The Celtics won their 14th straight game on Wednesday night by beating an angry but overmatched Philadelphia 76ers team, 84-80 at TD Garden. (Click here for a recap.)
The manner in which they won, by turning it on defensively late in the fourth quarter, was a good thing, but other than that there were few positives to take to Orlando for a Christmas Day matchup with the Magic. “We were not very good tonight, but we won the game,” Doc Rivers said. “That’s the only thing you’ll take from this game tonight, is we won the game.”
The Celtics shot 39 percent, spent most of the night in foul trouble, were admittedly frustrated by said foul trouble and didn’t really get into any type of rhythm until the final six minutes.
“The last five or seven minutes we just turned it on defensively and got in a rhythm on defense,” Kevin Garnett said. “And to be honest, it’s just how we’ve been winning games.”
After 27 games we know that the Celtics know how to win. But the reality is we don’t know a lot about this team yet because they haven’t been on the court together.
Jermaine O’Neal missed another game -- this time with the flu -- and that’s 19 and counting. Delonte West missed 10 games with a suspension and then has been out for almost everything else with a broken wrist. Then there’s Kendrick Perkins, who probably won’t be back until the All-Star break, not to mention Rajon Rondo, who has been out roughly a quarter of the team’s games.
The cumulative effect of all those injuries has been patchwork lineups and a lack of continuity for the second unit, which has been held together with Glen Davis, Marquis Daniels and duct tape.
“I don’t know, because we don’t have our team,” Rivers said when asked to assess his team’s performance after 27 games. “Record-wise we’re great. But as far as getting better and progressing as a team, for a coach, that’s my concern. We’re winning games, but not improving a lot because we don’t have enough guys right now. Our second unit is not getting any work because our whole second unit is in street clothes, for the most part. We’re just going to keep trying to win as many games as we can.”
It was interesting that all of the Celtics veterans -- Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen -- said basically the same thing after the game. The winning is good, but it’s not good enough. 
“I think we can play a lot better,” Allen said. “I’m not overly excited about what we’re doing. It’s been patchwork in a sense because so many lineups we’ve been working with, trying to figure [it] out.”
Credit the Celtics with figuring out enough to continue their winning ways, but they know that 14-game winning streaks in December don’t mean a whole lot in the final analysis.
Here are three other things to take from Wednesday’s win.
NATE ROBINSON HAS TO TAKE CONTROL
Nate Robinson has one of the toughest jobs in the NBA right now. He not only has to take Rondo’s minutes at the point, he also has to figure out a way to balance his own scoring instincts with his new role as the team’s de facto point guard.
The Celtics rightly want Nate to be Nate, to borrow a phrase. They don’t want him to try to be Rondo because obviously no one can do that and that would detract from what he does so well.
However, on a night when the Celtics had no flow and no rhythm offensively, they needed him to take control of the offense and instead he deferred too much to Pierce.
“We had no transition baskets,” Rivers said. “We had no movement offensively. Paul had to work so hard tonight offensively because he had to bring the ball up way too much tonight.”
The coach was asked how that could be changed.
“Nate brings the ball up,” he said. “That’s it. Nate just has to go get the ball more. He will.”
This was Robinson’s take: “Paul is the captain. Sometimes he wants the ball. I’m not going to go against him, regardless if Doc says go get the ball. If I go get it and Paul says, ‘No,’ I’ll be caught between the two.”
It goes without saying that Rondo not only would go get the ball, he would shoot Pierce a look that says he’s going to get the ball and get the heck downcourt. But Robinson is not Rondo, as we know.
Somewhere in between a balance must be struck. All things considered, Robinson has done a fine job filling in for Rondo. The Celtics are 6-1 in games he starts and he is playing major minutes at a time when, frankly, they don’t have a lot of other options.
The Celtics would be in major trouble without Robinson, but on this, he has to get better.
SHAQ DOWN THE STRETCH
Before we go any further, we must pause for a second to admire the latest in Shaqology. Behold the 1825 theory:
“Eighteen [championships] for the people of Boston, two for Doc and the Big Three and five for myself. If you know anything about 1825, John Quincy Adams, who lived outside of Boston was also inaugurated as the sixth president in 1825.”
So, there you go. He poses as a statue, he dresses up in drag for Halloween and as Santa for Christmas. He conducts the Pops and he also reads David McCullough, apparently. 
“He’s really embraced this city and the city has embraced him,” Rivers said before the game. “I haven’t been around Shaq enough. I knew him, but until you coach a guy or play with him you don’t really know him. He gets it. He gets the reason he’s here. He’s been great. I love it.”
He also saved the game for the Celtics. Rivers’ standard plan is to get 22 minutes of Shaq by the end of the third quarter or early in the fourth, and then have Glen Davis play the crunch-time minutes. That changed Wednesday, mainly out of necessity.
“Nothing else was working,” Rivers said. “As a coach sometimes really you just try to mix it up. I thought Shaq had great energy tonight. I thought he was disruptive in the paint. They really struggled in pick and rolls with Paul. With Baby they may switch.”
The adjustment worked. Shaq controlled the paint, and Pierce did get free on a pick-and-roll jump shot that put the Celtics ahead by four points, 82-78.
“He was huge for us when we needed him,” Garnett said. “You got Shaq, it’s a luxury. Because it’s like the black hole: He sucks everything in. He gives Ray, Paul, some of our perimeter guys, even myself open shots that normally we don’t have.”
Shaq had 13 points, nine rebounds, a couple of hard fouls and, as always, the quote of the night. It’s good to be Shaq, and for the Celtics it’s even better to have him.
THEY KNEW WHAT WAS COMING
Late in the game, with the Sixers down two, the Celtics figured the ball would be in Andre Iguodala’s hands. They also figured he would do exactly what he wound up doing.
“Last time we played them, Paul told me Iguodala loves to go right, finish right, and Paul funneled him,” Garnett said. “We talked about some things, some schemes, this morning about sending him to the defense. We did that and I just got the block.”
There wasn’t a lot that can be said about the Celtics' effort for most of this game, but when it came time to put it away they knew what the Sixers were going to do before the Sixers even knew what they were going to do.
“Number one, that’s knowing how to win,” Rivers said. “We got great execution down the stretch, I don’t know where it came from. It’s amazing. You don’t execute for 42 minutes and then you do it the last six minutes, it’s just amazing. But that’s winning time.”