I happened to be flying back to the Boston area on Tuesday evening and, after getting through security for the late-night flight, I called up the Celtics game on my phone to find the Celtics trailing 40-18 after the first quarter. I imagine my eyes bulged a bit in disbelief and it turns out I wasn't the only one.
Our good friend Jay from Red's Army captured a snippet from the Comcast SportsNet broadcast that shows Rajon Rondo getting a first-quarter box score on the Boston bench. Rondo obviously knew the lopsided nature of the frame, but watch at the 20-second mark of the video as Rondo's eyes flare wide and he stares down the Celtics bench in disbelief.
It begs the question of what exactly left Rondo so stunned. Assuming he was looking at Boston's half of the first-quarter box, here's what he would have seen:
Was it the fact that Boston was shooting 24.1 percent (or maybe that Houston was shooting a mind-boggling 80 percent)? Or that Avery Bradley had put up 10 first-quarter shots? Or that Boston had more offensive rebounds (5) than defensive (4)? Or that only three Boston players had points (compared to eight for Houston)? Or that the Rockets were dominating stats like points in the paint (22-6) or fastbreak points (15-0)?
No doubt, there was plenty to marvel at in that box score. None of it good for Boston.
(P.S. Thanks to our good friend Brian Robb from CelticsHub for handling the game coverage while we were in the air. As one friend texted as I traveled back, "Hope you didn't bother DVRing the Celtics game. Burn your cable box if you did.")