The Boston Celtics tightened up their defense agai

The Boston Celtics tightened up their defense against the New York Knicks in the second half of Sunday's Game 1 of their Eastern Conference quarterfinals series solely through effort. But no amount of desire seemed to help them slow down Amare Stoudemire.After the Knicks were limited to only five third-quarter field goals, NBA Boston Celtics Jerseys Stoudemire connected on six of seven attempts over the first 9:13 of the final period, pretty much single-handedly fending off all of Boston's advances. His driving slam with 2:47 to play had the Knicks out front by four, and Celtics players were openly asking coach Doc Rivers to make an adjustment.Rivers implored his team to simply stick with the game plan."We didn't do anything different; we just did what we should have been doing," Rivers said before Monday's practice session at the Sports Authority Training Center at HealthPoint. "We didn't make one defensive adjustment the entire game. But if you looked at the two halves, you would have said, 'Man, they changed a lot.'"He's even more encouraged that his troops were able to turn things around by simply following the game plan instead of some elaborate change.
Nope, only the effort changed. For a team whose catchphrase has become "flip the switch," the Celtics essentially proved Sunday that they are a completely different team when they apply themselves and follow the game plan laid out by Rivers and his staff instead of freelancing.The first thing that stopped Stoudemire in the fourth quarter was Jermaine O'Neal stepping up and taking a charge with 2:16 to play. During the timeout that followed, Rivers simply reiterated to his players what he had laid out for them in the scouting report four days earlier."We were shading Stoudemire way too hard instead of playing him square," Rivers said. "When we started doing that and denying his catches on the elbow, that was the game plan. We put more pressure on the ball so they couldn't throw it to Amare easier; that was all part of the game plan four days ago. We just got off of it."Pushed out of his comfort zone and simply ignored by his teammates at times, Stoudemire didn't touch the ball on any of New York's final seven possessions, the Knicks settling for isolation looks. Carmelo Anthony, laboring through a dreadful 1-for-11 performance in the second half, missed a pair of 3-pointers in the final minute as Boston surged ahead.
According to ESPN Stats & Information, the Knicks averaged 1.19 points per play in the first half, scoring on 55.8 percent of their total plays. Cheap NBA Jerseys In the second half, those numbers were practically split in half, the Knicks averaging 0.67 points per play and scoring on 31.4 percent of their plays.If the switch is on, the Celtics are hoping it stays there when play resumes with Game 2 on Tuesday night back at TD Garden."I want to see that effort in the first quarter, just to start the game," Celtics captain Paul Pierce said. "It was intense, guys were getting on the floor,G-STAR T-Shirt, going after the ball. Everybody was talking, and that's the Celtic team -- the Celtic defense -- that I know, that I recognized there.Defense and rebounding fueled the Celtics at the other end of the court, as Boston was able to get in transition and generate easy baskets with Rondo at the helm. Rondo missed all four of the shots he took in the second half, but he grabbed eight of his nine rebounds and handed out seven of his nine assists while flirting with a triple-double.The question is whether Boston can put that sort of effort together for 48 minutes. Rivers acknowledges his team is extremely tough to beat when that happens. The fourth-quarter defensive dominance disappeared during Boston's late-season struggles, so Rivers is encouraged to see it return in the postseason.

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