Sports Redux: Didn't We Almost Have It All

In a sense, it's comforting. The Celtics went to battle against one of the other good Eastern teams without Kevin Garnett, and almost beat 'em. On the day of the C's' long-awaited return to national afternoon TV, the script ran eerily similar to the first game in Orlando; the Magic jumped out to a big lead, the Celtics clawed their way back, but ran out of gas at the end. Orlando's the only team to get a 14-point lead on the Green all year, and they've done it twice.

Kevin Garnett was and will be sidelined with an abdominal strain (do NOT do a Google Image Search before breakfast), disappointing the national audience, and introducing America to Brian Scalabrine, Starter. Paul Pierce and Rajon Rondo stepped up their games accordingly, while Ray and Posey kept the C's in it through the fourth, but hopefully America got a good look at Leon Powe, who's been playing fantastic basketball off the bench the past few games. We're still hoping he'll develop into the poor man's Charles Oakley, instead of the poor man's Charles Shackleford. Good signs for Leon.

But as spirited as the depleted Celtics played, Orlando had answers. Dwight Howard was his usual commanding self in the middle, with 18 and 16 rebounds and two fouls on Kendrick Perkins in the first 4.2 seconds (unofficial estimate). Somebody named Brian Cook was killing Boston from the 3-point line, but the big blow was Hedo Turkoglu and his game-winning 360-degree off-balance 3-pointer, ending the game and using up all our extra hyphens.

CelticsBlog has an interesting primer on how to beat this team, based on the adjustments opponents have made over the past couple of weeks. They're also buzzing about Damon Stoudamire and Sam Cassell, two veteran point guards who are available (Cassell would require a trade) and could help spell Rondo, who's taken a beating lately.

Marc Savard represented the Bruins well on the national stage, scoring the game-winning goal in the NHL All Star Game. Back in Atlanta, where he used to play, Savard flipped a shot past Blues goaltender Manny Legace to give the East the 8-7 win with 20.9 seconds to go. Tim Thomas got the win even though he got peppered with four goals early in the third period. He's saving his best stuff for the regular season.

Garnett action shot (sigh) from Flickr's themikelee.