if mccutchen or callahan is on game 2, bet the celtics hard. salvatore or bavetta? go lakers.
hiyo!
Looks like Tom Thibodeau has been offered the Bulls' head coaching position, and has turned down the Hornets' and Nets' offers to accept it.
I like it.
the hornets and nets never really made official offers, so he didn't quite turn them down... he stopped negotiating with them to finalize the boston deal. symantics, yes... but anyhoo.
you always worry about a coach like thibodeau getting a head job in that he's been an NBA assistant for a long long time and consistantly didn't get job offers because there are a lot of people out there who believe that thibs is built to be an assistant coach and doesn't have the persona to be the big cheese.
that said, he certainly deserves a shot to prove those naysayers right or wrong. he clearly knows the game as well as anyone, and it'll be interesting to see if he can transition himself ino a succesful head coach. considering how long he's been around the league the managing of the ego's shouldn't be as big an issue as it would be for, say, a college coach. i think he'll do fine.
as far as the WWW/LBJ connections to the deal... i dunno. there are a lot of people represented by CAA, doesn't neccesarily mean anything. WWW was hanging out at knicks training camp last summer as well, and he's close with alan houston who's in the knicks front office now... he has so many contacts in some many places that you could pretty much tie him to every organization with cap room.
that said... i wouldn't pretty much hand over control of my organization to what amounts to a glorified street agent. i've said it a million times... i'd more than welcome lebron james to the knicks. obviously... would be silly not to. but if you told me, right now, today... you won't get lebron, but you can go out and sign two other free agents and next year we'll gaurantee you carmello (with curry's expiring contract), i'd sign up for it in a heart beat.
Officiating really was horrible, both sides should have reason to be angry.
Also, Bynum earn anyone's respect yet?
it's all about how the game begins which will tell you how the game is going to go... if they're calling it tight right from the opening whistle, advantage lakers. yesterday they let both teams play from the start, which plays into boston's hands.
because of the rules in the NBA re: playing defense, mainly the ludacris defensive 3-second rule, ANY team that rotates as well as the celtics do is going to create a physical confrontation with the offensive player... it's just too far away for them to go to not create contact. some refs see that as just being part of the game (which it is), some see it as a foul. if those bumps off of rotations are consistantly called as fouls boston doesn't have a chance. last night they weren't called that way.
as for bynum... his length creates a ton of problems for boston. but he has zero ability in the low block right now. for him to be the "dominant" player that people think he could become, in the triangle offense, he needs to be a more skilled offensive player. otherwise he's just a more athletic version of chicago's 3-headed monster from the 90s. he's active, he's big... they can toss him some lobs and he can go get the ball, but right now he's a roll player and not someone you can build around. if he's not active, he's not effecient at all.
Definitely. Van Gundy was right in pointing out the lack of lift and length compared to Bynum, though Davis pretty much made up for it in effort.
he was right, but davis has to finish some of those shots. the celtics missed a TON of layups, especially in that third quarter. yes, the lakers length is troublesome for a team with undersized or aging bigs, but they missed a ton of shots that they shouldn't have. that one posession with oversized infant gave me charles smith flashbacks. he wasn't the only one, of course... but that one posession was the worst of it.
bad angles... finish higher off the glass.
the defense on jesus shuttlesworth in the first half was absolutely atrocious. derek fisher has baisicly become manu ginobili with all the flopping he does. and you put him on ray allen? nobody in the league runs off a screen better than ray allen, and everytime fish hits a screen he flops around like, well, a fish, which is the absolute worst thing you could possibly do with ray allen if the refs aren't buying it. and the refs weren't buying it. notice in the 2nd half he completely stopped doing it and just stayed in allen's hip pocket around screens.
the best player for the lakers yeterday?
unbelievable... he single handidly gave the momentum of the game back to the lakers in those last 3 minutes of the first half. holy crap, i can't remember someone being that god awful in a while. wow, awful. the celtics would have been better off with williams' wife out there.
on the lakers side, pao has been terrific thus far. there's always been two versions of pao... the incredibly skilled one, and the one who disapears when someone gets physical with him. i was expectnig the second one to show up, but man was i wrong. he's really played well.
as far as KG? he needs to find something in the tank here... the gruelling nature of the playoffs and the physicality of the past few serieses looks to have really taken a toll on his old legs, as he's been completely ineffective through 2 games. they need him to show up eventually or LA wins the series.
i think boston wins 2 out of 3 at home, probably games 3 and 5, with LA taking the middle game. this format is stupid, if for no other reason than that they don't use it for any other round of the playoffs.
the 2-3-2 was created at a time when teams worried about travel costs. with travel costs obviously not an issue anymore, the 2-3-2 should be abandoned.