All season long, the Celtics have been criticized (fairly) for not playing with any effort and even though they lost tonight, the effort was there. Defensively, this was a really solid game for the Celtics but the wheels fell off offensively after the first half. In the first half, the Celtics shot 9-17 from 3 which is fantastic but those numbers plummeted to 2-13 in the second half and both of our hits from 3 were in the final 2 minutes of play when the game was already out of reach. The effort was there but shots weren't falling in the second half. The two guys that actually played really solid games were Timelord and Smart. Timelord set a franchise record 9 blocks tonight and added 11pts 9reb and Smart added 17pts and 5ast. Defensively, these were the two guys that held things down and they got the job done offensively as well.

We are the clear underdogs in this matchup and the only chance we have of winning this series is if all of our guys are on top of their game. That certainly wasn't the case tonight as we saw BAD shooting nights from our 3 best offensive players. Tatum shot 6-20, Kemba shot 5-16 and Fournier shot 3-10 which is a combined 30% from the field. This type of performance is not going to get it done. It's definitely promising seeing the defensive intensity back with this team but we need to mesh that intensity with a fluid and efficient offensive game to make this series interesting.

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