Darn.
The good news is that if this is all Orlando has, if we've now taken their best shot, we're fine. We'll close them out in five games and this will be nothing more than a bump in the road. Obviously, the Magic are a better team than this, and by "taken their best shot," I really mean that at least they haven't completely woken up: They won, but Jameer Nelson and Dwight Howard were the only two guys who played well. Rashard Lewis had nearly as many points as he'd had in the previous three games, but still only scored 13. Vince Carter was terrible. Matt Barnes hit a couple shots early, but that's it. Orlando showed some fight Monday night, but they still didn't look terribly like the team that they had been all year.
The bad news is that we let a chance to close the series slip away and now still have to beat a very good team one more time. The Magic are still dangerous, and you don't want to give a dangerous team a second chance.
Offense down the stretch is what killed us. We relied too much on isolations for Pierce and didn't run anything for the first several possessions of overtime. It was only after Jameer Nelson had hit a couple of threes did we dial something up for Ray Allen. Too often, we wait too long to call Ray's number. His baskets are worth the same amount when the score is tied as when we are down six. The other big offensive mistake we made was looking too hard for the three-pointer once Ray knocked down a couple. We hadn't been able to get the big stop on the other end, but Ray's shooting had it to within four with about a minute to go. I'm not sure what the play was, but it was clearly for some sort of three-pointer that we didn't need. Kevin Garnett passed up a wide open 20-footer, took an awkward dribble and then sailed a pass over Pierce's head and out of bounds. We just didn't have any continuity on offense for all of overtime.
I thought that at the start of this one, Boston didn't quite have the same intensity that we saw in the first three games. Nothing that suggested that they were dogging it or that they thought the series was already over, but they didn't have that something extra they'd had previously. I thought we didn't really come alive until the dust-up between Garnett and Howard.
Hopefully, we come out and take care of business in Game 5 in Orlando on Wednesday. With each game, the pressure mounts and the Magic gain confidence, so the sooner we can take care of this, the better.
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