With a little over 9 minutes to go in the 4th quarter at the Garden on Sunday, I pointed out Rondo’s stats on the scoreboard to my buddy. He figured there was no chance for a triple-double because at the time Rajon had just 6 rebounds. But after tracking down two in the game’s final 21 seconds, he finished with 32 points, 15 assists, and 10 boards. There’s only been 6 triple-doubles in the NBA this season, and Rondo’s got 2 of them.
But that wasn’t the most impressive thing Rajon did in the last 21 seconds. He also went 4-4 from the foul throw line to ice the game (extending a 91-88 lead to 95-89 with only 9 seconds left). You don’t expect the Celtics to win games with Rondo at the line, but that’s exactly what happened (overall he made his final 6 free throw attempts, and went 10 of 13 for the game).
And that wasn’t even Rondo’s best 21 seconds. With 5:28 to go he threw a nice alley-oop to JaJuan Johnson. Then on the next possession he passed to Chris Wilcox for another with 5:07 left (exactly 21 seconds later). I don’t remember ever seeing the Celtics convert back to back alley-oop dunks before.
This was the 25th straight game that Boston has held their opponents under 100 points. It’s the longest such streak in the league in 7 years, and also the 7th longest streak of it’s kind in NBA history in the shot clock era (I find myself always writing “in the shot clock era” when referring to records. I’m sick of it. Can we just eliminate that phrase? The NBA only existed for 5 years, 1950-54, before the shot clock, and it was a totally different game then and not much happened. So I’m done with it. From here on out I’m only ever acknowledging the NBA post 1954. Sorry George Mikan). Strangely enough the Celtics have never scored more than 100 points themselves during that same stretch. But, they have scored exactly 100 on three occasions, twice vs Washington and once vs Toronto.
One final thing: the Celtics are 15-12 right now. I know they have played twice as many games at home as on the road, and I know their schedule in the month of March looks pretty brutal, but their current pace would give them 37 wins for the season, which is exactly what I predicted.
About Mark Vandeusen