The Redheaded Utility Man

A Daily Babble Production

Last night's second round opener between the Magic and Celtics featured a lot that didn't make me happy. But in addition to leaving Applebee's (the only restaurant around here with tabletop audio) peeved about a 95-90 loss and the host of reasons it happened, I walked away thrilled yet again with the play of one Brian Scalabrine.

It's hard to believe that a year ago, this guy's best asset appeared to be his knack for the wildly entertaining celebratory press conference after earning a DNP-CD. It's nearly as hard to believe that three weeks ago, he continued to suffer the effects of post-concussion syndrome. Yet Scal gave the Celtics his third consecutive big effort off the bench last night, and this one was the best of the bunch.

The beginning of the Celtics' run to turn a 28-point rout back into a basketball game coincided with Scalabrine's arrival on the floor with eight and a half minutes to play in the third quarter. This was not accidental. After he had trouble defending Rashard Lewis in the first half, Scalabrine was assigned to guard Hedo Turkoglu for much of his second half stint. He responded by doing the best job playing defense with his feet that I can remember from him.

When the Magic began featuring Turkoglu as the point forward (and thus primary ball-handler), Scalabrine picked him up before halfcourt and ragged him all the way up the floor. He stayed low in his defensive stance and slid his feet exactly the way coaches teach their players at every level of this game across the globe. Defying his quickness deficiencies, Scal kept Turkoglu in front of him but managed to stay close enough to prevent him from using his hallmark jab-step-and-back move to create space on the perimeter. The Magic forward made exactly one field-goal over the game's final 20 minutes and just four trips to the line (he only converted one of those free throws). The redhead deserves plenty of credit for that as well as for doing a better job on Lewis the second time around.

To read the rest of this article by Steve Weinman go to http://www.celticsblog.com/