Sunday Notebook: Doc Feels a Win, Finley on the Playbook, Perk is Mouthy
Posted by Zach Lowe on Mar 14, 2010
As of 11:30 a.m., it appears to have stopped raining in New York City after about 55 hours of consecutive rain, approximately 14,000 destroyed umbrellas and, somehow, no loss of power. Score one for Con-Ed, which I believe marks the first time a New Yorker has said anything positive about Con-Ed since the 1960s.
Onto the notebook:
• Doc Rivers feels a win today against Cleveland, according to Dan Duggan at the Herald:
“I think we will (win); I really do,” Doc Rivers said. “I think we’ll come in and play terrific. But we just got to play hard. There’s no guarantees.”
I’m glad Brendan wrote the preview of this game, which is right below this post. Because the entirety of my preview would have been: Show me something. Be in this game down the stretch. The last meeting, a 108-88 Cavs win on Feb. 25, appeared at halftime to be a competitive showdown between two elite teams. Then the Cavs started playing better and the Celtics fell apart.
Let’s hope the team fulfills Doc’s predictions for today.
• We noted yesterday that Perk called out the big Aristotle by claiming the Cavs are better without Shaq. The Beast wasn’t done.
In the midst of a discussion about how valuable Anderson Varejao is, Perk couldn’t keep himself from using the F-word. Per the Globe:
“He’s a guy who flops to get a lot of calls, takes charges, gets offensive rebounds. I think you’ve got to just keep a body on him and play against him, hard. He’s a big energy guy. He helps them a lot.’’
Varejao has actually toned down the flopping this season, which is good, because now he receives attention for his skills instead of his flopping. He’s still irritating, sure, but he irritates me primarily because he always seems to find the right sliver of open space at the exact moment when LeBron James is ready to pass the ball to someone in that sliver of open space.
• Perk also hints that the C’s will pack the paint today, even at the risk of helping off of J.J. Hickson and the Cavs other interior guys:
“I think I’ll be able to help more off of J.J. Hickson, be able to make LeBron play in a zone-like defense,’’ Perkins said.
For all of his progress as a player, you still want LeBron James shooting long jumpers—a shot for which LeBron sometimes settles too readily. Don’t believe me? Read this.
• Michael Finley on the C’s offensive playbook, via this Scott Souza piece:
“The offensive play book here is very complex,” he said. “But they’ve done a good job of narrowing it down for me when I’m on the court – myself and Nate Robinson as well. But I’m trying to learn as much as I can as quick as I can so the team doesn’t have to slow down for me when I’m on the court.”
A guy who just played several seasons in San Antonio thinks the C’s offensive playbook is complicated. Finley’s statement is another piece of evidence that the C’s staff has developed one of the more refined halfcourt offenses in the NBA, with all sorts of moving parts and game-to-game changes. Doc isn’t a perfect coach, but he doesn’t get enough credit in this regard. When run well, the offense will usually produce a good shot, and that’s why Doc went through a mini-fit a month or so ago when players broke out of the offensive sets more often than usual.
• Nate Robinson likes to draw up plays on the C’s big white board. They are not good plays. (Via the same Souza piece):
“The other day I had him draw up some plays, like a coach, with a marker,” Rivers said. “I don’t know what he drew. Put it this way – my job’s safe.”
Man, I’d love to see Nate’s playbook. I’m envisioning sets so complicated they’d take 30 seconds to run but always result in Nate taking the shot.
• Still, the enthusiasm is nice, and Doc says Nate is working hard to learn the schemes:
Robinson is anxious to try. He said he’s been to the Waltham training facility each off day to work on sets and pick the brains of coaches. When he leaves the gym, he heads home and watches a DVD the staff had made for him of the offensive sets, and tests himself by trying to call out the play as its run.
“We’re probably killing him with it, honestly,” Rivers said. “We’re probably overloading him. But we have no choice. He has the ball in his hands. We can’t have him come down and call a play and not know it.
“It may hurt him some because when he’s thinking he’s not as aggressive.”
• LeBron James thinks the Celtics are bored, and that the team will find a different gear once the playoffs start, according to this piece in the Cleveland Plain-Dealer:
“To me, the Celtics look bored with the regular season,” James said. “I’m not saying they’ve tanked the regular season, I’m just saying an experienced team like Boston has so much talent, they know how to win in the playoffs. Just looking at them, they look like they’re ready for a new challenge.”
And:
“Any time you have a team that has so many guys who can put the ball in the basket and can decide to really defend they are dangerous,” James said. “They are ready for a challenge and that would be the playoffs. Last year in the playoffs they didn’t have KG, so it wasn’t a fair shot. That’s looking at them from the outside. I may be wrong, but I know basketball and I know those guys.”
Eh. LeBron is as media-savvy as any player, so I personally take these comments mostly as a rival player saying the “right” thing about a rival team. If I had to bet, I’d say LeBron, if he’s being honest, respects the Celtics but feels they’ve slipped and are no longer on Cleveland’s level. But he can’t say that. Not now.
• Manny Pacquiao—a Celtics fan!—destroyed another helpless opponent last night. Has Rondo challenged Pac-Man to a fight yet?
• The LA Times with a ground-breaking analysis of the C’s 2010 season that includes this mind-blowing statement about the source of Boston’s recent struggles: “Age could be an issue.”
That’s it for today. Let’s hope we all enjoy the game.
The Ticker