We can really illustrate Perkins’ hidden importance by looking at the Plus/Minus numbers. When Perkins was on the court for Boston this season, the Celtics outscored their opponents by 7.2 points per 100 possessions; when he wasn’t playing, that number was only +0.2, a difference of -7 pts/100 poss.
Meanwhile, Perkins’ Game 7 replacements, Rasheed Wallace and Glen Davis, don’t fare nearly as well by the WOWOY metrics. Despite Davis’ heroics in Game 4, he and Wallace have been Boston’s two worst players by net on/off rating during the playoffs. Wallace has been particularly toxic for the Celtics all season — the team played 5 pts/100 poss. worse when he was on the floor, as evidenced by his recurring appearance in the Celts’ worst lineup combinations. Davis & Wallace look better by the 4-year WOWOY regression (Davis is +1.36, Wallace is +0.47), but neither has the ability to positively impact the game the way Perkins does. Without his presence, and playing on the road (home teams win Game 7 80% of the time), the Celtics appear to be in dire straits tonight.
Numbers aside, I tend to agree with Paine from a qualitative point of view. Kendrick Perkins is a really good post defender, better than Rasheed Wallace and much better than Glenn Davis. He is not the offensive player that either of those guys are, but when you’re part of a unit that includes the Big 3 and Rajon Rondo, you don’t have to be.
Wallace has played some good post defense in these playoffs, but he tends to get into foul trouble, and that’s bad news for tonight, when the Celtics are so painfully thin on the front line. His three point range can stretch the defense, but he’s shooting 26% in the Finals and 35% in the postseason, so it’s not like his defender can’t help off of him. The Celtics need a 15/10 kind of a night from ‘Sheed if they hope to win Game 7.
If he gets into early foul trouble and Boston is forced to play Shelden Williams major minutes, the Celtics will be in major trouble.
Dr. Jack Ramsay, ESPN: If the Celtics are going to win Game 7, Rajon Rondo has to have a big game. He hasn’t shot the ball well the past two games. He needs to get all the way to the basket and finish. He has to penetrate, generate the transition offense and find the open receivers. Even when the Lakers are scoring, the Celtics have to find a way to run. Those opportunities are there if you are aware of them, and Rondo is a one-man fast break. Lately, Rondo has been too concerned with scoring instead of creating plays. He is Boston’s playmaker. His first objective should be to find open players. He has to find the wingmen — Paul Pierce and Ray Allen — so they can get open looks before the Lakers’ defense gets set.
Bill Plaschke, LA Times: If the Lakers defeat the Boston Celtics in Game 7 of the NBA Finals at Staples Center, their second consecutive championship would give real life to the possibility that this group could stay together long enough to win two more and certify the Lakers as the greatest franchise in NBA history. If they lose, that hope dies here. If the Lakers win, Phil Jackson is paid, Derek Fisher is remembered, Lamar Odom and Ron Artest are forgiven, and everyone returns with a legitimate shot to win it again for each of the remaining four years on the core group’s contracts. If they lose, everyone runs for cover, and not everyone finds it.
Dan Shaughnessy, Boston Globe: Take a good look at your Celtics when they break from their huddle and walk on the Staples Center court for Game 7 against the Lakers tonight. This will never happen again. Not with this group. Ray Allen might be gone next year. Paul Pierce could opt to leave this summer. Coach Doc Rivers says he’s not sure he’s coming back. Rasheed Wallace and Glen Davis are the only Celtic substitutes under contract for 2010-11. Even if by some chance they all return, they will never get to another Game 7 in the Finals. Allen and Kevin Garnett are 34, and their rookie-issue NBA tires are almost as bald as their heads. Pierce turns 33 this year. There are three other thirtysomethings on the bench. This is it. The last stand for the old guard.
Jeff Miller, Orange County Register: Kobe Bryant doesn’t need to win this NBA championship. Not for any legacy, validation or argument about his greatness. Bryant’s legacy is as golden as the jersey he’ll be wearing in Game 7. He could retire during the national anthem Thursday and they’d still build him a statue outside Staples Center… His greatness cannot be questioned any more successfully than his fadeaway jumper still can be defended. Bryant has won four championships and, just for emphasis, done so with two distinctively different teams.
Howard Bryant, ESPN: Game 7 will be what basketball is: a superstar’s game. There are two in this Finals series: Kobe Bryant and Paul Pierce. Whether it is directly by their star play or indirectly by facilitating the productivity of their teammates, by foul trouble or by an outright bad night, the NBA championship will be decided by which one of those two imposes his will longer and more effectively on the game.
Ever since I saw the schedule for these Finals, I’ve been writing about how the aging Celtics would react to having to fly cross country and play on only one day’s rest. They looked sluggish in Game 3 after a quick turnaround from Game 2, and in Game 6, just two days after Game 5 in Boston, it looked like they never got out of the airport.
This game isn’t quite over, but it has been decided. The Lakers’ defense showed up tonight and that helped their offense, which in turn kept the Celtics at a slower pace. Boston looked out of sync all night, and that was mainly due to the effort and positioning of the Laker defense.
The Laker bench also played well — as of this post, the L.A. bench is outscoring the Boston bench 24-11.
What else is there to say? Kobe needed someone else to step up and pretty much the entire team responded. Both teams are a man down — Kendrick Perkins played only seven minutes before suffering a knee injury, while Andrew Bynum only managed 12 minutes before the Lakers shut him down.
Okay, now it’s a final: Lakers 89, Celtics 67.
I would expect a much better effort from the Celtics in Game 7, mostly because they can’t play much worse. They’ll have a full 48 hours to read about how badly they played, while the Lakers will be riding high.
It’s funny how the momentum in these seven-game series can change on a dime.
On his way into the losing locker room, the most angry man in the Garden was heard to bellow a spontaneous stream of curses into the ears of his Los Angeles Lakers. As the door slammed behind them, a witness heard Kobe Bryant(notes) screaming that he needed some-bleeping-one to make a stand with him.
“We’ve regressed since Game 1,” Bryant confessed to Yahoo! Sports. “Our defense belongs on milk cartons in the last two games.”
Everyone wonders how Bryant goes about these next hours until Game 6 at the Staples Center. On the eve of Game 1, Bryant told me how the development of these Lakers, their growth, allowed him to channel his aggression, his time, into his own game. Two years ago, Bryant said, the Lakers weren’t good enough to beat the Celtics. He hated losing to them, but he could live with it. This one, he’ll take to his grave. This one, he’ll never get over.
All that screaming in the locker room, all that angst over a Game 5 that felt like ’08 again, and Bryant stopped walking and stood for a moment. He had to start building back these Lakers, building back the fragility of a defending champion on the brink of elimination.
His eyes narrowed now, his lips stiffened, and Kobe Bryant would say late in this chase for a back-to-back championship, “Listen, if you told me at the beginning of the year that we’ve got two games at home to win a championship, yeah, I’ll take that [bleep].”
There has always been an interesting dynamic between Kobe and his teammates. As long as they keep winning, he’s generally happy, but when the chips are down he lashes out like a black mamba. Certain people, like Derek Fisher, can take it as motivation and play a great Game 6, but I wonder how someone like Ron Artest, who hasn’t been in the foxhole with Kobe before, is going to react to the mounting pressure. It’s not just that the Lakers might lose, it’s that Kobe might lose, and that might be worse.
What is going through his teammates’ heads when the game is on the line? Are they wondering if Kobe approves of this shot or doesn’t approve of that shot? Are they afraid to make mistakes for fear of the tongue-lashing that they’ll no doubt get on the way to the bench? Or do they somehow transform his criticism into toughness and good play?
There were four great parts of this play: 1) Pierce’s difficult catch, 2) his ability to turn and find Rondo with the pass, 3) Rondo’s catch, and 4) Rondo’s circus shot.
The third period in Game 5 was the best offensive quarter of the night, with the two teams combining for 54 of the game’s 178 points (~30% of the game’s points). The first half of the third quarter was particularly entertaining, as Kobe scored an astounding 17 points in six minutes. He added two free throws with 4:52 to play, so until Pau Gasol’s bucket with 2:15 to play in the period, Kobe was the only Laker to score.
While this tremendous run kept the Lakers in the game, it took Kobe’s teammates out of the flow of the offense. It’s tough for a team to find an offensive rhythm when one guy shoots every time down the floor.
For their part, the Celtics withstood Bryant’s onslaught by scoring 19 points of their own in the first six minutes of the period. Here’s how the scoring broke down: Paul Pierce (9), Kevin Garnett (4), Ray Allen (2), Rajon Rondo (2) and Kendrick Perkins (2).
So in total, there were 36 points scored in the first half of the third quarter. To put this into perspective, if the two teams had played at that pace the entire game, the final score would have been 152-136.
Kobe was en fuego, but he was visibly frustrated about the fact that the Lakers couldn’t get a stop. It doesn’t do much good to be on fire if the other team is on fire as well.
The series moves back to L.A. for Game 6 on Tuesday, which is a quick turnaround for the older Celtics. How will the 30+ crowd react to the cross country flight and just one day’s rest? The last time the two teams traveled like this, the Lakers looked fresher and won Game 3 in Boston.
My prediction? I think the younger Lakers regroup in Game 6 and even the series at 3-3. In a deciding Game 7 in L.A., I have to go with the Lakers, even though I’m (grudgingly) rooting for the C’s.
The key is Ray Allen — since hitting eight of his first nine threes in Game 2, he has gone 0-for-18 from 3PT. For a career 39.6% three-point shooter, that streak is pretty astounding. The Celtics are going to need him to find his touch if they hope to close out the series in L.A.
Here’s where the 2-3-2 format in The Finals gets really interesting. With a 92-86 win in Game 5 behind a big 27-point effort from Paul Pierce, the Celtics are in position to close out the Lakers, but they’ll have to do it at the Staples Center.
Pierce was amazing offensively, hitting 12-of-21 shots from the field, which mostly offset Kobe Bryant’s 38 points. The Lakers only had one other player in double figures (Pau Gasol, 12-12), and Kobe grew visibly frustrated as the fourth quarter wore on.
Along with Pierce, Rajon Rondo (18-8-5) controlled this game for Boston. He made four huge plays late in the game, including two steals (though curiously, he was only credited for one in the game), a timely tip-in on an offensive rebound and a very nice catch and layup on a late pass from Pierce. Kevin Garnett (18-10-3) and Ray Allen (12-3-2) also played well for the Celtics.
Heading back to L.A. it will be interesting to see if the Lakers can turn things around. So much momentum swings with one game, and now that the Celtics have won three of the last four, the Lakers will be feeling the pressure. If they can rally together and win Game 6, they’ll regain control of the series.
A couple of other random thoughts from the game:
- Jeff Van Gundy had a great line about Derek Fisher’s propensity to flop. Mike Breen said that Fisher did a nice job of selling the call. Van Gundy responded, “If I never hear ‘selling’ and ‘basketball game’ together again, I’ll be happy.”
Breen: “Veterans know how to sell.”
Van Gundy: “How do you fool…these guys have all refereed this guy for 14 years. They know every time he goes up it looks like there’s sniper fire in the building.”
Classic.
- There was a weird sequence between Pierce and Rondo at the end of the first half. The Celtics were running the clock down and Pierce felt that Rondo “looked him off.” As Rondo started to penetrate into the lane (and looked to pass the ball to Pierce again), Pierce was already walking towards the Celtics’ bench in frustration, wiping his hand away at Rondo in dismissal. When asked about it moments later by Doris Burke, Pierce said he wasn’t upset when it was very obvious that he was.
That play was the opposite of ubuntu. What if the Celtics had lost by one point and that play could have made the difference between Boston winning and losing? Why is Pierce pouting about not getting the ball on a play like that?
I have to hand it to Doc Rivers. How many coaches would have had the balls to play a lineup that included Nate Robinson, Tony Allen, Rasheed Wallace and Glen Davis deep into the fourth quarter of a tight, must-win game against the Lakers? Ray Allen was the fifth Celtic on the floor, and at times he looked a little like Kelly Leak playing with the Bad News Bears.
That group started the fourth quarter, trailing 62-60, and slowly but surely built an 85-74 lead with 3:57 to play. There were points that Rivers sent Garnett/Pierce/Rondo to the scorer’s table only to pull them back to the bench after the aforementioned fivesome made a nice play to continue its run. This is not something we see often in the NBA because most coaches are afraid of their stars, but these Celtics don’t mind riding the wave with the bench when they are outplaying the other team’s starters. Ubuntu.
When Garnett/Pierce/Rondo did re-enter the game, Mark Jackson was concerned about their readiness to shoot when open, but these guys are pros (not to mention champions), and they answered the call. Well, Paul Pierce (19-6-5) answered the call. He scored five quick points, including a very suspect three-point play where he drew a block on Kobe. It looked as if Kobe got his feet set outside of the circle before Pierce left his feet, but the call went Pierce’s way. That’s why there’s such a thing as home court advantage.
With their backs to the wall, the C’s did what they needed to do in Game 4. Now they have to prevail in another must-win game to put the pressure back on the Lakers as the series heads back to L.A.
I remember this play when it happened, and I’m glad “BasketballBreakdowns” posted the clip on YouTube.
Fourth quarter, Celtics trailing by two, 72-70, with seven minutes left in the game. Boston had come back from a 17-point deficit, but hadn’t yet been able to tie the game or take the lead. They were on a 9-5 run in the quarter, and had a chance to tie the game with a bucket on this possession.
Rondo missed Pierce on what would have been a pretty easy bucket, and the Lakers scored on Derek Fisher jumpers on the next two possessions to push the lead to six. Had the Celtics scored here and tied the game, the Garden would have gone nuts and it might have changed the outcome.
