Is That The Best You’ve Got?

This was a throw away game as far as I’m concerned. It was get it out of your system. As badly as we played, to have been so close gives me hope that we will win one, or even two games in L.A.

Don’t be down in the dumps with what happened.

I certainly agree with you. Our defense was pretty darn good and Pierce and KG got their clunkers on the same night. Much to be encouraged about. We only need one of the next two out there and the Lakers shluld have put us away a lot better than that. I expected Rondo to be flat after Game 2 and I expected Kobe to get to the line a lot (deservedly or not).

Posey cannot get enough praise in my opinion. And, I was delighted to see Doc sit Sam/insert Eddie. Eddie was much faster afoot on D than Sam and if he nailed that 2 pointer to tie the game (Vujacic turned the miss into a dagger 3) we may very well have stolen one. Something in me likes seeing Eddie shoot and not Sam.

I know the Celtics lost but, I am now convinced that Boston is the better team…Boston played terribly, were treated to some horrendous calls and still managed to make it a close game..I’m sure Phil had touble sleeping in his cutomized bed last night.

Here’s the thing, yes there was jet lag, but that happened on both sides of the ball. Yes Pierce had an off night and he will probably show up on Thursday night. Keep in mind though that Pau and Lamar have not had a breakout game yet either. They don’t get hype for sucking the way they have in these finals. I am not saying the Celts can’t win in 5, but I just don’t think it’s going to be a cake walk like everyone else thinks. Besides, as Timmy said, let’s win it on Red’s floor.

“Something in me likes seeing Eddie shoot and not Sam.”

For me, it’s that they are open, non-fadeaway shots that occassionally go in. Call me crazy.

Laker fan here. I agree with most of what Jeff wrote. This was your obligatory game of “Lakers had to win to save their pride, the refs had to get one out of their system after so much crying from last game”. The next game is arguably the real game of this stretch in LA. It’s not a series yet, unlike what ESPN has declared. If the Lakers win the next one, THEN we have a series.

The Lakers did not play well but managed to escape, so some may argue they can play much better. But I’m beginning to believe that the Lakers don’t look like themselves because the Celtics D have gotten into their heads. The missed layups and dunks have become a trend. Whereas the Celtics have proved they can score on the Lakers when they run the right plays (why did they stop running the top pick n roll?? This forced the Lakers to scramble, opening up entry passes to Perkins and Powe in Game 2)

And KG and PP will not play this awful again… The only chance I see for the Lakers is (assuming Kobe plays great again) if one or both of Gasol and Odom finally show up

Please get over yourself. A loss is a loss. As we’ve seen many many times in this postseason, one game has little to do with the next. It’s often been the Celtics proving this. The bottom line is that the Celtics chances of winning the series are lower today than there were yesterday.

FYI — I’m a Celtics fan. And while I was happy last night that they could keep it close, I also know that it means nothing for the next game, just like LA’s fourth quarter rally in Game 2 to keep it close (leading many to predict a Game 3 blowout) meant nothing.

Good write.

That being said, we better close this thing as fast as we can. I don’t think PP’s knee is as good as advertised and with the injuries to Rondo and Perk, we can’t take another night off….

lets get this over with..

1. Doc Rivers was completely outcoached.
2. Where the **** was Powe last night after the breakout game he had in game 2? The Lakers have no one to defend him. Keep going to him until they stop him. I don’t want to hear about his lack of team defense.
3. If Pierce had simply a sub par game vs. the atrocity he mailed in last night, we would have won. Could his knee be worse than what is being said? Was he out too late with his LA buddies the night before?
4. Despite Kobe’s line, I love the way Ray Allen stepped up to the challenge of defending him.
5. The way to beat the Lakers is to make Kobe take over the game himself and have him forget about his teammates. There were long stretches of the game in which Kobe did exactly that and Rivers did not take advantage.
6. This could really come back to haunt us.
7. I’m so angry right now. Last night I slept on the couch.

At 22-62 on fga, Garnett is shooting about 17% below his regular season’s percentage.

Pierce is hurt. I’m glad he didn’t get more hurt last night. I don’t think the Lakers have the same toughness as the Hawks & Cavs, but every road game with those teams was close & hard fought, and each time we were optimistic about winning. My road optimism is guarded with the Lakers because it is never healthy to be over-confident. That’s the Lakers job — they know they’re second best. I enjoyed PP mixing it up with Bryant in the last moments of the game. Kobe’s fantastic of course but he doesn’t have Paul’s visionary depth yet.

By the way, this post reminds me of the posts on Detroit Bad Boys after the second and fifth games of the ECF.

coulda, woulda, shoulda, it was there for the taking.the fakers outwanted us and i hope we got the wakeup call. what fed me up the most was the broadcast crew. van gundy is a heckuva coach but he is a buffoon.jackson is ok but the breen van g asides are not up to what is happening on the floor. the defense will stay steady, but we better keep up with the slavs-they killed us. it was good to see eddie. and tony is really very hurt or forgotten because withh pp in foul trouble, he would have been good for a few mins.

One thing that really struck me was how quiet the Staples Center crowd was for long stretches.

Some positives to take away from last night.

Pierce got the clunker out of his system AND managed to get quite a bit of rest in the process, plagued with foul trouble. This will boad well later in the series.

We have the Lakers playing at our pace, and we have set the tone for a defensive, physical series.

Kobe has been convinced to go down shooting, triangle be damned. This seems to be what Doc and Thib wanted.

The Lakers tickets are at such a premium, that they have lost their homecourt edge. No hardcore rowdy Laker fan can afford to get into the building. Place was like a library through 3 quarters.

We will get at least one win in LA.

the more I dwell on it the more I hate this article. This is the exact opposite attitude to have while Doc Rivers is falling into all of his awful habits.

I thought PP looked injured. On one particular 4th Q fast break, he looked like he was limping. Also, despite some of the single coverage, he wasn’t exploding to the basket. That’s my biggest worry. Rondo’s health is second. Perk’s is third.

Beyond that, I think we’re clearly the better team. And If PP is healthy enough to play like he did in game 2, we’re winning on Thursday night.

Ok guys, I need some support. Is it just me or do you think we [/i]have [i]to win a game in LA. What’s amazing is that I agree with most of you, I think it’s clear that we are the better team but I’m still freaking out.

Around the office I’m acting as if were down 3-2. Is there any assurance that we’ll win this thing? HELP!

A few observations:
I wasn’t much of a Kobe fan before the series, I’m less of one now. What a whiner and a poor teammate.
I wasn’t much of a Phil Jackson fan before the series, I’m less of one now. What a whiner and not a great coach in this series.
The “mood lighting” at the Staples Center is absolutely ridiculous.
Eddie House is the consummate pro and team player. I am glad he is getting some burn, and hope it continues. I feel that in one of these games he will be a key to the victory.
In terms of toughness, Powe beats Pau, but no one beats Po.
Jack Nicholson is still cool.
The Celtics are the better team, and it really isn’t close.

Let’s see if PP goes for 10 points again in game 4 before we start crying about the sky falling. Still up 2-1 after a close loss where 2 out of our top 3 were terrible. Did everyone really think LA was going to go down 3 zip?

Frankly, I don’t care who the better team is. It’s no consolation if the Cs lose the series to be told they’re the better team. And, yes the Cs have to win a game in LA. If they lose tonight, I’m fearing a slow motion choke, aka, the 2007-8 edition of the Pats. BTW, the better team sometimes doesn’t win.

“tomorrow night” not “tonight”

I know this is completely random, but did anyone read Simmons today? He’s just terrible. To put it in the style of one of his lame, overused movie references, he has become to sports writing what Al picino is to acting. It almost seems like he’s parodying himself at this point. With every article, he sounds more and more like a caller to sports talk radio. All bombast. He’s just terrible.

“Please get over yourself”

The surest lock on the face of God’s GREEN Earth is that anyone who says “Please get over yourself” never follows their own advice. ;D

   I don’t see why every fan interprets a game through rose colored glasses. When their players struggle, it is the exception rather than the rule — the result of an off night, fatigue, or jet lag. When the opposition struggles, it is the rule rather than the exception — the players just aren’t that good.

Thus, Boston fans say: LA is dead; they barely won when Pierce and Garnett shot horrifically. But LA fans counter: Boston is dead, the lost on a night when non-Kobe starters shot 7-28 and Gasol and Kobe went 14-26 from the free throw line.

This is the reality I see:

Odom is done as an offensive contributor. He’s been overcome mentally by the stage and Garnett. But he’s still playing disruptive help defense with his length and speed.

Gasol had an off night, and hasn’t been able to really put it together offensively yet, but he’s very likely to revert to the normal 17-20 points on 55% shooting than go 3-9 again. That said, he’s played game-changing defense (in opposition to what most think). In the last 3 series, he held Boozer to 40% shooting, Duncan to 42, and Garnett to 36. He’s incredibly effective on defense, but in strange, unconventional ways. He has freakish length and plays smart position defense, tempting these elite big men to take jumpers and then making them tough by closing out with the 17 foot arms.

Garnett is not going to suddenly score 35 points on great shooting. He is what he is — the best defensive player in basketball and the reason Odom is playing like Kwame Brown, but ultimately passive and just okay on offense. Gasol’s length is bothering him, just as it bothered Duncan and Boozer — he’s 6-30 in the last 5 quarters. He’ll be better, but don’t expect that much.

Pierce is not 100% and had an impossible time finding good looks last night. When Kobe was on Rondo, he roamed and doubled Pierce before he could penetrate. When Kobe guarded Pierce, he effectively shut down all easy opportunities. Some of that is the knee, some is spacing problems because of Rondo, some is Kobe, but Pierce probably isn’t going to shoot 60% again and carry the team easily.

Where does that leave us? With a series. An ugly, defensive, grind it out series. Kobe has cracked the Boston defense, but Odom is done, Gasol is just okay, and LA’s shooters are spotty. On the other end, LA’s defensive schemes and Pierce’s knee make it unlikely Boston gets to 100 again. Each game is probably a race to 90 or 95. It will come down to which team makes 3s and has the advantage at the FT line — which is usually a function of home court.

While I’m in agreement with the folks here who think that Boston has looked like the better team so far in this series, I’d like to make a couple of points.

- The same was true in the San Antonio series after three games. The only difference was that the first two were on the Lakers’ home court, and that they were able to make that big 2nd-half comeback in game 1, so they were up 2-1 instead of down 1-2. Heck, one could make the argument that for the middle three games against Atlanta, the Hawks looked like a better team than Boston. 3 games is a small sample size – certainly, the Celtics have looked better. But not by an uncatchable margin.

- Does nobody here really believe that this game was extremely similar to Game 1 of the series? Neither team played well, the home team got a win after pulling away slightly in the final minute or two, while the road team actually led for stages in the 2nd half… This doesn’t sound familiar? If the Celtics choose to foul instead of letting the clock go in the last 20-odd seconds, the margin could have ended up identical.

We’ll see if the Lakers can get their offense going a bit more successfully going forward (not a guarantee against this C’s team). As much as they’ve appeared ‘dormant’ this series, I fully expect one of Gasol or Odom to break out – or were you not planning on seeing Garnett have a single dominant game either, given that he’s 0-for-3 in this series so far?

Thursday will be a monster of a game, I think, given that both teams know how huge it is. Boston wins, they’ve pretty much got the series wrapped up. Los Angeles wins, they’re right back in, and will be looking at a Game 5 where they can actually push the Celtics to the brink of elimination.

Should be fun.

I´m not worried, not even a bit.
Everyone did what they were supposed to do, Lakers won at home, Celtics up 2-1. The Celtics won´t lose three in a row, plain and simple. Not against these Lakers.

I would like to point out that this is not some karma-antijinx-BS. When I compare the finals Celtics with the “first-two-rounds”-Celtics (and I only use my eye to do that), I can´t find a single reason to be worried.

It´s not the first time that KG struggled with his shot, and the Celtics won those games. It´s not the first time that Paul is completely out of rythm, and the Celtics won these games, too.

As long as they keep the Intensity and Teamwork on the same level they showed during these finals (including game 3), they will win one game in LA.

It´s not the first time that KG struggled with his shot, and the Celtics won those games. It´s not the first time that Paul is completely out of rythm, and the Celtics won these games, too.

…and if not, they normally had great performances in the next game.

This C’s team, maybe more than any other team in NBA history, has grown over the playoffs… not the same team from the 1st round…

As badly as many of the C’s played last night, especially on offense, I thought Doc Rivers did a terrible job coaching. His main attribute seems to be as cheerleader/motivator/taskmaster as opposed to actually making adjustments on the fly and implementing strategies. Why was P.J. Brown, who was struggling on offense all night, on the floor instead of James Posey when the team had to make up ground? Why has he stayed so long with Cassell, who has struggled since coming to the team and appears ill-suited to a back-up role? Why didn’t he take the ball out of Kobe’s hands late in the game?

The Celtics may be the better team but if they win it will be in spite of the coach.

I was watching the game with my oldest son, who was cursing and screaming at everything. I kept telling him, to relax…. patience…. you need patience… and all I received was a stare from him……..

Doc showed that he can’t get too high or too low and he kept and even keel with this team, as a coach should.

I only wish that Red Auerbach was alive to see this…… to see his team… yes his team continue his legacy………

Just think anyone who has ever worn a Celtic Uniform is feeling PROUD at the moment, reliving the glory years and feeling proud to have passed the tourch to this group…

Forget what Rick Pitino did to this franchise…….. He was never a Celtic

Red Blead GREEN and everyone who don the Celtic uniform blead Green… As much as many of us were angry with Danny before all the trades….. His HEART was GREEN… and he and everyone associated with the Celtics should take a bow…

One Suggestion I want to make before Sunday’s game…..

EVERYONE SHOULD GO AND PLACE FLOWERS NEXT TO “"” RED’S STATUE “"” AT FANUEIL HALL, on fathers day and before our Banner 17 comes home