But holy hell, how many teams have to screw this up before it just becomes a universal rule to foul? 

As I’m writing this, I haven’t heard an explanation yet as to what Orlando’s strategy was on that play. I’m guessing it didn’t include: “If your guy is dribbling just beyond the three-point line, just sag off of him a little. He’ll probably miss.” Bad defense by Jameer, but, wow, did Jeff Van Gundy put all the blame on Nelson. It’s like he’s related to the Magic coach or something. (For the record, I don’t mind JVG doing commentary on his brother’s games. But that scenario–a possible coaching blunder that goes almost unmentioned in the booth–is the nightmare scenario for ABC). 

And, yes, I understand you can’t boil an NBA game down to one play. The Magic committed 17 turnovers (seven by Howard, who is way too turnover prone) and they shot 22-of-37 from the line. So cumulative mistakes put them in position to lose on a bad play. But, wow, was it a bad play. As bad as bad plays get. 

In any case, the Lakers are going to win their 15th title. That will put them back to within two of Boston. Enjoy watching Kobe celebrate, because it’s coming. Damn.

***Update: Here’s SVG, via Kevin Arnovitz at TrueHoop, on the call not to foul: No, we thought 11 seconds was too early, especially the way we were shooting free throws tonight.  So we thought it was too early. But you know, in retrospect, we gave him so much space to shoot the ball. We played like we were trying to prevent the layup. I thought we did a good job, we denied Bryant the ball, and then we just didn’t play Derek Fisher, just didn’t guard him. But no, it was my decision with 11 seconds not to foul.  Yes, I regret it now, but only in retrospect. I mean, normally to me 11 is too early.  You foul, they make two free throws, you cut it to one. You’re still at six or seven seconds … I thought it was too early at 11, though when they took it full court, I’ll have to go back and look at that. That one will haunt me forever, but we could have played that play a lot better.

Stan (barely) has a point here. We’ve all debated exhaustively where that line is when it’s too early to start the foul game. I think these playoffs have taught us that it’s a bit earlier than we think. The right call here was to foul. I said it before the play on my live blog, the guys at Ball Don’t Lie said it before the play on their live blog, thousands of basketball fans on their couches everywhere said it before the play.

Someone with really great computer programming skills should go through every “up by three with less than 15 seconds” scenario from the full season and find out what teams did and how often it worked. I may sit down next week and do that just for the playoffs. 

Honestly…that possession–the decision not to foul, Jameer Nelson’s inexplicably poor defense–has to go in the top five all-time worst game-deciding possessions in NBA history. You literally could not play that scenario worse than Orlando did.

And it cost them their season.

Look: I’m not comfortable saying that. I’ve hated the Lakers since I can remember being alive. But if you missed that game against Denver Friday night, you missed an incredible display of team basketball–a type of game even the Lakers (or the Cavs, or the Magic or the Celtics when healthy) are only capable of pulling off a few times per season. They scored 119 points on about 88 possessions against a top-10 NBA defense on the road. That’s about 140 points per 100 possessions. They shot 57 percent–only the third team all season to hit that mark against Denver–made all 24 of their free throws, hit better than half of their three-pointers and turned the ball over just three times in the last 30 minutes of the game. 

All insane numbers. But what’s more amazing to me is that if you re-watched that game, I’ll bet you wouldn’t find more than a half-dozen high degree of difficult shots among the 75 field goals the Lakers attempted against. Frankly, I’m surprised the Lakers “only” recorded 28 assists on their 43 field goals. Almost every look was, in NBA terms, easy. The cuts were precise, the passes were timely and on target, and the shooters were open. It was gorgeous basketball. And it is hard for me to truly hate a team that can take basketball to that level. Perhaps I should hate the Lakers because they have this ability but can only put it all together occasionally. 

The beauty of the offense, for me, starts not with Kobe Bryant, but with Pau Gasol. Bash the Gasol-Gasol trade all you want, and it deserves criticism, but the bright spot for me has been the opportunity to watch Pau Gasol more often. I like basketball and all, but I have a job and a life, so I am not going to watch many Memphis-Houston games in January. 

The easy criticism of the Laker offense before Game 6 Friday was: “Why in the world is Gasol taking just 10 shots per game?” I was as guilty as anyone of voicing that opinion. Perhaps we missed the point. He took “only” 12 shots in Game 6, but he was still the fulcrum for the Laker offense during stretches of the game. Maybe we just misunderstand Gasol’s game and his nature when we demand greater volumes of shots from him. He has averaged 13.5 FGAs/game for his career, and never more than 14.9.

He’s just an unselfish player. I’ve said this regularly to fans I talk to: There is nothing prettier in the NBA than watching Gasol and Lamar Odom pass the ball in the interior. 

Is Gasol the best passing big man in the game? His assist rate–the percentage of teammates’ baskets a player is credited with assisting while on the floor–was 14.8 this season. That would have placed him second among centers, behind only Brad Miller, and 12th among forwards, according to Basketball Reference. With two exceptions (Boris Diaw and Mike Miller), the 11 forwards ahead of Gasol dominate the ball to an extent Gasol never will with Los Angeles. 

If you are a fan of NBA halfcourt offense, there may not be a more enjoyable thing to watch than Gasol facing up at the elbow as the other four Lakers are moving around and the defense is deciding what in the hell they are supposed to be doing. 

That said, of course I will be rooting for Orlando against Los Angeles. Just not with the fierce, nearly irrational, throw-the-remote-at-the-wall hatred I have reserved for the Lakers and the Yankees in the past. This is about history for me. I want to be able to call the Celtics the winningest franchise in basketball when I’m 75. I want to be able to lord that over my friends forever. I never want Phil Jackson to pass Red Auerbach. I never want anyone to pass Red Auerbach. 

So, yes, Orlando: BEAT L.A! But just don’t ugly up the series too much. (Official prediction, after the jump).

As for the Finals, this should be a very interesting match-up. There are a million questions to ask, and you’re going to read them in previews all over the place. I’ll just add one:

How healthy are Trevor Ariza and Lamar Odom?

Odom has a bad back, Ariza a sore hip and groin. 

I focus on these guys because the Lakers, unlike the Celtics and basically everyone else in the league, have plausible defensive match-ups for Rashard Lewis and Hedo Turkoglu. Those guys have been killing defenses because of their unique combination of size, quickness and shooting ability. Turkoglu, especially, is the stabilizing force behind Orlando’s offense. 

Trevor Ariza is listed as 6’8”, Odom 6’10”. They seem like the perfect counters to Turkoglu and Lewis–if they’re healthy enough to pull it off. 

Official prediction (gulp): Lakers in 7.

Dwight Howard in seven post-season games against Boston:

16.4 points per game

55 percent shooting (6.4-of-11.7 on average)  

6.6 free throw attempts/game

17.1 rebounds per game (4.1 offensive)

10 total assists

Dwight Howard in four post-season games against the Cavs:

22.75 points per game

61.5 percent shooting (on 13 FGAs per game)

9.5 free throw attempts per game

13.4 rebounds per game (3.75 offensive)

11 total assists

The FTAs and the assist numbers are actually the most interesting to me. They show that Perkins was able to defend Howard a) without fouling and b) without the kind of help that facilitates Orlando’s inside-out game. 

When people talk about the Magic being a bad match-up for the Cavs, it starts with the fact that Cleveland has no one that can guard Howard. The Celtics do.

Suddenly being a win away from eliminating Orlando looks pretty damn good, huh? 

Think the Cavs wish the C’s had finished the job? 

Oh, and Mo Williams is now 21-of-57 in this series. His two most accurate tosses of the series were his inbounds pass to LeBron to set up the Game 2 winner and his Clemens-esque beaning of Howard. Keep yapping, Mo.

1) Doc didn’t volunteer the information
It would have been one thing if the coach gave up the information in the press conference following game 7. That I would have been somewhat skeptical about of him talking injury excuses for the loss at that point. The injury admission however came two days after game 7 following an interview in which he was asked directly about the team’s ailments. There was no need for him to hide his players’ injuries players anymore, so why not come out with the truth when asked?

2) Doc owed the information to Celtics fans
Zach Lowe all ready referred to this in his earlier post and I agree 100 percent with him on it. I had a number of serious questions about a team that is capable of being blown out by 20 points in its own building during a game 7. Despite the overwhelming number of minutes the stars of this Celtics team played throughout the regular season, a performance like Sunday’s was still inexcusable in my eyes on the surface.

After that game, I pondered the future of this team with my buddy JRo. How was Pierce a complete no show for that game? Did Ray Allen have anything left after failing to hit a jumper consistently for six games? Obviously KG’s absence affected this team’s play astronomically, but it still did not account for the drop off in those guys performance.

Therefore hearing the injury news was somewhat of a relief for me in explaining their play and put any questions I had in my head about those players’ ability to contribute in future years to bed. There’s a piece of mind that comes with knowing your guys gutted it out despite not being at 100 percent but its more than that for me.

As fellow Celtics Hub writer Brendan Jackson kindly stated upon hearing the news, “That makes sense, but I wish Doc would have let us known earlier….it would have saved me a lot of time from yelling at my television so much during that game.” Losing is tough enough, but knowing your team was gutting it out while hurting will make the Celtics fanbase sleep a little bit easier at night after a disappointing game 7.

3) Doc owed it to his players to share the injury news
This once again goes back to their performance throughout the Orlando series. Between Ray, Paul and Perk those guys helped will this team somehow to seven games against a well balanced and well coached Orlando team that took game 1 from the supposedly unbeatable Cavaliers team tonight. This is all after they held off an up and coming Chicago team in arguable the best Round 1 series anyone in basketball had ever seen.

Every time they went out there, those guys left it on the floor and never once did they complain about injuries in the aftermath of those losses. Allen and Pierce could have potentially been risking years of their careers with the amount of stress they put on their injured bodies in that series.

And even though everyone knew about Perk’s injury, about he shrugged off an MRI despite the shoulder being a chronic problem for him during his career. As a coach, Doc Rivers had to admire his guys so much for their effort, and likely felt like a proud father explaining to friends how his sons had come up short in a big game after they had sprained their ankle the night before.

Anyone who sees in harm in that, Doc speaking up for guys that are too modest or professional to make up or talk up excuses, even if they are serious injuries, then I fear hearing what it takes to know when its acceptable with you to share that kind of information. Final thoughts after the jump

I guess what it boils down to is this. If the Celtics had beaten the Magic in that series, and Stan Van Gundy came out with the news that Rashard Lewis and Hedo Turkoglu had been suffering from hamstring problems and bone spurs all series, my gut reaction probably would not have been “Excuses, excuses!” Instead, it probably would have been something along the lines of, “Wow, I guess that explains why we were able to stick with them for seven games.”

Zach Lowe is right about one thing though. That kind of skepticism of the C’s are showing how hated of a franchise they have become this past couple years. This reality must make both Celtic players and fans excited to get back at it in a few months.

                                                     VS MAGIC                                         REG SEASON

Offensive Efficiency                          104.0                                                  110.5

Defensive Efficiency                          108.2                                                  102.3

Pace (Possessions/game)                  88.7                                                    90.4

Three-point %                                       29%                                                      40%

Opp. Three-point %                           34.6%                                                   34.9%

Two-point %                              48.4% (29-60)                                      51% (31-61)

Off Reb %                                           22.9%                                                   27.9%

Def Reb %                                           80%                                                      75.6%

TO/g                                                      13.7                                                      15.6

Opponents TO/g                                12.7                                                      14.6

So, it appears the single biggest reason the Celtics lost this series was their inability to hit three-point shots. Other than the huge drop in three-point accuracy, the Celtics offensive statistics weren’t much different than they were in the regular season; their two-point percentage remained about the same and their turnovers per possession dropped. Other stats I haven’t shown here (such as free throw attempts for the Celtics and their opponents) didn’t change much–if at all–from the regular season. 

The drop in defensive efficiency looks bad, but Orlando’s 108 points per 100 possessions in this series was actually lower than its regular season scoring rate of 109.2 per 100 possessions. The Celtics couldn’t cripple an opponent’s offense as they did during last year’s playoffs, but they remained a staunch defensive team. 

Two caveats: 

1) The other big drop-off occurred on the offensive glass. The C’s ranked eighth in the regular season by grabbing 27.9 percent of their misses; their mark against the Magic (22.9 percent) would have ranked 29th in the NBA, ahead of only the Spurs. That is the Howard Effect.

2) I wonder if a more precise breakdown of those two-point shots would show the Celtics attempted fewer shots at the rim and made a lower percentage of those attempts. I’d bet money it would. Any unemployed fan want to tackle that? 

The main culprit from deep was obviously Ray Allen, who shot a dismal 8-of-42 (19 percent) on what we know now was a bad hamstring. (Side note: Red’s Army gives the Celtics props for not mentioning the injuries as an excuse during the post-season. I actually had the opposite reaction–that it looked a little unseemly to toss out a team-wide injury update 36 hours after the team lost Game 7. It sort of felt like Doc was saying, “You know, we couldn’t say this during the series for tactical reasons, but you should know we were facing these problems.” Then again, I understand they owe their fans an injury update–especially if players are going to have surgery.)

Pierce (7-of-21) and Rondo (2-of-15) also fared poorly from deep. It’s the Rondo number that stands out at me. He took a bit less than one three-pointer per game this season, and he doubled that against the Magic. When teams dared Rajon to shoot threes during the regular season, he responded by attacking the rim even more aggressively. He could not do that against the Magic. I suspect, again, that Howard is the main reason. 

The Magic’s three-point percentage from three ended up near 35 percent after their barrage in Game 7. That would have ranked near the bottom of the league, but it’s not an out of the ordinary percentage for a team to shoot over a seven games against a solid opponent. In other words, the Magic weren’t just “cold” from deep for seven games. Overall, their inability to put up above average offensive numbers–and 108 points per 100 possessions is average in the NBA–against a wounded C’s defense does not bode well for their chances against a healthy, rested Cleveland team.