first... if that game was played in january, the only thing anyone would say about it would be a quick "wow was that an awful game" in passing. the tension of it being game 7 of the NBA finals made it, at the very least, dramatic... but just a terrible, terrible game.
all credit is due to the lakers. they proved to be the better team. they won, can't say it any other way. but the boston celtics are going to be reliving that second half in their heads for the rest of their lives.
the team that i dominated the cavs iso 1v5 offense settled on force feeding the ball to paul pierce and letting him go 1v1 for, oh, the last 24 minutes of the game. the offense completely stagnated in the second half... they got nothing going to the basket, nothing in transition, no fluid motion... nothing. just jumper after jumper after jumper. that's why you can't even blame the foul shooting differential... 37-17 in favor of LA would normaly be cause for alarm. but boston isn't going to get foul calls shooting nothing but fall away jumpers. i was incredibly impressed with the adjustments that doc made in the first half to create more spacing and be able to get to the rim more on those screen/rolls, but then it all went away come the third quarter.
a friend of mine from college, big celtics fan, sent me a text midway through the 3rd quarter in which he suggested that marquis daniels started banging ray allen's mom after game 2. think about it... ray hasn't made a shot since then, and we get no more sideline shots of ray's mom in her sparkley jersey. put it together, put it together...
and, well... then there's kobe. kobe should give that mvp trophy back to david stern. or better yet, make it a hood ornament on the bentley that he should be buying ron artest. kobe should buy everyone in queensbridge a new TV, and heck... even buy some shit for that guy who threw the cup at ron ron in detroit.
please, put this "kobe is the closest thing to jordan" ridiculous bullshit argument away for good. please... i'm begging you. if ron artest didn't man up last night we'd be talking about john starks this morning. kobe was awful. in the biggest game of his life he shit the bed. he was bailed out by artest, gasol and the celtics inability to throw the ball in the ocean. he rebounded the ball well. yes, true. offensively he was a complete disaster.
i'm sure if you ran down the list of the greatest of great all time players you could find someone who had a similar dog shit performance in such a huge game, but you're gonna have to do a lot of looking, and you're not going to find one on jordan's resume', bird's resume', russel's resume' or magic's resume'. kobe is an all time great player. there is no doubt about that. but he's not on the same level as jordan, bird, magic and bill russell. and that's not an insult. to be just below those guys is an unbelievable achievement. but no matter how much espn and david stern tries to market him as more, he just isn't.
i think this is the last shot for both of these teams. the celtics, obviously, will need to retool. the lakers? kobe is getting older, ron ron's only able to stay saine for a limited amount of time, fisher's shot, bynum has no knees. they certainly have a shot to make another run, but time is running out and running out fast, especially with an offseason that's likely to change the face and swing the power of the nba from coast to coast. oklahoma city is coming hard and coming fast, and they have an absolute stud to carry them.
and now on to more important matters... we are now 12 days and 15 hours away from free agency.