First, all credit to the Lakers. Third game in four days at the end of a road trip and they played a lot tougher than they did in last year's Finals.
[recap] [box score] [highlights]
You could blame the officials for this one. You could put it on Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen being slowed by the flu. I point directly at Doc Rivers.
After Lamar Odom hit a couple of free throws to put the Lakers up by one in overtime with 16 seconds left, Boston called a 20-second timeout. Here's the lineup Doc came up with: Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, Rajon Rondo, Glen Davis, and Kendrick Perkins. To be fair, Davis was in the game because Garnett had fouled out with a few minutes left in regulation.
The first problem I have with this lineup is: NO EDDIE HOUSE!
Never mind the fact that Eddie was the only guy who had his jumper going (4-for-6 from deep), or that he has killed the Lakers the last season and a half, or that the guy he would have replaced, Davis, was having a terrible shooting night. We needed Eddie in to space the floor.
KG was out, and Rondo and Perkins are limited offensively to the point where you don't have to worry too much about them. Davis was having an awful game. The Lakers were able to focus their defensive energy on Pierce and Allen, and neither had room to operate. Eddie would open up the court more, and of course he's very dangerous if the Lakers happened to leave him open.
Secondly, in the absence of House, Doc chose to play Davis instead of Leon Powe. I've been ranting about Doc's choice of Glen Davis over Leon Powe for a while now, and last night it finally came back to bite us. I remember writing a few weeks ago that while Davis might have the potential to produce a little more on a given night, he also has the potential to shoot us out of any game. Last night, though he did make one big jumper, he did almost exactly that, going 1-for-8 from the field. I've said something similar before, but I'll say it again: Glen Davis should never go 1-for-8 in an important game on this team.
What was especially infuriating about watching Davis clang shot after shot down the stretch (while getting abused by Lamar Odom -- an admittedly tough cover for Davis -- on the other end) is that Doc finally let Leon Powe out of purgatory and Powe responded with 10 points and eight rebounds in 16 minutes (on 5-of-7 shooting). And yet it was Davis who played the crunch-time minutes.
Anyway, I'm pretty sick of talking about this game. Very good win for the Lakers. We'll see what implications it has. The one obvious one is that were the two teams to meet in the Finals after posting the exact same overall record during the regular season, the Lakers would get homecourt advantage. That would be very important should it come to pass, but I'm not too worried about it. The odds of two teams ending with the same record aren't great to begin with, and I have to figure that the Lakers are going to lose a couple here and there that they would have won with Andrew Bynum. The other consequence would be confidence on the part of the Lakers, since they've now won in a building they couldn't win in last June.
The Celtics will try to start a new winning streak when they play New York tonight. Next natioanl TV game is San Antonio on Sunday, at 1 pm. Eastern, on ABC.
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