Nobody really stepped up in game 1 until it was largely too late, but Pierce led the way in the scoring column. Ray and Rondo carried the team to a victory in game 2 but Garnett was still absent. KG finally snapped out of his delirium with a huge game 3 but Ray disappeared and Paul and Rondo had so-so games.
Throughout the playoffs, the best offensive games we've had have been marked by offensive balance. Rondo spreads the ball around and everyone seems to have 17, 18, 19 or 20 points each. On nights like that you get the feeling that any one of those guys could have gone for 30 but they are all content to make the extra pass and share the wealth.
There's still hope for a few of those perfect storm games to happen in these playoffs, but we're running out of time. We'll need that offensive balance and ball movement that seemed to be missing last night.
Credit the Lakers for making life difficult, in particular in the paint. Their bigs didn't get the playoff record 14 blocks from a few nights ago, but they did get 7, which is still very good. The Celtics don't look comfortable driving to the hoop anymore and you can see that they are thinking twice with their layups (always a bad thing).
With that said, if the Celtics are executing the offense and being patient enough to look for the 3rd and 4th option, they should be able to get buckets. We saw a few too many "hero shots" as Doc likes to call them.
Of course there were also a lot of open looks that didn't go in too. Ray in particular had some nice, open looks that he normally takes advantage of (at least a couple times in a typical game). But the shots just weren't falling.
I'm taking a glass half full approach to this. Chances are pretty good that Ray will even out and have a more typical game. Chances are good that we'll see Paul Pierce have a good night pretty soon. Chances are pretty good that Garnett has turned a corner and won't look as bad as he did in games 1 and 2. Chances are very good that Rondo can sense when all 3 of them are doing well and orchestrate the offense like symphony conductor. If all that happens, I like our chances.
If it doesn't happen soon, chances are this series won't end the way we'd like it to.