to second but the Rockets haven't skipped a beat as they are 7-4. Denver also is new to the leaderboard as Carmelo Anthony and Co. have won four out of five games after starting the season 0-3.

Once again, Derrenmatts over on Celtics Green came up with a great post that I wanted to share here. He compiled a list of our stats after 10 games and these are very revealing as to the progress of this team. I am looking forward to his 20 game report as I expect us to continue to improve over the next 10 days. Here is Derren's post:

Celtics fans have a lot to be excited about. Our record is not indicative of how well we've been playing because most of our losses came as a result of 1 bad quarter of mental lapses. Aside from those spurts of lackluster play, our stats indicate how good we have been playing.

A glance at our stats in our 1st 10 games:

PPG: 103.8 (5th)

FG%: 45.7% (12th)

FT%: 74.1% (20th)

FT attempts per game: 32.8 (2nd)

3pt%: 41.5 (1st)

3pt attempts per game: 17.1 (18th)

Rebounds: 43.9 (4th)

Assists: 21.2 (11th)

TO's committed: 16.1 (23rd)

Steals: 6.4 (21st)

Blocks: 5.6 (9th)

Fouls per game: 26.4 (25th)

What do these stats tell us?

These stats tell us a lot about how well we've been playing. What jumps out at me is how much we've improved in the rebounding department, and keep in mind that this is without Ratliff and Jefferson--the latter who had beeen contributing a lot prior to the appendectomy. Perennially, we've been among the dead last in rebounds in the league. But credit Clifford Ray and our players because we've mightily improved all the way to the top 4 spot Its incredible to see us control the boards and not give up so many second chance points as we have becoming used to seeing. Perk and Gomes have done a remarkable job, as well as Pierce and Rajon from the guard spots. As a whole, our team has been aggressively crashing the board (and Scalabrine deserves credit here as well). And while we are talking about our former problem areas, we've also improved markedly in shot blocking. We've gone from mediocre to 9th place and this is primarily due to Kendrick Perkins finally emerging as our enforcing presence (currently averaging 2.1 bpg). And just think what he'll be able to do once he starts averaging 30 mpg. Perkins may never be a smooth offensive player, but that's not his role anyways. Grabbing near double digit rebounds and blocking 2.5 shots per game is what'll keep us from slipping defensively.

We've known that we're a good offensive club already. But we're getting even better. We're still not running as efficiently, or consistently as we need to, and still we are 5th in the league in scoring. And now we are 1st in the league in 3pt shooting. But what I really like is that although we are shooting the three ball really well, we're not over doing it like we did during O'Brien's tenure. We're 18th in the league in 3 pointers attempted per game. I would not want to become reliant on the 3 pointers.

What do we need to work on?

Turnovers, though slightly improved, still remains our weak point. We turn the ball over 16 times per game, good for 23rd worst in the league. Just as discouraging is that we are only forcing 13.3 turnovers per game, and that ranks us at 28th in the league. As quick and athletic as we are, we should be forcing more turnovers and getting our hands on more steals with our pressure defense. The preseason games were encouraging because we were swiping passes left and right. We need to get back to being more aggressive defensively. Getting more steals and turnovers allow more fastbreaking opportunities and that's where we can really blow the game open.

What also hurts us is the amount of fouls we give up, which leads to a high amount of free throw attempts. We are among the highest fouling teams in the league and this is partially why teams are able to stage runs and make comeback attempts off of us, especially late in games.

Free throw shooting has been discouraging. We are a team that gets to the line a lot during games (2nd in the league). But we only convert 74% of these freebees. Again, this hurts us late in games, when making free throws are at a premium.

So all these stats considered, we are actually playing much better than most people think we are by looking at our current record. And to think that we have a lot more room to grow with the chemistry aspect and we really have a lot to look foward to this season.

I'll keep you posted on how we are doing at the 20 game mark.

Opponents:
PPG: 101.3 (23rd best)
FG%: 44.3 (7th best)
3pt%: (7th best)
Rebs: 40.7 (18th best)
Assists: 20.6 (14th best)

Being a team that scores a lot of points, its only natural that we are also going to allow a lot of teams to have scoring opportunities. And because we foul a lot as a team, we are giving our oppoenents free scoring chances. Thus the reason why we are giving up 101.3 ppg.

But more than just looking at this stat, its good to consider our opponents FG%, which is a better indication of how our defense is doing. We are the 7th best team in terms of opponents' FG%, meaning we aren't allowing teams a lot of good looks.

Last week the Celtics were ranked #29 in the ESPN Power Rankings. This week, they have jumped to #21. What a difference a week makes.

21 (29) Celtics 4-6 We praise Pierce for his board work, then he stops rebounding in double digits, then Celts start winning. We'd have said something sooner if we knew the result.

Rookie Rankings are out again and Boston is well represented. Rondo is ranked 8 overall. Not bad for a 21st pick.

8. Rajon Rondo, G, Boston
MPG PPG RPG APG SPG BPG FG% 3P% FT%
21.9 5.4 3.7 3.6 1.22 0.11 .364 .000 .654
Seven assists on Monday and again on Wednesday. Six boards on Saturday. Throw in eight steals in four games. Rondo can fill a statsheet even if he's not scoring.

Leon Powe (BOS) has started to play solid minutes off the bench for the Celtics. On Monday, he scored 10 points and grabbed seven boards against Orlando.

Derrenmatts on Celtics Green posted this great piece. This was a very signicant win and he states it very well.

1) It was the 1st time in 19 months that we were able to win 3 games in a row. Now, this may not seem like much, but its something we just could not do last year. We are younger this year, but this team has the ability to be much better than last year's team. We are defending much better, rebounding much better, moving the ball around the floor better and limiting our TO's. All good signs and we are now seeing the effects of these improvements.

2) This was the second of the back to back games and we won it on the road. Coming off a feel good win vs. the Blazers was nice, but we had to hold our breath to see if we could continue playing well the very next game while playing on hostile territory. Most young teams take a while to learn how to win on the road, away from the comfort of home.

3) We were to fight off a major colapse and hold strong till the very end. We built a huge lead, lost it, but did not lose our composure. This shows developing maturity and tough skin. Earlier, we may have given up after squandering such a hefty lead, especially being so young and inexperienced as we are. But how we were able to hold firm and build up another lead shows that we are growing as a team, and this should bolster their confidence that they can pull out a win even when the momentum shifts and the lead is lost.

This team is showing resiliency and new found confidence. They are beginning to believe in themselves as a team and many of the players are beginning to pull through late in the game. Lots of guys are stepping up and playing bigger roles in tight games. Gomes and Perk have been doing an excellent job defensively and pulling down boards.

Steve Bulpett points out that after a woeful 1-6 start, the Celtics are suddenly red hot and right back in the mix in the Atlantic division. This was a game where the refs called frequent fouls and kept any momentum from going too far and we finally closed out a close game. Things are looking up for the Green!

In the Celtics Notebook, Bulpett reports that Danny is not going to make any moves to alleviate our center woes. Al should be back next week and Perk has been very good to stay out of foul trouble. And Powe has been doing a good job of backing up Perk. Pierce is once again showing his playful side as he tells how he misses the Brown/Knicks soap opera in New York. This is a great quote.

“The soap opera’s dying down around here. The year before that we had the Lakers with Kobe and Shaq, and then we had New York. What are we going to do without those two soap operas?

“Maybe I should start something,” he added with a mischievous look. “Maybe I should slap Perk (Kendrick Perkins). No, I ain’t touching that man. He’ll choke me out. But we’ve got to start something on this team.”