“I was [mad], too,’’ Rivers said. “Shaq wants to play, but he doesn’t want to play 35 minutes. He had just said coming out, ‘Give me a blow here,’ and then bam-bam, Semih’s out.’’
After a stretch of up-and-down performances the past two weeks, O’Neal was in rare form last night. In a way, it was like watching a greatest-hits reel, seeing him break out a few oldies-but-still-goodies. The slick reverse. The hard, two-handed dribble into the easy layup off the glass.
O’Neal finished with a game-high 23 points, flirting with the season-high 25 he scored against the Nets Nov. 24.
The Celtics won their Eastern Conference-leading 18th home game, extending their winning streak over the Bobcats to six games.
Ray Allen scored 19 points, drilling four of his six 3-pointers. Rajon Rondo put up his 15th double-double (18 points, 13 assists), and Paul Pierce scored 19 points on 7-of-14 shooting as the Celtics beat the Bobcats for the fifth straight time at the Garden. But this one wasn’t nearly as dominant as the others.
Typically, the games are all stitched up by the half, but with a new coach in Paul Silas and a rediscovered confidence, the Bobcats wouldn’t go away.
“We let them hang around a little too long and we picked it up there,’’ O’Neal said. “We just held it there until the end.’’
With trade rumors swirling around him, Gerald Wallace still scored 20 points, getting to the line a game-high 10 times. For much of the early going, the Bobcats were able to dictate the game’s flow by getting to the stripe, taking 34 free throws as a team (to the Celtics’ 25).
“Doc didn’t like our pace,’’ said Rondo. “Obviously we fouled a lot throughout the entire game. They shot 14 or 15 free throws to our two or three. You can’t get a pace if you’re taking the ball out of bounds every time, every dead ball.’’
The Bobcats’ bench outscored the Celtics’ bench, 17-0, in the first quarter. The Celtics’ bench didn’t chip in its first points until Marquis Daniels knocked down a 21-footer with 5:50 left in the third quarter.
Up to that point, the Celtics’ starters had to put the game on their shoulders.
