It sounded great.
Given the injury-riddled Knicks frontline, Celtics coach Doc Rivers planned to establishKevin Garnett as an offensive weapon in Game 2 (via Baxter Holmes of The Boston Globe).
It was a strategy both predictable and effective. KG’s minus-five rating in the plus/minus category might not sound like much, but it led all Celtics starters Tuesday night.
In the end, though, it proved to be nothing more than a Band-Aid on a gushing wound. Plagued by foul trouble, the Big Ticket was limited to just 24 minutes.
With their offensive focal point sidelined, the Celtics looked like, well, a team playing without an offensive identity. Boston shot just 37.1 percent from the field, tallied only 14 assists (less than three more than Rajon Rondo’s season average, 11.1, by the way) and managed a total of 23 second-half points.
The Celtics’ box score featured a horde of volume-scoring efforts.
Paul Pierce needed 19 field-goal attempts for his team-high 18 points. Jeff Green and Jordan Crawford each needed 11 to tally 10 points. Even Garnett, arguably the team’s most effective scorer in the game, shot under 50 percent (4-of-9) and turned the ball over three times.
The Celtics have done what they needed to do on the defensive end in this series. They’ve held the Knicks, a team that averaged nearly 105 points over its last 17 games of the regular season, to just 86.0 points over the first two games.
But 74.5 points per game won’t get it done, regardless of how strong the defense looks.
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