Sunday Notebook: Moving Onto Game 2, Second Half Issues, Hello to Leon
Posted by Zach Lowe on May 2, 2010
• The Celtics are ready to move on after the Cavs came back from an 11-point deficit to win Game 1. Here’s Perk, via ESPNBoston.com:
“No, an 11-point lead isn’t much in the NBA. If it was a 20-point lead, it’d be different. But an 11-point lead, that’s really nothing in the NBA, especially on the road.”
And Paul Pierce seemed to dismiss the notion that the C’s age costs them in second halves against the Cavs. As NBA.com’s John Schuhmann Tweeted during the game, the Cavs have now outscored Boston by a combined 276-213 in the second halves of the five games the teams have played this season. That breaks down to 55.2-42.6 per half. Yikes.
Still, Pierce wasn’t hearing the age questions after the game, according to the Providence Journal:
“Just keep talking and we’ll keep playing,” he answered. “I don’t know what you all want me to say. We feel that we have a great team, that we have a championship team here, regardless of what everybody else says.”
“We’ve got to stick together, and we need to play together Monday.”
• And Doc is convinced this is going to be an ultra-competitive series. Check out this exchange Chris Forsberg documents at ESPNBoston.com:
“There will be at least three more [games], I can guarantee you that,” Rivers said.
When a reporter asked whether Rivers was insinuating the series would go seven games based on “three more” Cavaliers home games, Rivers kept it light.
“I hope so, or five,” he said, alluding to the potential for Boston to end the series with four straight victories. “If we can do it in five, that would be terrific.
“Right now [the Cavaliers] have to feel real good. They’ve won a game; we haven’t. For us to make it go five, we’ve got to win one first, then go from there.”
If the C’s win this series in five, I’ll eat my laptop. I don’t think Doc was serious.
• After the game, Doc speculated that foul trouble may have made the C’s less aggressive on defense in the second half (via the Globe’s Julian Benbow):
“[The fouls] had an impact, but not that big,’’ said Rivers. “It was us. Maybe, mentally, guys were worried about fouls.’’
Whatever the case, the C’s defense in the 2nd half had too many breakdowns. I watched the video of all of Mo Williams’ baskets in the 3rd quarter again after the game, and two came on lay-ups in which he got into the lane far too easily and met no significant help when he got there. If I can stomach it, I may do a video breakdown of a few of Mo’s baskets. Suffice it to say the screen/roll defense faltered at the top and the help was insufficient at the basket.
If you’re going to beat a great team on the road, you need to put together damn near 48 minutes of strong play. The inability to do that has been Boston’s problem all season, and it contributed to the Game 1 loss.
• The Herald’s Steve Bulpett nails it by focusing on the little things, especially turnovers:
The Celts took quick shots, and when they did move the rock, they fumbled it away. The end was a series of errors during which time the Celtics were tentative and unsure of themselves.
Varejao ripped a rebound out of Rasheed Wallace’s hands. A sprawled James reached up from the floor and took the ball from Paul Pierce. Then Shaq applied the coup de grace with a third-chance tip-in between Garnett andKendrick Perkins for a 98-93 lead with a minute left.
I’ll add two more: How about the stretch at the end of the 1st quarter, when the C’s were up 23-15? Jamario Moon made a contested three. Fine. It happens. 23-18. Then Rondo and Perk ran a screen/roll, and Rondo threw a pass to where he thought Perk would be on the roll—only Perk wasn’t there, and the pass went out of bounds.
Turnover—one of 16 Boston would commit in the game, compared to 9 for the Cavs.
But hey! The C’s responded with a stop on the other end, as Sheed rebounded an LBJ miss. Except Sheed didn’t bother throwing his outlet “pass” high enough so that his guy, Andy Varejao, couldn’t deflect it. Varejao got a had on it, and three seconds later, Sheed fouled LBJ on a lay-in attempt. LeBron made ‘em both. 23-20, lead gone.
I wrote in my notes: “This feels like an important stretch people will forget.”
Rondo summed it up best in the Herald:
“It was tough. You know, we’ve been there before. We were up at halftime again. We lost a double digit lead – again. And we didn’t get the win.”
• Chris Broussard (at ESPN.com) and Duane Rankin (at the Globe) both focus on the Mo Williams fast-break dunk over Paul Pierce as a turning point in the game. People are billing it as Mo’s first career dunk. Obligatory quotes:
“Those red shoes might have helped him fly a little bit,’’ Brown said.
“I told Mo a long time ago that if he ever dunked a basketball in a game, it was definitely going to spark us in some way that we haven’t been sparked before,” James said.
Good for Mo Williams, I guess. I’m not sure the dunk meant much more than the two points it contributed to the Cavs score.
• At NBA.com, John Schuhmann discusses Mike Brown’s decision to put J.J. Hickson back in the rotation:
For the game, Hickson was a +5 on the scoreboard. The move paid off overall. Frontline athleticism is the Celtics’ kryptonite, so the second-year forward has a chance to be a huge factor in this series.
I was terrified that Mike Brown would figure this out before the series. I was very, very happy with Hickson sitting on the bench.
• At FanHouse, Tom Ziller is far less impressed with the most famous member of Cleveland’s front line:
With James, Williams and Jamison typically on the court with O’Neal, why even bother? At some point in the series Shaq’s artful but slow-mo post play might come in handy. Like, when LeBron loses his legs in a freak carp shoot accident. Not a minute sooner. The best thing for Mike Brown‘s rotations in Game 1 was Shaq’s foul problems.
Perk’s defense against Shaq was perfect until the last five minutes of the game. Watch those first half post-ups. Shaq could not back Perk down—at all. Perk kept one arm on Shaq’s hip and put all his leverage behind that arm to shove Shaq away from the basket. When Shaq shot an ugly jump hook in the lane, it almost appeared as if he were moving away from the hoop as he released the ball.
So what happened in the 4th quarter? Perk started biting on Shaq’s pump fakes. Shaq doesn’t need you to jump toward the roof like Tony Allen in order to get an advantage via his pump fake, and Perk can’t really jump anyway. He just needs you to stand straight up. When you do that, the hand-on-hip leverage disappears, and Shaq can essentially move over/through you to get a clean look at the hoop.
• Steve Bulpett catches up with our old pal Leon Powe, who isn’t in Mike Brown’s rotation. But he is offering whatever inside knowledge of the C’s he can provide:
“It’s not much, but in the meetings we have I’ll speak up if I know something that they’re really trying to look for,” Powe said. “Sometimes I can see when they’re doing some false action, looking for a duck-in or something like that.”
Powe concedes that his tips may not be that crucial, since every team basically knows their opponent’s plays. He also says he feels no extra motivation to eliminate the team that let him go after his most recent severe knee injury:
“Really this series won’t be that emotional for me. My first couple of times going back to Boston, that was big for me. It was great to see how the fans appreciated what I did there and all the hard work I put in.”
“I left it all out on the floor there for my team, and they responded to that,” Powe added. “That was emotional for me because I love the fans there. I was sad that I had to leave them.”
Don’t worry, Leon: Boston fans won’t forget your contributions.
• Dan Shaughnessy says LeBron needs to accomplish a few things before we put him in the “greatest ever” discussion:
James has always been a good teammate. He applies himself at the defensive end. He goes to the basket with the force of Wilt. But he won’t be the best ever unless he improves his outside shot and learns to involve his teammates at the end of games.
I was with Dan through the entire column until this last bit about learning to involve his teammates at the end of games. It was only three seasons ago that the NBA punditry criticized LeBron for involving his teammates too much at the end of games. A portion of the punditry howled that Michael Jordan never would have passed up a shot in the lane and dished to Donyell Marshall for a wide open three on the wing.
John Krolik at Cavs the Blog will tell you LeBron absolutely takes too many heat-check/wannabe dagger jump shots at the end of games. But he usually does so when the Cavs are up, say, 5 with 40 seconds to go. The odds are already hugely in favor of Cleveland winning. When the game is truly in the balance, LeBron’s play is more well-balanced.
• Chris Forsberg duly notes Rasheed Wallace’s awful performance in Game 1:
On a night the Celtics desperately needed production from Rasheed Wallace, he posted another dismal performance. Wallace connected on 1-of-5 shots for 2 points and 2 rebounds over 11 minutes.
And that doesn’t even mention that Sheed was completely incapable of defending the screen/roll when guarding Antawn Jamison in the 2nd quarter. The Cavs were smart to force Sheed out to perimeter on defense, and it’s to the point now that Doc just can’t put Sheed out there if the other team is going to drag him above the foul line on screen/rolls. He just can’t hedge and recover properly anymore.
Sheed declared before the post-season that he’d play better now that the games matter. After six games, his PER is 4.8, he has zero offensive rebounds, he has hit just 7 of 20 shots and is 0-of-3 from three-point range.
We’re still waiting, Sheed.
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