December 29, 2012; Oakland, CA, USA; Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry (30) dribbles the ball during the fourth quarter against the Boston Celtics at ORACLE Arena. The Warriors defeated the Celtics 101-83. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports

The Boston Celticcs will take on the Golden State Warriors  and try to tie the season series against them tonight. The Warriors have been shooting the lights out in their last three games the Warriors shot 52.3% from three point range.

The Warriors have been scorching in the past three games. The only problem is that they haven’t been able to defend anyone. Over the past three games they’ve scored 106 points per 100 possessions but they’ve also allowed 108 points per 100 possessions on the defensive end. That’s why they haven’t been able to win.

Luckily for the C’s they’re catching the Warriors in the midst of this defensive slump. The Warriors are always better defensively at home, but tonight they’ll be in the Garden. The Celtics should have no problem scoring against these guys.

Shooting One: The Three Keys

The keys for the Celtics tonight are on the defensive part of the floor. They’ll have to stop these guys if they want to win. They aren’t keeping up with Curry and the Warriors offensively. Now, lets get into the keys:

• The Celtics have to stay with Stephen Curry at all times. The Knicks learned this lesson the hard way when Curry embarrassed them for 54 points. They were letting him shoot the three ball and then he caught fire. If Curry catches fire from deep, you aren’t stopping him. Let him take the ball to the rim. Curry is only shooting 58% at the rim. That’s down from the league average.
• The Celtics have to watch out for the Warriors pick and role attack. The Warriors are going to kill them if they don’t guard the role man while fighting over the screen. That means that the help is often going to have to come from off the wing or from the side. The Celtics have to be judicious with who they leave because the most of the Warriors squad lights things up from deep.
• The Celtics are going to have to watch out for Jarrett Jack coming off of the bench. He’s a leading candidate in the sixth man of the year conversation and he’s going to be hard to stop. The Warriors are going to throw him out there with two shooters in Curry and Klay Thompson–the C’s have to do everything in their power to stop that lineup.

At present, Orlando’s record stands at 5-7, fourth in their division and eleventh in the conference overall.  Their Basketball-Reference-calculated defensive rating of 101.4 is fourth-best in the league; their offensive rating of 97.8 is second-worst.

After opening the season with a surprising pair of semi-blowouts over the Denver Nuggets and Phoenix Suns, the Magic endured a five-game losing streak, smack in the middle of which they erected a towering monument to ineptitude – a 107-68 loss to the Brooklyn Nets.

Fun fact: the Magic have scored 68 points or fewer 13 times in their two decades of operation.  Four of those games were played within the last year.  These included an 87-56 wipeout at the hands of the Boston Celtics, in which they set franchise records for fewest points and worst field goal percentage (.246), and a league record for fewest field goals made (16).  The Celtics’ defensive effort was keyed by Avery Bradley, who provided one of our favorite defensive highlights from last season.

The Magic played the whole of their losing streak without starting point guard Jameer Nelson, whose various strains had kept him out of action since the second game of the season.  Since his return, Orlando has gone 3-2, beating the woeful Detroit Pistons twice and the equally subpar Cleveland Cavaliers once.  In the three wins, Nelson averaged 15.0 points, with percentages of .444 from the field and .412 from downtown, along with 7.7 assists and 5.3 rebounds.  In the two losses he made it 8.0 points (.286/.182) with 5.0 assists and 3.5 rebounds.

Some will say that correlation does not imply causation; others will tell you that as goes the point guard, so goes the team.  That second statement is especially true when the team in question is built like the Magic, whose lightly-regarded youngsters (four rookies, three sophomores, one third-year man) outnumber their adequate-at-best vets (Jameer, Aaron Afflalo, Big Baby Davis, J.J. Redick, Hedo Turkoglu, Josh McRob-Job) eight to six.  When your experience lacks talent and your other guys lack both, the very least one might ask for is a steady hand to control the chaos.

The Celtics have already caught a beating from one bad team this season, taking a 103-83 loss from the 3-10 Pistons one week ago.  The Celtics were playing the second game of a home-road back-to-back and their fifth in seven days.  The toll that the heavy workload had taken on their legs was evident in the 20-4 advantage on fast break points that they surrendered.

Beyond merely catching them at an inopportune time, Detroit was not an ideal matchup for the C’s.  The Pistons make their offensive living on the interior, getting up an average of 31 shots per game at the rim, the most that they shoot from any distance on the floor.[1]  The Celtics, meanwhile, have been especially vulnerable on the inside, allowing opponents to connect on 69.6 percent of their shot attempts from up close.  We can’t say where this ranks until Hoopdata updates their G.D. shot location database, but we can say that a week ago this would have been the third-worst mark in the league.

Predictably, the Celtics gave up a 44-30 edge on points in the paint, as the Pistons connected on 20 of their 27 rim attempts.  Overall, Detroit made 54.2 percent of their shots, the third-largest percentage the Celtics have allowed this season.

Orlando may not be as equipped to take advantage of the Celtics’ weaknesses.  They prefer the short- to mid-range game, averaging 11.8 shots from 3-9 feet (third-most in the league), 8.3 from 10-15 (most in the league), and 23.1 from 16-23 (seventh-most).  While the Celtics have allowed opponents to connect on 40.8 percent of their shots from 3-9 (ninth-worst a week ago), the 37.4 percent they’ve allowed from 10-15 and 34.3 from 16-23 rate as passable (eleventh in the league) and pretty good (fifth) respectively.

More importantly, the Magic will (probably) struggle to mitigate Boston’s biggest offensive strength.  The Celtics do the bulk of their work from the 16-23 foot range, connecting on a scorching 45.6 percent of their 23.6 attempts from that distance.  Orlando has allowed opponents to put up an average of 20.8 attempts (eighth-most) from 16-23, which go down at a rate of .440 per (second-highest).  Be on the lookout for sharp shooting from Kevin Garnett, Brandon Bass, Jason Terry, and Courtney Lee, who have all favored that range this year.

On a personal note, it will be nice to visit with old friends Glen Davis and E’Twaun Moore again.  As you’ll recall, E’Twaun appeared in 38 of the Celtics’ games last season, showing a little bit of a three-point stroke (37.8 percent) in less than 10 minutes of action per game.  His best game came in a 91-83 Celtics win over the Magic, in which his 16 points (12 of which came off a 4-4 night from downtown) helped drive a remarkable 27-point comeback, resulting in an absolute world-beater of a postgame interview with Kevin Garnett.

E’Twaun has been getting some serious burn with the Magic, starting six of 12 games and averaging 11.1 points (.432 from the field, .439 from downtown), 3.8 assists, and 3.0 rebounds in nearly 30 minutes of action per.

Big Baby, meanwhile, has been a critical part of Orlando’s post-Dwight landscape, putting up career highs in points (14.9), rebounds (8.9), and assists (2.1) in his second season with the team.  He’s also continued to prove himself as one of the most reliable quotes in the game, emerging with this gem on teammate Nikola Vucevic after Friday’s 104-100 win over the Cavaliers:

You’ve got to feed him nails and hot sauce.  That’s how you’ve got to do it with guys like that; big upside, but never really had to bite anybody.  You’ve got to get him to bite somebody.

As always, best of luck to you, Glen!

January 23, 2012; Boston, MA, USA; Boston Celtics point guard Rajon Rondo (9) sits on the bench during the first quarter against the Orlando Magic at TD Banknorth Garden. Mandatory Credit: Greg M. Cooper-US PRESSWIRE

Tonight, the Boston Celtics will make their first visit to the Barclays Arena to face the Brooklyn Nets. They’ll be doing this without their star point guard and the NBA’s assist leader in Rajon Rondo. He won’t have a chance to extend his 10 assist streak tonight according to Celticsblog.com.

The Celtics will have Leandro Barbosa in the starting lineup tonight along with the usual crew of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Jared Sullinger, and Courtney Lee.

Barbosa scored 16 points and was a spark-plug off of the bench for Boston last night in a 98-93 win over the Utah Jazz. They’ll expect him to do this out of the starting line-up tonight and the bench will likely be short because of that.

Paul Pierce will need to step up and play that point forward role as he did the last time Rondo couldn’t play against the Atlanta Hawks in the Eastern Conference semi-finals last season. They’ll have a shot to win this game if he can do so.

What the Celtics will need to watch out for is Deron Williams. Though he started off relatively cold this season, he had a great game against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Tuesday night dropping 26 points and 10 assists against Kyrie Irving and company. They won’t have Rondo so Boston may struggle to contain him.

Another player that could hinder Boston tonight is Brook Lopez. He’s off to a hot start this season averaging 17.5 points per game, 6.7 rebounds per game, and 2.3 blocks per game. Those are stellar numbers to say the least and if Boston doesn’t watch out for him on both ends of the floor they will surely lose.

This should be a high pace offensive game as both clubs are going to try to beat each other on the defensive end and get up and down the floor. Be sure to watch how Kevin Garnett plays against Brook Lopez. If he can stretch him out from the rim on the offensive end the Celtics have a great shot.