CELTICS NEED DOUBLE OT TO PUT AWAY FIESTY BOBCATS

The Boston Celtics obviously know that nothing is going to come easy for them with superstar Kevin Garnett ‘shut down’ due to his lingering knee injury.  Even so, they likely didn’t expect that the victories would be the sort of struggle they endured at the TD BankNorth Garden on Tuesday night.  The defending NBA champs needed some three point shooting heroics from Paul Pierce and two overtime periods to finally shake the Charlotte Bobcats in a 111-109 victory.

A bad defensive sequence by Charlotte left Pierce wide open as time expired in the second OT session and he buried a three pointer for the game winning bucket.  He’d kept the Celtics alive a few minutes earlier by nailing a three point shot late in the first overtime to tie the score.  Bobcats coach Larry Brown said it was simply a ‘mental error’ by his team:

"We didn't handle it. We had a foul to give. We're going to smother everything -- no 3s and we give up a 3. Then we had a good shot at the end."

Unfortunately for the Bobcats, Raja Bell missed the ‘good shot’ that Brown mention and the Celtics prevailed.

Pierce led the Celtics in scoring with 32 points, followed by Ray Allen with 22 and Rajon Rondo with 21.  Eddie House contributed a nice effort off the bench with 18 points.  Charlotte had seven players score in double digits, led by ‘double/double’ efforts from leading scorer Gerald Wallace (20 points, 10 rebounds), Raymond Felton (14 points, 12 assists) and Emeka Okafor (12 points, 10 rebounds).  Boris Diaw had a nice all around game as well, adding 17 points, 8 assists and 7 rebounds.  D.J. Augustin (14 points), Raja Bell (12 points) and Vladimir Radmanovic (10 points) were the other double digit scorers for Charlotte.

After the game, the Bobcats’ Wallace said that his team needed to avoid dwelling on the disappointing loss and move forward:

"We had a great opportunity to beat the defending champs in their own building. We've got to put this game behind us."

Charlotte will return home on Friday night to host the Miami Heat before heading up to Detroit for an afternoon game against the struggling Pistons.  They’ll return to the ‘Queen City’ to host the Philadelphia 76ers on Tuesday.  Boston passed Orlando for 2^nd place in the Eastern Conference with the victory, and will hope to continue that success on Friday at home against a tough Atlanta Hawks team.  They’ll then host New Jersey on Wednesday and the Miami Heat a week from Friday.