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Yep, the moment the Suns put Artest on their ignore list he proceeded to blow them up.
Finish it.
Artest can defend, but can he make open shots?
He's about as reliable as an Italian train. But somehow someway he has held it together this season and helped the team win.
Yep, the moment the Suns put Artest on their ignore list he proceeded to blow them up.
Finish it.
Searching For Holes In The Lakers And Celtics On The Eve Of The Finals
SportingNews
Two weeks ago, I wrote that this year’s likely Finals matchup between the Lakers and Celtics would be far different from when the two teams matched up in 2008. That piece turned out to be laughably premature—two L.A. losses in Phoenix momentarily put them in danger, and Boston could have become the first team to lose a series after being up 3-0—but the series is finally set to tip off tonight at Staples Center (9 ET, ABC).
While that post may have been written looking too far forward into the future, it’s still a useful period piece (in online time, two weeks is an eternity) to compare how opinions have changed about both teams. Each now has potential holes that can be exploited.
The Lakers came out of the conference without facing a serious challenge. (As impressive as Oklahoma City was in the first round, it never seemed to have control of the series.) As usual, L.A.’s biggest weakness remains its inability to defend quick point guards. It struggled against Russell Westbrook and Deron Williams. The Lakers kept Phoenix’s Steve Nash from dominating (17.7 ppg, 11.8 apg), but he’s better suited to L.A.’s defense than a young dynamo like Boston’s Rajon Rondo.
The Lakers simply don’t have an easy answer for him. A lot of people will focus on a Rondo-Derek Fisher matchup, but Fisher is almost certain to shadow Ray Allen as Allen uses screens to get open on the perimeter. The Lakers instead will go with Kobe Bryant or Ron Artest on Rondo. That’s where things get tricky.
If Kobe guards Rondo, coach Phil Jackson will risk saddling his best player with fouls and tiring him out on defense in a series in which he stands to draw a lot of contact on offense. (Then again, the same thing could happen if Kobe has to fight through screens against Allen.)
If Artest gets the assignment, the Lakers will have the same matchup nightmare as in 2008, when Paul Pierce dominated undersized defenders to become Finals MVP.
L.A.’s issues in this series don’t stop at the point. Throughout the playoffs—and particularly on the road against the Suns—the bench hasn’t consistently built on leads. The Celtics have had their own problems with reserves, but with Nate Robinson potentially becoming more of a factor, the Lakers need to find their own bench star. Lamar Odom is the top candidate, but can one of their backcourt players finally step up? Can Shannon Brown or Jordan Farmar make any sort of noise?
***
The Celtics are trickier to figure. Even though they’ve been stellar throughout the playoffs, their regular-season struggles linger. As we saw in Games 4 and 5 against Orlando, Boston is prone to poor efforts, and it doesn’t seem to have the same "team on a mission" swagger that typified its 2008 le run. (That team struggled in the early stages of the playoffs on the road, of course, but it always appeared to be the team to beat in the East.)
In large part, that’s because they don’t seem to have a high-level superstar. When the Celtics have been at their best this season, they’ve done it with balance rather than a few transcendent performances. In a series with Kobe Bryant, there’s always the possibility that Boston won’t be able to match his greatness, especially given the high standard of play he found against Phoenix for all six games of the series.
Rondo has been the Celtics’ best player throughout this postseason, but he still struggled in several games against the Magic and may not yet be able to carry such expectations during an entire Finals series. Kevin Garnett is playing even better at the offensive end than he did in 2008, but he is no longer the force he was in Minnesota. Ray Allen can still shoot as well as anyone, but he’s a secondary player now rather than star. And while Paul Pierce is perhaps the Celtics’ best scoring option, he’s taken a lot of ill-advised shots recently and will have to contend with Artest for most of the series. The point is that while the Celtics have several impressive options in this series, they don’t necessarily have one guy to carry them. Whether or not they’ll need that kind of player is another question altogether.
They’re also facing a team the likes of which they haven’t seen since the Big Three joined up in the summer of ’07. This year’s Lakers are a more cohesive unit than the ’08 squad, in large part because Pau Gasol is now more comfortable in purple and gold. The Celtics are perhaps the only team with three players—Garnett, Kendrick Perkins, and Rasheed Wallace— capable of guarding the Spaniard, but he’s also reached a level of greatness in these playoffs that no single player has been able to stop.
For the Celtics, it seems clear that a second championship in three years will have to come from a team effort, not the dominance of any one player. In the event of their victory, that’s why their actual Finals MVP will likely not be a player, but rather defensive mastermind Tom Thibodeau, who stands to move on to a head coaching gig once this series is over, or Doc Rivers, who might leave Boston altogether.
The Lakers are more of a team than this series’ easy narrative would suggest, but they often win games on the strength of individual performances. The Celtics, on the other hand, need a coherent team game if they want to come away victorious. It’s a tall order and perhaps the biggest obstacle for either team to overcome in this Finals.
Just a little over 5 hours to tip. Booty holes starting to constrict.
Why I picked the Lakers
Michael Lee
The Washington Post
After several days of deliberation, I finally decided to go with the Los Angeles Lakers to win the NBA championship in seven games over the Boston Celtics. This decision wasn't like two years ago, when I actually was emotionally torn about making an NBA Finals pick (I went with Boston in seven, despite my childhood love of the Lakers and hatred of the Celtics).
The rematch was really tough to call, simply because there hasn't been a Finals with two more evenly matched teams since 2005, when the defending champion Detroit Pistons faced the champion once-removed San Antonio Spurs. That year, I went with San Antonio in seven games, which turned out to be right.
I went with the Lakers over the Celtics this time mostly because I picked the Lakers to repeat in October (of course, I also saw the Wizards making the playoffs. Whoops!). Two years ago, I figured that the Celtics defense was going to suffocate Kobe Bryant and it did, turning Bryant into a frustrated, off-target shooter and a poor comedian.
Boston's defense remains stout, which has been proven through some incredible performances to eliminate Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Dwight Howard. I have picked against the Celtics twice already this postseason, and I'm nervous about doing it again. But I can't simply hop on the bandwagon after doubting them to this point.
I just think that revenge is a serious overriding theme for both Bryant and Phil Jackson, who should devise a better scheme to make Bryant more effective this time. You have to remember that Jackson can finally get payback against a coach who defeated him in the NBA Finals (Doc Rivers). His little comment to Paul Pierce about getting the Celtics back in the Finals lets you know how much he's been thinking about defeating Boston and getting a ring at the expense of Red Auerbach's franchise.
I also believe that having Ron Artest on the floor to defend 2008 Finals MVP Pierce is an incredible upgrade over the "space cadet" Vladimir Radmanovic. The presence of Andrew Bynum, no matter what his knee situation is, provides another big body for the Celtics to contend with and keeps them from beating up Pau Gasol alone.
Home court advantage also cannot be overlooked in the NBA Finals. I know the Celtics have won their last two series over Cleveland and Orlando despite not having the advantage, but they also closed out each series at home, in Game 6. This time, Games 6 and 7 are in Los Angeles.
Since the league switched to the 2-3-3 format in 1985, the team without home court advantage has only won the championship six times, with the Miami Heat the last to do it in 2006 (The others were the 1985 Lakers, the 1993 Chicago Bulls, the 1995 Houston Rockets the 1998 Bulls and the 2004 Pistons). The Finals have gone seven games on three occasions, with the home team claiming Game 7 each time (the 1998 Lakers, the 1994 Rockets and the 2003 San Antonio Spurs.
I'm not completely confident with this choice, and I wouldn't be stunned if the Celtics claim championship banner No. 18, but I'm going with the Lakers. With the experience of winning the franchise's 15th championship last season, and after getting tested this postseason, I think the Lakers are ready to topple Boston.
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