It’s a forgettable stretch for Celtics

As the hangover from Sunday night’s Patriots collapse finally begins to fade, we look at the biggest beneficiaries of coach Bill Belichick’s monumental mistakes: The Boston Celtics. In the 48 hours leading up to the most anticipated football game of the season, Gang Green managed not only to lose two games; they lost them in embarrassing fashion to two clearly inferior teams and the Boston media was too busy with Belichick to care.Both the Atlanta Hawks and the lottery-bound Indiana Pacers made the Celtics look old, slow, and unprepared. Only 11 games into what the team hopes is a title run, questions are starting to emerge, and restless fans are looking for answers. Even more alarming is the sudden lack of focus and execution on the defensive end. After all, it is these same Celtics that just one week ago were considered the finest defensive team in basketball. Newly re-signed Celtics point guard Rajon Rondo is keenly aware of what ails the Green.”We’ve got to get back to doing the fundamentals,” he said. “We’ve got to go out there and be solid, talk on defense and help each other out. Really, it’s just defense. We’re letting teams shoot over 50 percent, and if we want to pride ourselves on defense, we can’t let that happen. We’ve got to change back to the way we used to do things”Making matters worse for the Celtics is the uncertain status of Paul Pierce. Pierce, who strained his knee in Friday night’s loss to the Hawks, was clearly not operating at 100 percent in Indiana. Pierce has a reputation for being one of the toughest players in the NBA, often playing through injuries, sometimes to the detriment of his team. Pierce himself said as much following the Celtics’ 113-104 loss at Indiana.”I obviously hurt us,” Pierce said, “especially on the defensive end. I was a step slow pretty much all night and it really hurt us. I pretty much told the (team), ‘I really take a lot of the blame.’ Dahntay Jones goes out and has one of his best nights, with me guarding him most of the night. I am really going to take that one on the chin right there.”In an effort to rest their aching legs, and heal Pierce’s balky knee, Celtics coach Doc Rivers has taken it fairly easy on the Celtics during their three days off, giving his team practices that were heavy on film and light on physicality as well as Sunday off.With three winnable games on the horizon, the Celtics have an opportunity to make the fans forget all about last week’s disappointing efforts. And with a win on Friday in their first playoff rematch with the Orlando Magic, the Celtics may even have an opportunity to heal any remaining wounds left over from Sunday night’s football nightmare.