January 26, 2012
Game 17: Boston Celtics (8-9) at Orlando Magic (12-6)

The Boston Celtics followed up Monday night’s merciless thrashing of the Orlando Magic with an encore for the ages, coming back from a 27-point deficit to capture a 91-83 victory.  If Monday’s win represented the raising of the battleflag, Thursday’s was the charge into the breach.

We at the Kuts have become increasingly reliant on violent descriptors when relating game outcomes: so far this year, the Celtics have punched the Raptors in the nose and smashed the Magic in the teeth with a brick.  Kevin Garnett did the honors for us Thursday night, describing the game as “a goddamn bar fight, a goddamn bar fight, man, it’s a bar fight, Craig, it’s a bar fight, tonight was a bar fight, man…you ever been in a bar fight?”  Indeed, Garnett radiated the bruised, exhausted giddiness of a man who’d been pitched through a plate glass window, only to charge back through and crack someone in the skull with a pool cue.  We have never been in a bar fight ourselves, but last week we watched a tall fellow with a mustache disarm a potential troublemaker by kissing him on the mouth, then dragging his stunned, freaked-out ass through a crowded concert hall, dropping him off with the bouncers, and coming back to his very impressed girlfriend just in time for the final verse of “We’ve Been Had”.

Continue reading →

January 23, 2012
Game 16: Boston Celtics (7-9) vs. Orlando Magic (11-5)

The Boston Celtics welcomed Glen “Big Baby” Davis and Von “The Dutch Cookie” Wafer (who is eating some serious dust in his Wikipedia photo) back to the Garden by smashing their new team in the teeth with a brick, dealing the Orlando Magic a humiliating 87-56 loss.  You may have read that the Magic set ineptitude records with franchise lows in points and field goal percentage (.246), and a league-history low in field goals made (16).  You may not have read that, since Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen came to town in 2007, there have been eight NBA games where a team has scored 60 or fewer points.  The C’s clamped down with the stranglehold in four of those games.  Since the dawn of the Garnett-era, they are the only team to have held more than one opponent to that low a point total.  The most recent of these games was played less than a year ago, when the Celtics defeated the Milwaukee Bucks 87-56: the exact same score as Monday night.

Continue reading →