More from Tuesday night's Celtics-Kings game, brought to you by Jeremy Gottlieb, staff writer at Patriots Daily.
Kevin Garnett never stops talking. Rajon Rondo's on-court instructions are always audible, even on TV. Doc Rivers' bellows from the bench have been commonplace since he's been the Celtics coach. But Ray Allen? He's a silent assassin.
At least he usually is. Until he isn't, like last night during halftime of the C's 95-90 win over the Sacramento Kings. The Celts saw a seven-point, first quarter lead not only vanish, but transform into a nine-point, halftime deficit, thanks in no small part to the team's second unit, which allowed the home team to score 34 points and shoot 67 percent from the floor while only managing 18 points of its own on the other end. Allen, who will talk when he needs to both on the court and on the Celts bench, decided he'd seen enough so when the team got to the locker room after the second quarter, he unloaded.
"Ray doesn't really say too much at halftime," Celts captain Paul Pierce told the Boston Globe after the game. "But he kind of lit us up there and it woke guys up. Guys responded."
Did they ever. On the heels of that rather nauseating second quarter, the Celts would allow the Kings to shoot just 40 percent for the remainder of the game. Meanwhile, Allen backed up his words with a stellar offensive performance. He scored 22 points while connecting on 9-of-15 shots, 4-of-7 from beyond the three-point line. It was vintage Ray and it improved the Celtics record to a most impressive 14-0 when he scores 20 or more points.
"It's funny because after the game, they said, ‘Man, we knew we were messing up because you stepped up and screamed on everybody and you don't normally do that.'" Allen would tell the Globe. "There's a time for everything."
By the way, Allen, now 35, is shooting in excess of 50 percent from the floor and sits comfortably at 46 percent from three-point range on the season, only the most efficient numbers of his 14-year career. He needs just nine more makes from long distance to break Reggie Miller's all-time record.