Catching Up

As you may have surmised, I've been too busy with my day job to keep up with my historical pace of cranking out posts on the current state of Celtics basketball. Bottom line is that if I don't have time to read about the Celtics, I don't have time to write about the Celtics. This may be changing, at least short term. I just retrieved 270 Celtics-related articles since November 20, 2009, and it took exactly one minute to find something interesting, very interesting indeed.

Dig this:

The fact Rajon Rondo played just 43 seconds of the fourth quarter last night was not the deciding factor in the Celtics' 83-78 loss to Orlando. Nor was Doc Rivers wrong or right for leaving his point guard on the pine. But the situation is quite representative of the Celts' largest problem right now. The coach doesn't know what he's going to get when he puts any given group on the floor, so when something is going a little right, he's loathe to make a change. "Well, we made a run, so it wasn't a hard (decision),'' he said of sticking with Eddie House. ``You go with the best unit that's playing.'' Turning to his team as a whole, Rivers said, ``We're making up stuff on the floor on offense and defense.

Rondo thought he knew why the offense was discombobulated:

``I don't feel that we trust each other right now on both ends of the floor,'' he said. ``We're not executing offensively. We're not getting in our sets. And against a good team like Orlando, you can't get away with it. Maybe against other teams that are below .500 you can get away with it, but not the defending Eastern Conference champs.''

Rondo playing less than a minute of the fourth quarter in a big game? The offense not clicking? It is hard to imagine either thing happening today. Every game Rajon Rondo takes another step closer to becoming the type of closer that has made other NBA point guards Hall-of-Fame bound. Not unrelated, the offense is clicking so well right now that nary a game goes by without the opponent, the announcers for the opponent, or the opponent's fans praising the well-oiled machine that is the Celtics' passing game.

Funny what a difference less than a month can make.