Knocked the bully's ass out!

Those who heavily criticized Kevin Garnett for his Game 5 4th quarter offensive woes (2 missed free-throws, 2 missed tip-ins, and the general feeling that KG fades in crunch-time) failed to see that he played a pretty good game at the other end (14 rebounds, 2 steals, a number of stellar defensive plays, and numerous effective picks on Kobe to free up Pierce en route to his game high 38 points). Garnett himself declared that his game 6 performance was “garbage” and that he would do better.

Perhaps the biggest effect of this externally and self-applied flagellation was to fire up Garnett for Game 6. Even though the Celtics started off slowly in this game on 3-15 shooting, KG was determined to atone for his measly 13 point production in the previous game and finished with 10 points in the quarter. And despite another strong start from Kobe (11 points on 4-4 shooting), the Celtics led at the end of the first by four points.

It had been the pattern in this series for Boston to dominate the third quarters. In this game, they didn’t wait around that long. Boston started out strong and finished with a flourish, ending on a 26-6 run. More importantly, they held Kobe to exactly 0 points, forced 11 turnovers, didn’t allow a single offensive rebound, held LA to 29% shooting, and continued their dominance on the boards with a 26-14 edge.

Once again, Kobe had a strong start that would lead one to think that this was going to be his “breakout” game, but once again the Celtics were able to adjust defensively and put the clamps down on “Black Mamba.” His uttering to a fan courtside of “Not tonight” would prove to be moot. He finished with only 22 points when the Lakers needed him to score 50. After his quick start, he faded with only 11 points in the final 3 quarters.

While KG scored on a variety of offensive plays including on a back-door alley-oop, and his usual mix of hooks and short-range jumpers, the signature play for the “Big Ticket” was a double-pump bank shot and ‘one against Odom. It was this sequence, with Garnett down on the floor pumping his fist, that capped off the Celtic surge in the second quarter that essentially put this game away. That surge was also undoubtedly fueled by Ray Allen’s return from an eye and nose injury that had caused him to miss almost 10 minutes of playing time. Much like Pierce’s now infamous return in the first game, as Allen ran back onto the court the court went wild, and in Pierce’s own words: “Ray’s return rejuvenated us.”

In the third quarter, with the game still within reach, the Lakers mentally checked out after about 4 minutes. After a Radmonovic 3 pointer cut the lead to 23, the soft Laker defense allowed Rondo to drive the length of the court and get a shot in less than 4 seconds. The defender on the play was none other than Kobe Bryant. Rarely did you see a Celtic giving up on any play in this series. Kobe’s tentativeness on the play indicated that the Lakers knew they were beaten. Rondo continued terrorizing the Lakers, stealing the ball and running the fast break to perfection. On another play, Rondo drove the ball into the lane, and found Ray Allen with no one within 10 feet of him in the corner. Rondo finished the game with 6 steals (1 shy of the record), while Allen, despite his missing in action sting, finished with 7 three-pointers, tying the NBA finals record.
(His 22 total for the Series was a record.)

Boston was able to make the historic comeback in Game 4 because of their commitment to defense. The Lakers defense and mental toughness was in question in this series. With the lead at 30 with 6 minutes gone in the fourth quarter, this game was over. There would be no near-miss Laker comeback like in Game 2. The Celtics were not going to play the score, not with a championship in sight. Their 39 point final margin of victory was the largest for a series clinching game in the Finals.

The Big Three finally have their championship. Doc Rivers finally has his championship. KG’s primal screaming and the rawest display of emotion while being interviewed courtside with Michelle Tafoya was matched only by his embrace with Russell and subsequent uttering of “I’ve got my own” and also the most authentic of exchanges at the press conference when Scoop Jackson asked him to express how it finally felt to have won a championship. KG’s responded with an analogy that is perhaps better than getting the monkey off your back, finally conquering the playground bully. I finally “knocked the bully's ass out!” Pierce was equally as ebullient after having been awarded the MVP of the series and could hardly sit down in any of the interviews. Allen, while still clearly overjoyed with the achievement, was a bit more muted. While the other two are the undisputed emotional leaders of the team, Allen displayed the kind of rock steadiness that helped him not only overcome a miserable start in the playoffs but also provided the necessary fireworks from a third-gun that proved to be way too much for the overmatched Lakers.

In the locker room, the team whirled like a hurricane gaining energy with every turn, spraying champagne into the air, and then when that ran out, spilling whatever other beverages were to be found in a celebration of pure and unbridled, unscripted joy. The perfect image of Ubuntu.

Here’s the scary thing about this team. They accomplished this the hard way, playing the most games (26), losing the most games (9), losing their first 6 games on the road, being extended to two 7 game series. As a collective group, they were an unproven commodity in playoff basketball, but they learned how to win in their first season together, enduring the most arduous and difficult playoffs of any champion. KG and Pierce both scored over 500 points in the second season alone, a feat only previously accomplished before by Larry Bird.

Having mastered the playoff learning curve in their first year together, how good can this team get ? Is a repeat imminent ? The Big Three are all in their 30’s but are all in very good shape. Pierce’s knee injury was obviously not as bad as everyone thought (especially as initially conceived to here to be series ending) and can be repaired. The Celtics bench is deep and proved to be better equipped to handle the playoff pressure than the Laker bench. Cassell and PJ Brown are veterans and signed on to this team late. As instrumental as they were to this championship, they most likely will not return. But if Boston can keep the core of Posey, House, Powe, and Davis. this team should be favored to win the East again next year.

Back in the late 80’s, the Detroit Pistons used a tough physical defensive style on Michael Jordan with the purpose of beating him up as the game wore on. They gave him multiple looks by throwing different defenders and then using two or three man traps to make it difficult for him to be both a scorer and a playmaker. Even though Jordan got his points, the strategy worked because it forced Jordan to use extreme amounts of energy to solve the myriad defensive looks he faced. The strategy also made it hard for the teammates to get involved in the offensive flow. The end product was that the Pistons beat the Bulls twice en route to two championships. The strategy, known as the “Jordan rules”, was resurrected by the Celtics and used to great effect against the two best current players in the league. Against Kobe, their defense tabled, at least momentarily, the comparisons of Bryant to to “his Airness”.

We’ll wait for next year, where hopefully a Laker team with a healthy Bynum can survive the West again and return for this century’s round 2 of this historic rivalry.

Mother of all Comebacks

It is a tired and old sports axiom that defense wins championships. It worked well for Bill Rusell's great runs as leader of Boston's teams that won 11-12 championships. It worked pretty well for Detroit when they beat LA in the 2004 NBA finals. Make no mistake about it, defense is what fueled Boston's furious comeback last night, the best in an NBA finals game since records have been kept by Elias Sports Bureau.

The Celtics had trailed by as many as 24 points in the second quarter. They had let Jordan Farmar shoot a running 3 at the buzzer to extend the lead back to 18 after doing a lot of work to whittle it to 12-13 right before half. And even after the second half, when Paul Pierce said "we were not competing in the first half and we just wanted to come out and play and not look at the score", they still found themselves in a 20 point hole early in the third quarter and Kendrick Perkins had just incurred another injury in the series. No matter how many times the Celtics cut it down to 12 or 13, the Lakers had an answer.

But that's when Rivers started working his magic. After the forced timeout due to Perkins injury, the Celtics put together a 13-4 run with 4 points from Pierce, a 3 pointer from House and layups from Posey and Allen. Meanwhile, the defensive pressure intensified, highlighted by a block on Kobe by both Pierce and Garnett. That forced Jackson to call a timeout. Pau Gasol's field goal 43 seconds later would be the last points the Lakers would score in the third quarter. Pierce would continue to do damage scoring on a 3-point play after absorbing a hard foul from Gasol. House then buried another three. Ray Allen's two free throws cut the lead to four.

The Celtics had owned the Lakers in the 3rd quarters of this series (more on that later) outscoring them 116-73 (L.A. is plus-27 in the other quarters combined). There were two keys to the comeback: a) Perkins' injury which forced Doc Rivers' hand to go small and b) allowing Pierce to guard Kobe ( a move that Pierce initiated and a move that I thought should have been done from the beginning of the series). One sequence illustrated the turning point the most: After having scored on his first two possessions of the period, Kobe's shot was blocked by Pierce, who grabbed the ball and threw an outlet pass to Ray Allen for a layup. Kobe never scored again in the quarter. That may have been the start that the Laker started "to wet the bed."

The icing on the cake came with 16 seconds left in the quarter. Pierce found P.J. Brown under the basket for a vicious dunk over Bryant to cap a 21-3 run. The lead was down to 2. The emotional lift of this is obvious but the fact that it happened right at the end of the quarter was crucial because it allowed the Celtics, who are older and also depleted by injuries, to catch their breath. (And the breaks in the Finals are ridiculously long). Meanwhile, the Lakers had probably too long of a time to think about what just hit them.

For all of Jackson's pleading about coming out of the gate fast in the 3rd: "We gotta go out there and win this third quarter. We gotta go out there and win the third quarter" (and he mentioned that maybe he shouldn't of said anything about it in the post-game press conference) the Lakers were not ready for Boston's renewed defensive intensity. Nor were they able to figure out how to stop Pierce. Nor were they able to figure out how to adjust to the new lineup that Boston was forced to go to because of the injuries. Nor were they able to figure out a new 3-2 zone thrown at them. With the best player on the planet and the best coach of all time, a majority of the experts declared that the Lakers would win this series. Jackson, the more decorated coach by far, is flat out getting outcoached in 3rd quarters, if not in the series, by the neophyte Doc Rivers.

In the fourth quarter, both Kobe and Pierce went it at mano-a-mano, reminiscent of the James-Pierce shootout earlier in the playoffs. But while LA had just Kobe and Gasol with their heads in the game, all of the Celtics contributed. House and Posey each to hit key three pointers, KG had a key bucket in the paint. But it was Ray Allen who took over in the last 5 minutes, Alone on the left wing, he took a pass only to see Kobe rushing at him. He blew past Kobe en route to a reverse layup that had Julius Ervin qualities about it. With less than a minute to go, Allen shook off a pick-and-roll from KG, and isolated against Vujavic, easily got around him for a left-handed layup, again with 16 seconds to go in the quarter. Allen played all 48 minutes of this game, easily the best of the playoffs and maybe the best game of his career.

Then the Lakers then made another mental mistake. By not calling a timeout immediately after the Allen bucket and inbounding the ball instead, they ended up having to burn a second timeout to be able to take the ball out at half-court. I’m afraid this didn’t matter much as the game was already over but it was indicative of how badly LA had fallen apart. Composure has always been the hallmark of a Jackson team, and this one didn’t have any down the stretch.

But while key Celtics such as Leon Powe, House, and Posey hit key shots and added balance and different looks for LA to defend, the Lakers starters Odom and Radmonovic totally disappeared. Odom, who had struggled in the series, asleep at the wheel, "confused" as described by Jackson, had a monster first-half but was not to be found after that. Odom had 15 points by the 7:47 mark in the second quarter and scored only 4 more the rest of the game. This is the quintessential definition of starting out too fast and having nothing left at the end. Radmonovic ended with 10 points. Enough said. I personally felt that the Celtics were the deeper team. After 5 games and multiple injuries, it is clear that all of the experts were wrong about players numbers 6-12.

Phil Jackson, the master motivator, is getting outhustled by Doc Rivers. Phil told his team that "this playoff isn't over" as a futile attempt to keep them motivated. I hate to say this Phil, but this series ended last night.

Wicked Brilliant Theatre

Paul Pierce has been the man for the Boston Celtics as they’ve raced out to a 2-0 lead in the NBA finals against the heavily favored Lakers. He has been their leading scorer, most clutch player, crunch-time assassin, and now I must say, architect of one of the most dramatic moments in recent NBA final history.

After Game 1 was over and Pierce had converted those two huge three pointers that put the Celtics up for good, I was convinced that this series was over if Pierce really could not go on his injured knee. And after his dramatic exit and subsequent reentry, I was convinced that he was good for this game but done for the series. Being carried out by three teammates and then rolled out on a wheelchair made for some very exiting theatre. Returning with a a few minutes later and exciting the crowd into a wild frenzy was even better. He was both Willis Reed and Muhammad Ali, the valiant warrior coming back from injury, bouncing up and down on pure adrenaline, scoring key buckets. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

But realistically, how can a player fake this? The injury must have happened right? I saw Perkins hit him from behind, Pierce’s knee seemingly turning one way while his heel was clamped down by the huge Perkins. Surely there must have been what Pierce claimed; “I heard a pop.” Or could it have been faked for dramatic effect ? If so, this would definitely be one of the more ingenious ways of turning momentum ever contrived.

Now seriously speaking, the injury must have occurred but it was probably not worse than the initial trauma would have suggested. With of state of the art orthopaedic therapy and who knows what kind of medical cocktail administered, Pierce was able to waltz onto the court for Game 2 and play as if the injured never happened. How else to explain the monster game (41 minutes, 28 points, 6 assists) in which he was not only instrumental in building up Boston’s huge lead but also closed out the game after the Lakers had made it chillingly close at the end with a drive into the paint that got him two free throws.

Pierce has made this kind of miraculous recovery before. In 2000, after suffering multiple stab wounds just 6 weeks before the start of the season, he was able to recover in time to start and play the entire season.

Pierce’s knee is back, Powe is back in the rotation with a flourish (21 points in just 15 minutes), and Boston has just held server to be up 2-0. Add to that that Pierce is back home and I think he will continue to be a huge factor on both ends of the floor. More importantly, the Celtic mindset is correct. Kevin Garnett stated that “We haven’t done anything yet, we just won two games on our home court. We’re expected to do that.” Not that it will be easy of course. LA will make the adjustments needed to get their offense back on track. The officials will make the adjustments they always do and the Lakers should be able to win Game 3.

But with the big three finally all clicking on all cylinders at the same time and with Boston having learned how to win on the road, I look for Boston to win at least one of the 3 games in LA. They will then return to the “whatever it is called now” Garden with a commanding 3-2 lead. And I don’t see the Lakers winning two in a row in a place where the Celtics have been dominant.

Battle of the K's

Kobe-KG Dream Matchup

Celtics/Lakers: Bird, Magic, Kareem, McHale, Rambis, Worthy, Parish, DJ, Coop, baby skyhook, Memorial day massacre, clothesline, no layups, Riley, Fitch, etc. And this is only the 80's. (Other blasts from the past include but are not limited to Russell, Cousy, Wilt, Baylor, West, JoJo White, Auerbach, and so on). Heck even the casual would know that this is a classic matchup. Nearly 20 years after their last meeting, these two historic rivals meet again, for the 11th time in the history. The hype is already almost at Super Bowl proportions.

The hope with any championship is, obviously, that it is competitive, exciting, just good sports. Unlike one game finals, the best 4-7 format gives the die-hard fan the hope that it will go the distance, that every game will be close, or if that’s not possible, that each team alternates winning so that the series can be prolonged. But while you often do get some good matchups, most often you also find some bad ones, and the result is that the hype supercedes the game.

The hype has centered on resurrecting the Magic versus Bird era in order to place this matchup in historical context. The two teams have their own megastars of their own and this latest chapter in the rivalry has some unique storylines that promises to place this particular series up there with the other great series between the two teams.

In the 1980’s, it was Magic vs. Bird. The NBA presciently began advertising the finals by imposing images of two players’ faces side by side as they each spoke a number of platitutes about winning. The image of Kobe and KG are splattered all over the sporting world and it is an accurate pictorial depiction of what will transpire on the hardwood. This is Boston versus LA after all. But as legendary soccer announcer Norberto Longo used to say, the best players playing for the best teams in the biggest games make for the best spectacle. This spectacle will truly be about Kobe versus KG, about who can best have their team exert their will on the other.

These two players matched up one time before, in the 2004 Western conference finals, but the Lakers were a vastly superior team and so round 1 of this matchup went to Kobe. I think it was somewhat of a miracle that the Timberwolves were able to win two games (more on that late). This matchup is fascinating because of the contrasts as well as similarities between the two superstars. In many ways these guys are alike (intensity, drive, talent, heart, athleticism) but they are also dissimilar:

Kobe tends to be very vocal about his views on management; KG tends to be quieter publicly. Kobe moaned and bitched just last year about wanting to be traded, about his and management’s philosophy being on divergent paths. Kobe’s outbursts are well known and documented. KG, on the other hand, never voiced his complaints too publicly about his unhappiness with the pathetic Timberwolves’ handling of the Joe Smith deal, the bad draft picks, etc. He just sucked it up and continued playing.

Kobe is willing and able to take over a game offensively. It’s downright travesty that Kobe hasn’t won an MVP before this year. Apparently Larry Bird was so incredulous at hearing this he offered to give back some of his 3 MVPs.

KG won an MVP but has had the “can’t take over the game” mokey his whole career and has been (correctly or incorrectly) defined by it. Bill Simmons’ article for ESPN magazine is just the last salvo thrown at KG:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?id=3403820

But KG is probably the best defensive player of a generation. He has been an all-defensive NBA team for the past 9 years and this year was the NBA’s defensive player of the year. He has been singled for single-handedly transforming the Celtics’ defense this year. It’s not only that every player now plays harder and with better technique due to KG’s influence, it’s that the teams’ defensive schemes and rotations are better than the rest of the league. The result: Boston was the faraway leader in almost every team defensive category as ESPN’s Jim Hollinger overall team defensive efficiency (96.2) indicated. This was the 3rd best showing for an NBA team in the last 35 years. Individually, KG is also an exceptional one-on-one defender and he orchestrates Boston’s team defensive schemes. Chris Mannix. of SI called him probably the best “pick and roll” defender ever in the NBA. Watching him over the years, I’ve begun to learn how truly great he plays defense.

KG has always been a team first player. He tends to be too unselfish (i.e. on the offensive end). Kobe’s whole career has been defined by his uneasy relationship to the team concept. In the early years, he was clearly second banana to Shaq. Then he was the undisputed leader of the team but tended to be too selfish, which resulted in dramatic and spectacular performances (most notably his 81 points against Toronto) but his team overall suffered. In this his first MVP year he has finally figured out the delicate balance between self and team; his prize is his first trip to the Finals since the Shaq years. This leads me to the next point.

KG and Kobe share an almost otherworld type intensity as basketball players. A recent post in the www.rakemag.com/balls blog hypothesized that Garnett’s intensity may actually be a negative influence on teammates in that it burns them out over the course of a season. It’s an interesting point of view that I had never considered. On the other hand, SI has a piece on Kobe’s killer mentality that is equally fascinating:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/writers/chris_ballard/05/27/kobe0602/index.html

In the 80’s (and evidently it still is today) the Lakers Celtics matchup was neatly packaged as the Bird versus Magic show. This was in someways unfair as both teams were loaded with other superstar players. But the lingering feeling of those confrontations always seems to boil down in its bare essence, to a style of play best incarnated by Magic’s versus Bird’s style of play. This series will be similarly defined by the Kobe versus KG style of play. Certainly of the players around today, only Kobe has the “Jordan thing”, an enfatuation to win and the will to carry it out that is supreme to any other player. KG has an “intensity thing” that is unmatched. Both players bring out the best in their teammates and that’s what makes them great. Something is got to give and it will be a beautiful thing watching it unfold.