Getting His Due

Regular followers of these pages may have noted that it's been nearly two months since I've posted. The reason for that is twofold. One is that the NBA offseason is full of rumors and scenarios, the majority of which don't pan out, and it's exhausting to keep up with. I've been paying attention, but not enough to really analyze them in depth, and I figured it'd be better to wait until next year's team was pretty much set before I provided my thoughts on it.

The second reason is that losing to the Lakers still stings. Even now, two months later, I'm still bummed that we couldn't hold on to a 13-point third quarter lead. Being so close to our eighteenth and most improbable banner, and not being able to hang on is tough; that it came against the hated Lakers, the favorite team of the city in which I live, makes it even tougher. Celtics fans are not used to their team not coming through in those situations. Perhaps one day I'll be able to exorcise those demons, but for now, I've said what I'm going to say about the Finals.

I'm breaking my silence for a different reason: Dennis Johnson, the man who probably had a bigger influence on my love for basketball than anyone other than my father, was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame this weekend.

I was very young during DJ's career, and so I'll leave it to others to supplement what you may recall of the Celtics' point guard during the 80s. But I was old enough to have a favorite player, and DJ was it. And I was old enough to understand what DJ meant to those teams, the role he played on one of the best collections of basketball players ever assembled. And I was at just the right age for that role to shape my understanding and philosophy of basketball, forever.

DJ was extremely talented, the kind of guy who could have dominated the ball and scored a bunch of points the way he had in Seattle prior to coming over to the Celtics in a trade for Rick Robey. But those Sonics teams didn't have Larry Bird and Kevin McHale and Robert Parish, and the Celtics did, and DJ understood that that meant that his job was to defend, to make sure the ball got to where it needed to get, and to make the other team pay for ignoring him if they chose to do so. DJ taught me that you don't necessarily have to score to contribute, that assisting on a basket or making a steal can be as satisfying as scoring a bucket yourself. (Indeed, I found that there is no feeling on a basketball court more exhilarating than changing the natural momentum and flow of the game by poking the ball away from the opposition as they rushed upcourt.)

Bird always said DJ was the best player he'd ever played with, and that, too, helped shape my basketball philosophy. If you were eight or nine years and a Celtics fan in the 80s, and Bird spoke, you listened, and those comments made me think about basketball and DJ in a way I might not have otherwise. I tried to be like DJ as much as I could. His uniform number, 3, became mine, and it remains my favorite number, my "lucky" number, to this day. I enjoyed a very modest basketball career in high school, and I always did my best to play the role of "system" point guard to perfection: Protect the ball, try to be a game-changer on defense, make just enough shots so that the other team couldn't forget about you.

Bringing it back to these current Celtics, what I want most for Rajon Rondo, certainly my current favorite Celtic and probably second only to DJ all-time, is for him to be a little more like DJ. They have vastly different games: DJ could shoot and Rondo can't, Rondo's flashy where DJ was solid, DJ was burly and strong where Rondo is wispy and quick. Two years ago, Rondo did exactly as DJ would have done, deferring to his veteran teammates in most instances. But now, with age and wear and tear taking its toll on the Big Three, DJ would have been quicker to take what is now the next step for Rondo: Recognize that he is fully capable of carrying his team offensively, and doing so when the situation deems it necessary. Drop an in-his-prime DJ into the third quarter of Game 7 in June, and there's no way Boston wastes possession after possession isolating its obviously exhausted top offensive options. That's when DJ would have gone to work.

As many of you know, DJ was inducted posthumously; many consider it an injustice that the selection committee didn't choose him immediately and a tragedy that he wasn't around to receive the honor himself. Myself, I'll never forget where I was when I found out DJ had died of a heart attack. I was in Las Vegas for work, and my best friend, Joel, called me to break the news, understanding that it was not the kind of thing I'd want to find out from ESPN. I called home to tell my parents about it, and found myself choked up while on the phone with my mother. I remember being surprised, at the time, that a man in his 20s could get that emotional about a basketball player he had never met.

Later, I decided it was a good thing, that I was glad that we never get too old to have heroes.

Dennis Johnson was my hero. And now he's a Hall of Famer.

Doc's Coming Back

[Boston.com story]

You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who has been more critical of Doc Rivers than I have during his tenure as head coach of the Boston Celtics. I've ripped him for his rotations, his choice of players, his handling of players, his tactics, pretty much everything to do with basketball. Over the past few seasons, he's grown on me. There are still a lot of things I disagree with. I think he buries players too quickly or for no good reason (Leon Powe, Marquis Daniels). I didn't think he did a very good job of integrating Nate Robinson this year. I blame him for how bad our offense at the end of quarters is, and for all the games we lost because we went to the Paul Pierce isolation play too early in the fourth quarter. (He says it's the players who have control of this, but as head coach, it's his job to take that control away, if necessary). And while I think he by and large outcoached Phil Jackson in this year's Finals, we still needed to try something else in the third quarter of Game 7, when everyone was tired.

But I'm glad he's coming back. Doc has been a great leader during these championship runs, somehow getting superstar egos and other difficult personalities to mesh. It wouldn't be the same to make a championship run without him.

Next year is going to be tough. It has the potential, in fact, to be tough to watch. Rasheed Wallace is retiring. Kendrick Perkins is going to be out until at least December after knee surgery scheduled for July 7. Defensive guru Tom Thibodeau has left to steer the Chicago Bulls. Kevin Garnett's going to be a year older. So, too, wil Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, assuming they come back. Even if they do, Boston will have seven guys under contract (eight if they sign second-round pick Luke Harangody) and not a whole lot of money to go out and fill up their roster. And it looks very likely that there's going to be at least one two-max player team to contend with in the Eastern Conference next year.

Frankly, I would have liked us to have guaranteed Thibodeau the job either this season (if Doc chose to leave, as he announced he was thinking of doing) or next (once Doc's contract was up), rather than refusing to do so and letting him go to Chicago. I think he's that valuable to the team. But I do think that Doc's the right guy to steer this ship.

Pierce Opts Out

[Boston.com story]

Before we all panic, this doesn't mean we've lost him, and I personally think there's a very good chance he re-signs with Boston and ultimately retires as a Celtic. But I'm sure there are some questions running through many people's heads, so let's take a look at them:

What does it mean to opt out? Basically, Paul Pierce had an option to stick around for another season at about $21.5 million, then become a free agent next year. Instead, he's chosen to forfeit that year in search of a long-term deal. I don't have a complete grasp of NBA salary cap rules, but I believe that I read that such a deal could be up to four years for $96 million if it comes from Boston, and four years for $93 million if it comes from another NBA team.

How can Pierce walk away from so much money? There are many considerations here:

• The collective bargaining agreement (CBA) is up after this year, and the next one -- if there isn't a lockout -- is almost certainly going to be less lucrative/favorable to players. Pierce wants to get his new contract under the terms that are most favorable to him.
• It's insurance against having a bad year or getting injured. It's unlikely that Pierce's new deal, wherever he signs it, will pay him the $21.5 million in 2010-2011 he would have earned if he had opted out, but he's eliminating some risks that you have to worry about more and more when you're an NBA veteran entering your mid-30s. (He's currently 32.) Let's say, for the sake of using round numbers, that Pierce gets $80 million over four seasons in a new deal. Averaged out -- and that's now how the NBA works, but for simplicity's sake, it works -- that's 20 mil per year. In such a scenario, Pierce would be paying $1.5 million to hedge against the chance that he suffers some career-ending injury or has a dip in performance next season that would reduce his value to less than what he could get this offseason (4 for 80, in our hypothetical). The risk is that he'll have a great 2010-2011 season and would actually command more in free agency next summer, but that seems unlikely at age 32 -- and don't forget the CBA.
• If there was a summer that Pierce was going to get overpaid, it's this one. Forget his performance and the fact that the Celtics made a surprise run to the seventh game of the NBA Finals. You may not have heard this, but a large number of very high-profile NBA players are free agents this summer, and for two years now, teams have been giving away players to create cap room to sign one or two of them. But there's more cap room than there are marquee guys to fill it, and the teams that miss out on LeBron James and Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh may look to guys like Pierce to ensure they don't come away empty-handed. It's probably not the smart move, but GMs and coaches have pressure to win from fans, owners, and players. Besides, this is the NBA, where most moves aren't smart.

Why not let Pierce go instead of overpaying him and sign one of those free agents instead? Because we can't. NBA salary cap rules allow you to exceed the cap to re-sign your own free agents, but we wouldn't be able to go over the cap to sign someone like LeBron. I think I read somewhere that even if Pierce and Ray Allen leave, Boston would only have about $15 million in cap room. That's not enough to get a player that you could team with Kevin Garnett and Rajon Rondo and contend for a championship.

That leaves Danny Ainge with a couple options. He can let Pierce walk, in doing so signaling the closing of the current window and probably more or less eating the last two years of Kevin Garnett's hefty contract. Or he can bring back Pierce, and probably Ray, too, and making another run or two at it, perhaps throwing a way a couple of years in the future.

I think the latter is most likely, for a couple of reasons. First of all, and I wouldn't have said this when the playoffs started, but it's a little premature to say the window's closed. We came damn close to winning a title this year. I promised I'd never say the words "we would've won if Perk had played," but show me a Lakers fan who says he's convinced LA wins that series if Kendrick Perkins hadn't blown out his knee in the opening minutes of Game 6, and I'll show you a liar. Giving up now is a bad PR move; even if Danny thinks the window's closed, the team spent the last couple of months convincing a whole lot of people who pay for tickets that it isn't. I also have to think that it will be easier to rebuild with a 34-year-old Pierce making who knows what than it will to rebuild with a post-injury, 35-year-old Garnett. It's conceivable that a contender could take on Pierce's contract in a couple of years if we wanted to move him out for picks or other young assets; I don't see that happening with KG. Finally, re-signing Pierce and Ray buys a little time; the team should be relatively competitive with those two guys and that gives Danny time to find some diamonds in the rough through the draft or free agency. I'm not saying it's likely to happen; just that it's possible.

Mostly, though, I think we're re-signing Pierce because Doc Rivers announced he was coming back to coach, and I don't think he'd do that if we were re-building. But that's another post. Stay tuned.

Quick Cs draft thoughts

I usually love the NBA Draft, but I just couldn't get up for it this year. Maybe it's a hangover from losing to the Lakers. Maybe it's because I had to watch on DVR since it starts at 4:30 out here. Maybe it's because I just don't think it's that good of a draft class -- especially relative to all the hype it's gotten over the past couple of years.

I'll probably have some more draft stuff tonight or over the weekend, but here's what I think about Boston's two picks:

#19 overall: Avery Bradley, PG, Texas. I didn't like this pick much, but I'm starting to come around to it. The safe selection was James Anderson, a smooth SG with a sweet stroke out of Oklahoma State who was snapped up with the next pick by the San Antonio Spurs (given that franchise's draft history, it's a good bet Anderson will turn out to be a fine NBA player). With Ray and Tony's futures with the team uncertain, a backup wing who can shoot it fills a need nicely.

But Danny Ainge doesn't always play it safe in drafts, and I kind of agree with him here. I know very little about Bradley, just that he came into college with huge expectations -- I think some people had him ranked ahead of John Wall -- and was disappointing on a Texas team that imploded mid-year and finished well below its potential. On the Celtics, Bradley would spell Rajon Rondo -- let's not forget that no matter how young Rondo is, backup PG is a need, too -- and maybe even get a little time alongside him if he turns out to be a scorer.

Ainge has a rep for falling in love with guys that not everyone else is enamored with. Sometimes it works out (Rajon Rondo) and sometimes it doesn't (J.R. Giddens). Anderson was the safe pick, the pick you make when there isn't someone you love available. I think Ainge loved Bradley, and swung for the fences by with him. Time will tell.

#52 overall: Luke Harangody, PF, Notre Dame. Harangody's an interesting player to me, in part because I've been relatively silently singing his praises since his freshman year with the Irish, when he averaged 11/6. Heading into that season, there was a ton of talk about North Carolina's Tyler Hansbrough, and I thought there was no reason that Harangody couldn't produce similarly, at least offensive. He averaged a double-double that year, then nearly 23/12 as a junior, before putting up like a 22/9 last season with a few injuries.

The comparisons to Hansbrough aren't great since Harangody's got a bit more of a traditional post game than Hansbrough, who somehow scores most of his points on the interior by contorting his body so that it is parallel to the backboard, then releasing the ball well below his shoulder. I'm not in love with Harangody's post game, but he's got a little polish there. His outside shot is bizarre -- he has a very low release point and he, I swear, jumps two or three feet backwards when he shoots it -- but it goes in often enough that it can be counted as a weapon in his arsenal.

He's a pretty good rebounder with a big frame; give him some time with an NBA training staff and he could really fill out into one of the stronger players in the league. His defense needs a ton of work, however -- he's not a shotblocker and I think he gets pushed around at times. If he can get stronger and play defense with the same intensity he plays offense, he'll at least not be a total liability on that end.

Is Harangody a future NBA starter, which is the minimum you'd expect from a guy who basically averaged a double-double for three years in a conference like the Big East. Probably not. Is he the kind of guy who would've grabbed some minutes from Kevin Garnett and Rasheed Wallace in Game 7 against the Lakers, possibly winning us a championship? Absolutely. And for that, he's well worth the 52nd pick.

Los Angeles Lakers 83, Boston 79

[recap] [box score]

Some day, I'll look back on the 2009-10 Celtics and remember that they came within six minutes of beating the three best teams in the league without home court advantage.

Right now, it feels like we gave a championship away.

Could the Celtics Go Small?

The John Hollinger column I mentioned in my previous post apparently had a suggestion that the Celtics try, from time to time in Game 7, a lineup of Rajon Rondo, Tony Allen, Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, and Kevin Garnett. The rationale for this, I gather, is that it gets Tony Allen -- who has defended Kobe Bryant better, by far, than any other Celtic this series -- onto the court without taking Ray Allen and Pierce off of it.

Here's something I never thought I'd say: I like the idea of getting Tony some more PT. He's been not-terrible-to-decent offensively, and there's no denying that he's been our most effective Kobe-stopper. He crowds Kobe a little bit too much for my liking, but it's obvious to anyone watching that the shots Kobe gets with Tony checking him are tougher than the ones he gets with anyone else checking him.

I have no indication that Doc is even considering this strategy, but there are several things that concern me about its possibility:

• We have not, to my knowledge, done this before. It'd be like a football team running the hook-and-ladder or Statue of Liberty on the last snap of the game, only without having practiced it beforehand. Sure, it may force LA to call an audible, too, but it's a big adjustment for us to make with the season on the line.
• It would set up a pretty hairy Pierce-Lamar Odom matchup on defense, if the Lakers chose to exploit it and Odom was uncharacteristically assertive. Pierce has shown he can score on Odom, but I imagine that Odom's length would bother Pierce more than Pierce's, uh, nothing, would bother Odom. On the other hand, if the Lakers are giving the ball to Odom instead of Bryant and Gasol, it's probably a good thing for the Cs -- at least until Lamar gets going.
• It would mean that Ray and Pierce aren't getting rest. I know, I know -- there's no Game 8 to rest up for, so everyone should be prepared to go the full 48 in Game 7. But the odds are overwhelmingly against us blowing out the Lakers on their homecourt; chances are, if we're going to win, we'll need a strong performance from our starters in the fourth quarter. To that end, every second of rest those guys can grab will be crucial.
• LA killed us on the boards in Game 6, and that lineup would be extremely vulnerable on the glass. With Kendrick Perkins out, stops will be a bit tougher to come by than they were before, and we can't afford to give up extra possessions when we do get stops by not grabbing the defensive rebound.

With that said, I endorse this strategy in limited situations. If, for example, a couple of our bigs get into foul trouble and Doc doesn't trust Shelden Williams or Brian Scalabrine, then he might need to go small by necessity. Or if Kobe is getting everything he wants offensively but we need to keep our guards on the court because of what they are doing offensively, then bringing Tony in might be a solution.

In reality, though, I don't expect Doc to do anything fancy. He's not that kind of coach, and, anyway, I'm not sure the circumstances call for it. The Celtics minus Kendrick Perkins can beat the Lakers with hard work, team play, strong defense and attacking offense -- and every player on Boston's roster is capable of providing those things.

Perk Out for Game 7

This doesn't come as a surprise to anyone who watched the game last night, but Kendrick Perkins will not suit up in Game 7 due to the knee injury he suffered in the first quarter of Game 6. There are conflicting reports about whether the injury is a torn MCL and PCL or just a sprain of the ligaments, but Perk isn't having an MRI until he returns to Boston after the series and he officially isn't available for tomorrow night. For the sake of next season and Perk's future, let's hope it's just a sprain.

However, now is not the time to think about next year; next week is. Now is the time to think about what Perkins' absence means for Game 7 against the Lakers, and what adjustments need to be made.

The bad news is obvious. Perk is our best on-ball defender in the post, and while he hadn't consistently delivered his best work on that end this series, he had done a decent job on Pau Gasol (with Kevin Garnett sliding over to guard Lamar Odom when Andrew Bynum was out of the game, which was more often than not due to Lakers' young big's own knee injury). In addition, Perk is a reliable big body, of which we are now down to just three -- making foul trouble a real danger for Game 7. With Boston weakened on the front line, LA will probably look to dump it into Gasol more often in the hopes of getting Rasheed Wallace into foul trouble. The Lakers are best when the offense runs through Gasol, but they are sometimes reluctant, for some reason, to exploit him. But even Kobe Bryant should see that foul trouble to Wallace would be so detrimental to the Celtics that he can't help but go to Gasol early, and thus the Lakers offense may be more effective by accident.

There is some good news, or I guess at least a silver lining. For starters, Wallace has actually guarded Gasol fairly well in this series, although he has had trouble doing so without getting into foul trouble. If 'sheed can force Gasol to catch the ball off the block and contest his shots without fouling (content to live with the results of a contested shot) -- things Perk does extremely well -- then we may not miss Perkins at all defensively. If, however, Wallace gambles for steals and blocks in his typical fashion (which is okay when we're less reliant on him for minutes than we will be Thursday night), we could be in some trouble. Either way, I look forward to seeing, at least once, Gasol fall on his ass and then look up helplessly at the official when 'sheed breaks out the "pulling the chair" move.

Offensively, the news is better. There's a John Hollinger column on ESPN about how the Celtics are better off without Perkins, but I'm not an Insider and am not particularly inclined to go around searching for it. I have seen bits and pieces, however, from various blogs, and Hollinger has at least one thing right: Wallace is a much better offensive player than Perkins. Perk's offensive limitations allow the Lakers to guard Boston's starting unit close to 5-on-3, with Bryant backing well off of Rajon Rondo and whoever is guarding Perkins ignoring him unless Perk is standing within five feet of the basket. Wallace's range, which extends out to the three-point line, should unclog the paint for Rondo drives and Paul Pierce isolations, and keep the Lakers honest on pick-and-rolls with Pierce and Ray Allen. I suspect that LA will be more than happy, at least initially, to roll the dice with Wallace bombing away, and so he'll have to knock a couple down for this advantage to really bear fruit. (Fortunately, Wallace expertly didn't waste any of his makes on a lost cause in Game 6!) We don't need the 29 points on 5-for-7 from deep that he gave us in a January win at Toronto with Garnett out (though we'll take it), but the zero points on 0-for-6 from three-point land from Game 6 won't do, either. I'd love to see 'sheed step inside the arc for some of his offense, but at this point, I consider that something of a lost cause.

No matter how well 'sheed plays, however, he, Garnett, and Glen Davis are probably going to need help handling Gasol, Bynum (if he plays), and Odom, particularly on the glass. Last night, that guy was Shelden Williams, and he was, well, terrible. That leaves one other possibility: Brian Scalabrine.

When Shelden is playing regularly, like he was at the start of the season when Davis was out with a hand injury, he's a better option than Scalabrine. He's stronger, a better rebounder, a little more athletic. But he's out of rhythm now, and his performance in Game 6 was bad to the point of being painful to watch. (His play in four minutes in Game 2, his only other action of these Finals, was not much better.) I know Scalabrine hasn't played since March 28 and has barely even dressed for any games during the playoffs, but at this point, if Scalabrine can simply catch the ball most of the time it lands in his hands, he'd be an upgrade over Shelden.

Look, I know this isn't ideal, but there was a time, before we got Wallace, that this wouldn't have been so ridiculous a suggestion. Last year, Doc Rivers tabbed Scalabrine eight times as a starter; five times when Perkins was out and three when Garnett was out. In one of the former, against Phoenix, with Garnett guarding Shaquille O'Neal, Scalabrine held Amare' Stoudemire to 0-for-7 from the field, actually outscoring the five-time All-Star 4-to-3. Scalabrine defends and rebounds with every ounce of his by-NBA-standards-underwhelming ability. If he sees the court on Thursday, there won't be anyone on it playing harder than Brian Scalabrine.

Scal also has the ability, when left open -- and he gets left open a lot -- to knock down an open three or two. It's asking a lot of a guy to step in after not playing for two-and-a-half months and hit jumpers in Game 7 of the NBA Finals, but six or nine points from Scalabrine could be absolutely huge.

Heading into Game 6, there was a lot of chatter on the Internet about how, if Boston won the series, who would win the MVP was still an open question. Scalabrine will never be mentioned in that discussion. But in a series in which the best two players are wearing purple-and-gold, it may take a solid, if unspectacular, performance from a forgotten role player to push the team wearing green-and-white over the top.