Celtics disappear like Magic

The Celtics [team stats] obviously were banking on Newton’s first law of motion when they bounded onto the court for the second half of yesterday’s game against the Magic.

In earning an 11-point lead at the break, they moved the ball, made extra passes and - holy teamwork, Batman - got wide-open shots. At the other end of the floor, they moved in concert and held the Magic to 40 points on 39.5 percent shooting.

It was just the type of performance the Bostonians had been seeking - a bravura beatdown of a top conference foe in front of a national television audience that surely included peers munching on chips and salsa as they awaited the Super Bowl kickoff.

Ah, but after slipping their principles of inertia textbooks back in their lockers, the Celtics proceeded to forget Nike’s first law of selling expensive sneakers.

They failed to just do it. In fact, they didn’t do much of anything.

Doc Rivers was asked to recall his thoughts as the Celtics were shooting 28.6 percent, allowing the Magic to hit 70.8 percent and getting outscored 36-11 on the way to a 96-89 defeat.

“We were getting what we deserved,” the coach said. “I thought we played like crap in the third quarter.

“I thought everything we did in the first half we decided not to do. We were making up our own coverages defensively, switching. We gave up nine points on switches that we never switch.”

Switching to his offense, Rivers said, “The ball moved from in to out the entire first half. (In the) second half it stayed on the outside, stayed on the outside. Over-dribbling. And I told them when I called a timeout, I said, ‘We’re doing our own thing. We’re going to lose the game.’ ”

Rivers has sounded similar themes after ugly losses and near losses this season. But yesterday he was more blunt. Maybe he wanted to get in his shots before the dressing room doors opened and the players got their chance.

Maybe he had just seen enough. But it is growing abundantly clear that the Celtics cannot talk their way out of this drop into the NBA’s middle earth.

“I thought we lacked discipline,” Rivers said. “I think right now when you look at our team, and I say it, I love our team on paper. But we tend to be front-runners. When we get a good lead, we relax and teams take advantage of it and then you’re caught. And it’s tough to turn it back on.”

Looking at the smoking gun - the stat sheet - Rivers went on.

“It’s rare in a game that you outscore a team three quarters and lose the game,” he said. “But our third quarter was so bad. You know, you look at 24, 27 and 27, is what we scored in three quarters. When you see those numbers, with our defense, you would say, ‘Boy, they probably won the game.’ But we gave up 36 points in a quarter. And I really believe this: I believe we could’ve scored zero points in the third quarter, and we should never give up 36 points. But we did.”

The Celtics planned on having the best defense in the NBA. Now they’re just defensive.

They continue to say there is plenty of time left to divert the ship and avoid the iceberg, and that’s hard to argue with 33 games remaining before the playoffs. But each day they fail to back up their talk further erodes the confidence. And right about now, the Celtics’ talk-to-action ratio is rivaling that of Congress.

Agreeing there is still time, Rivers acknowledged, “You’ve got to show it. I don’t know at what point is the answer. I just know at this point those teams are better than us. And that’s, you know, that’s up to us what we want to do with that.”