Rajon Rondo leads Boston Celtics past Detroit Pistons
The Boston Celtics handed the Detroit Pistons their fourth-straight loss of the season with an emphatic 109-86 win behind Rajon Rondo’s impressive night on Tuesday 2 November at The Palace
of Auburn Hills.
Rondo, who had a historic triple-double performance with 24 assists on Friday 28 October against the New York Knicks, scored only nine points, but directed the flow of Boston’s offence with
his 17 assists.
"He's unbelievable. He played the perfect floor game tonight," said Paul Pierce, who had 21 points on 8-for-13 shooting to go with five rebounds for Boston. "He had 17 assists and no turnovers.
You can't get any better than that. He's just being a great floor general out there."
Kevin Garnett also had a big night as the veteran power-forward scored a team-high 22 points and grabbed six rebounds, while sharp-shooting guard Ray Allen added 16 points for the Celtics,
who missed Shaquille O’Neal with a knee bruise.
"We knew we had an advantage with Kevin in the post, so we were going to try to exploit that," Celtics head coach Doc Rivers said. "They didn't try to do much trapping, and the few times
they did, we did a great job of moving the ball to the open man."
Without Shaquille, Jermaine O’Neal took over the starting centre spot and scored 12 points, while Semih Erden made his NBA debut for the Celtics. The 7ft Turkish centre entered in the quarter
and immediately made an impact by blocking two shots and scored his only two points with a vicious dunk, which gave Boston a 39-28 lead.
The Celtics ended the half with 57-44 lead and they continued to dominate the Celtics in the third period and led by as much as 20 points, 86-66, after a deep-corner three-pointer from Pierce.
They never looked back and bagged their third win of the season against a single defeat.
Charlie Villanueva had 17 points and seven rebounds, while Rodney Stuckey and Ben Gordon added 15 and 14 points apiece for the Pistons, who only had 13 assists, four less than Rondo’s total
dimes.
Second-year forward Austin Daye, who took over the starting power-forward spot after Jonas Jerebko went down with a torn Achilles tendon during the off-season, scored 16 points, while veteran
forward Tayshaun Prince added 10 points, but their efforts were not enough as the Pistons dropped to 0-4 this season.
"It starts with us in this locker room but it goes to everybody else as well," Prince said. "When you're 0-4, you don't just look at the team, you've got to look at everybody as a whole."
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