At this point, if you care enough to read the blog, you care enough to watch the games, so a narrative of what happened is pointless. I do want to repeat one thing that Sports Guy mentioned in his live chat on ESPN.com, which is that Phil Jackson went for the kill by leaving his starters in to start the fourth, and it backfired. Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol had played big minutes heading into the period, and the Boston bench really outworked the Lakers' starters, at least in part because they had fresher legs. Give credit to Doc Rivers, too, for sticking with the bench. It takes a lot of guts to keep Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Rajon Rondo sitting next to you, especially when guys in purple shirts with "Bryant" and "Gasol" written on the back are out on the floor. But Doc saw the spark that Nate Robinson and Glen Davis were bringing offensively, saw the fantastic defense Tony Allen and Rasheed Wallace were playing, and stuck with them -- all the way until just 2:50 remained in the fourth quarter.
It's nice to be posting about something other than the officiating, too. For the first time all series, I thought the refs let the players decide the outcome, and no one was plagued by foul trouble throughout the entire game -- the way it should be in the Finals. I'm sure LA fans have something to say about the late Pierce and-one, but it was a bang-bang play and it's hard to complain about those types of calls. It was certainly a much closer play than the very poor charging call that went against Pierce in the first half. A Boston fan friend pointed out a handful of other calls that went against the Celtics, and while I agree with him, I also was never really frustrated for more than a second or two with the officiating in Game 4.
So it's now a best of three series, and I have to say, I like our chances even more than I did at the beginning of the series. For three full games now, Boston has gotten significantly better shots than LA. We knocked them down in Game 2 and won; didn't in Game 3 and lost; and didn't for most of Game 4 and still won. While it is frustrating to see us miss layups and open jumpers the way we did Thursday night, it's encouraging that we're getting those types of looks, on the theory that they'll eventually start going in. On the other end of the court, it's seemed to me that LA has hit an inordinate number of very difficult shots. (They're hitting the open ones, too, but we're not giving them that many.) So while Kobe can stick his jaw out after every brilliant jumper with a Boston defender all over him and Lakers fans can applaud him for it, I'm comfortable watching him take those shots -- and I'm equally comfortable watching Garnett bang a few open 20-footers off the back rim. My tune will change, of course, if we continue to miss these shots for the rest of the series, but the percentages, I feel, are in our favor.
Game 5 is nearly as much of a must-win as Game 4 was. Expect a war.
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