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.
One internet bookmaker currently has the Finals at a pick ‘em, largely because the Lakers’ home court advantage offsets the Celtics’ 3-2 lead. Here are a few stats to chew on heading into Game 6:
- Phil Jackson’s 47-0 series mark after winning Game 1 is in serious jeopardy.
- Teams trailing 3-2 in the Finals have won just six times in 40 tries. However, since the league has gone to a 2-3-2 format, the team down 2-3 has only had home court advantage six times and have gone 2-4 in those series.
- The Celtics are 11-0 in the franchise history when leading 3-2 in the Finals.
He obviously played great, but I don’t think you can brush that incident at the end of the first half under the rug. He quit on his team for that possession, and it could have had an impact on the outcome of the game. What if the C’s had lost by one? Pierce would spend the next two days deflecting questions about why he started to walk off the court when his team needed him.
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?
Want to know how it feels when you’re a reserve and you have a direct impact on the outcome of Game 4 of the NBA Finals? Watch this video of Nate Robinson and Glen Davis. They don’t hold anything back…
There is definitely a different mindset as a starter versus a reserve. As a starter, you expect to be in the game at crunch time and are prepared to play with the game on the line. There will be games where you decide the outcome.
As a reserve, you go in and do your thing, but you’re usually pulled with five or six minutes remaining (or earlier) because the coach wants to get his starters back in. Doc Rivers made the decision to let a unit that featured four bench players continue to play deep into the fourth quarter because they were performing so well. Both Davis and Robinson admitted that they kept looking at the clock wondering when they were going to get pulled.
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.
Check out Ray Allen’s line from each of the last two games:
Game 2: 11-20 (8-11 3PT), 32 points, Celtics win, 103-94
Game 3: 0-13 (0-8 3PT), 2 points, Celtics lose, 91-84
I wondered how the Celtics would handle the long flight and quick turnaround from Game 2 to Game 3 and it appears that Allen didn’t handle it well. Kevin Garnett kept Boston in it, hitting 11-of-16 shots for 25 points and six boards in what was easily his best game of the series. Generally speaking, the Celtics played well enough to win, but they had trouble scoring largely due to Allen’s struggles from the field. However, he did play good defense on Kobe Bryant (29-7-4 on 29 shots), but it still wasn’t enough.
The reason the Lakers won was Derek Fisher’s excellent fourth quarter. He went 5-of-7 from the field for 11 points in the period. In essence, he gave the Lakers what Kobe usually gives them in the fourth quarter.
In Finals history, ten series have been tied 1-1 after the first two games and the team that won Game 3 went on to win all 10 series. That, coupled with Phil Jackson’s amazing record in series where his team wins the first game, would seem to make the Celtics big underdogs. They absolutely have to win the next two games and hope that they can steal another game in L.A.
