I often wonder what opposing teams, their beat reporters and bloggers are saying about the Celtics after playing the Celtics. Here's a dose of 'enemy chatter' from Milwaukee.
"Every time we got close we kind of hurt ourselves," Scott Skiles said. "But it's another game where our opponent shoots over 50%. It's hard to overcome that, and we lose the free-throw battle again.
"These stat sheets are starting to look awful similar every game. That's a great club and we were able to hang in there. We had way too many busted coverages and let them go wherever they wanted to go. Rondo was in the paint on us all night long.
"We tried to make several adjustments. He took it to our rookie (Jennings) pretty good."
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Boston Takes Over Behind Rondo
Unfortunately, in crunch time the Celtics simply played like the Celtics. And the Bucks, well, they played like you'd expect the Bucks to play on the road against the league's best defense. After Delfino found Ilyasova surprisingly open for a layup to tie it at 86, Rondo (40% ft shooting coming in) hit a pair of freebies and stuck a mid-range jumper shortly thereafter. It was the capper on a big quarter for Rondo, who scored all 11 of his points in the decisive period, including 5/7 from the stripe. Bogut then turned it over on consecutive possessions, and Garnett dumped a righty hook over Ilyasova to extend the Boston to lead to 93-86. Ballgame.
The Bucks certainly worked hard, but Rondo was seemingly able to draw the extra defender at will, forcing the Bucks to leave either Perkins open under the basket or Garnett open on the perimeter. And even though Rondo was basically no threat to score himself most of the night, he made almost no mistakes finding his talented teammates (13 dimes, one turnover). Whether it was the screener or someone setting up shop in the corner, Rondo's vision was tremendous and he's got the teammates to make him look good.
Rajon Rondo showed why he is a legitimate top flight NBA point guard and why Bucks PG Brandon Jennings still has a bit of a ways to go. Most of the Bucks produced somewhere on par with their Celtic counterparts except Jennings who was badly outproduced by the statistical machine known as Rajon.