"Well, duh" you might be saying. But if you're saying that, you're probably not being honest with yourself. Because heading into the playoffs, the best you could realistically have been asking for was a first-round triumph over Miami and then a good showing against Cleveland -- something like stretching the Cavs to seven games.
But then the Celtics dispatched the Heat rather easily in the first round, and then, lo and behold, looked like they could hang with the Cavs while splitting two games in Cleveland. And when Boston decisively closed out Cleveland by winning the final three games of the series, well, we all should have known.
But we didn't. At least most of us didn't. We were too caught up in the euphoria of beating Cleveland, or too fascinated by the apparent collapse of King James and the Cavs, or too impressed by Orlando's consecutive sweeps of Charlotte and Atlanta.
But now? After the Cs wrested home-court advantage away from the Magic on Sunday? We're on notice. Boston's playing for a ring, and they're championship aspirations are just as realistic as Orlando's or LA's.
Some quick notes on the game:
- A rather pedestrian game for Rajon Rondo, who is the Celtic most responsible for the win over Cleveland. Rondo wasn't bad until the final two or three minutes, when he made a couple of very poor decisions forcing the action, but he wasn't spectacular, either. I give credit to a couple of things. One is the presence of Dwight Howard; Rondo looked spooked in rushing his shots when he got into the lane. The second is the fact that the Magic guard him more or less straight up. I've always thought it was a mistake to play off of him the way the Cavs did; he's so quick and crafty that giving him a running start is a mistake. (This strategy was more or less born in the 2008 Finals, when the Lakers used it successfully for a couple of games. I attribute its effectiveness simply to Rondo not being accustomed to having that kind of room to operate. Now that he's seen it a fair bit, it's rarely effective).
- The two miscues I alluded to above came on consecutive possessions in the fourth with Boston trying to hang on to a lead that had, at one point, been 20 points. Rondo first picked up a charge trying to drive through three Magic players -- one of whom was the lurking Howard, who was probably even money to block the shot. The next time down, Rondo forced a runner that Howard batted away. But Rondo's brain freezes weren't the only ones that plagued the Celtics late. With a minute to go and Boston up five, Ray Allen chose to go one-on-one with Jameer Nelson in the open court, with Howard trailing the play. Allen dribbled the ball off of Nelson's leg, it resulted in a tie-up, and the Celtics lost the ensuing jump ball. Allen also failed to block out Nelson from the top of the key on a missed free throw with about eigh seconds left; Nelson's putback cut the lead to two. (Allen, to his credit, sealed the game with a couple free throws on the ensuing possession.) Eliminate those four silly mistakes and there's less of an Orlando comeback to speak of.
- 22/9/5 for Paul Pierce and 25/7/3 for Allen. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe that Stan Van Gundy's decision to put Vince Carter on Pierce and Matt Barnes on Allen represents a shift away from the status quo. If that's the case, or even if it isn't, I can't see this for the whole series. Guys like Barnes are in the NBA pretty much solely to guard the opposition's focal point on offense, to get under a star's skin during a seven-game series. Pierce will torch Carter if allowed to.
- It's amazing to watch an athlete as powerful as Howard try to score around smaller guys like Kendrick Perkins and Glen Davis, rather than through them.
- Rasheed Wallace came up big off the bench with 13 points, and really got under Howard's skin a bit.
Game 2 is Tuesday night at 8:30 pm Eastern on ESPN. If you're interested in tracking the West (some advance scouting, knock on wood?), the Lakers and Suns tip off their series at 9 pm Eastern on Monday on TNT.
No comments:
Post a Comment