NBA Finals game one: Blood on the marble floor
Posted by: SPQR on Jun 06, 2008 - 01:48 AM
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The two Crowned Princes of the NBA finally locked swords tonight in the media built castle know as The Finals to determine who will reign as King. When it was over there blood on the marble floor...and that blood ran Purple and Gold.
The loss was not caused by a single brutal blow or vicious strike. This was a loss inflicted by a lot of small wounds with the cumulative effect being a Celtic victory that moves them within three games of their long awaited 17th championship.
The bleeding that led to this loss actually started months ago. When Doc Rivers got a team that was big, athletic and physical and got them to buy into the idea that playing superior defense will win a championship. The Lakers defense and the Celtics defense are two different things.
More blood was drawn the night Andrew Bynum went down. Of all the teams I feared his loss would hurt us against, its the Celtics that scared me the most. Big, athletic, physical and multi-talented you have to match their physical play and rebounding aggression or they will beat you at the end of the day. The rebounding edge of 10 tonight was no small part of the defeat. It is a fact that our team has three large, athletic big men- Gasol, Turiaf and Vlad- who simply don't have the drive or desire to rebound effectively night in and night out. If they can't find this within themselves the bleeding will continue and we will lose this series.
The biggest and most severe wound was inflicted on our most important player: Kobe Bryant. Kobe looked out of sorts, unsure of himself and begn to jack up shots even when he was tightly covered and they weren't falling. To me, though, it was not his missed shots that stuck out in my mind. It was a play in the fourth quarter, when the Lakers were trying to close the gap, the game still on the line. Kobe drove through the paint and closed in on the basket. You were expecting him to launch an easy jumper or even a finish with the foul, but instead he hesitated and dished out to Sasha in the corner-who missed. In all my years of watching The Great Man, this is the first time the thought crossed my mind, "He didn't have the confidence to take the shot."
Every great player has days like this and if this was one game, I would forget his performance as easy as Kobe sloughs off a bad game-but its not. In three games against the Celtics, Kobe has not had one good shooting game. Three games of the exact same result against the same team is not a fluke or an off night. It constitutes a pattern. What the Celtics are doing to Kobe reminds me so much of what the Bad Boy Detroit team did to Michael Jordan back in the late 80's.
This is the single biggest problem that confronts us in this series. Kobe is counted on to carry too much of our offense for this to continue. Kobe never needs help to be effective offensively, but this may be one series where they need to help him get shots that can work. If the coachs, the team and Kobe can't figure out a way to get him loose, this series will not end in our favor.
The bench players are not going to find any easy minutes in this series, and the flaws and liabilities of every player on this team will be magnified under the pressure of this Celtic defence and the crucible of the NBA finals. The other moment that stuck out in my mind with intaglio clearity was when Kobe was taken out in the fourth quarter. Luke and Ronny were both on the floor for several minutes. Watching these two offensively challenged players passing the ball back an forth, neither having the offensive game or the confidence to make a move of any kind was a microcosm of how flawed these two players have been all year. You could almost hear them thinking, "No you take the shot." Did anyone really think this lineup would make up any crucial ground as we watched them play hot potato with the basketball with time slowly ebbing away?
I know Luke Walton has gotten his share of abuse here, but its not really so undeserved. He should have worn a green jersey in this game because he helped the Celtics tonight more than he did the Lakers. Watching him pull his 'I look slow, I'm confused, I don't really know what i'm doing' routine-usually followed by his fouling an opposing player and shaking his head-is quickly forgotten when its one of a long line of 82 regular season games. Not so easy to forget when it's the first game of the NBA finals and you lose. Luke bled like a stuck pig tonight. It's not his first time and its not going to be his last. The question is how much will it cost us in the championship round?
With the defense that Celtics are blanketing Kobe with, Lamar is going to have to step it up. It may be that 14 points will not be enough to cut it. Nor will the rebounding effort he gave tonight. We all know Lamar does not like the spotlight, but if we are to win a title, he may have to step forward and learn to like it just a little bit more.
The seminal moment of the game? To me it was when Paul Pierce went out. I waited for the Lakers to grab a choke hold at that point. After a while it became evident that we didn't have it in us to take advantage of this golden opportunity. As the time ticked away, and the Lakers squandered the moment, I got the feeling it would not come again.
At this point I have to admit, I feel a little dread. It's not just the loss but the patterns I'm seeing now in all three Laker-Celtic games. In all three meetings now, they have effectively taken Kobe out of his rythm and therefor eliminated the catylist of this team. In all three games they have disrupted what is usually a very high powered offense. In all three games they have physically dominated us and taken control of the boards.
It goes further. We have one player who poses a large matchup problem for them: Kobe Bryant. They have three players who pose matchup problems for us: Garnett, Pierce and Allen. They have found a defensive answer so far for Kobe. Watching the Celtics three against us, I end up almost praying one or more is not going to go off for a huge night. I saw nothing in this game, or the two regular season ones, that give me confidence that we have any real, sustainable defensive answers for any of their big three.
We still have alot going for us. If Kobe can get going, then that inexorable pressure he puts on a team will begin to crack Boston just as surely as it did San Antonio and our other victims. Pau and Lamar have shown that when embarrassed, they can respond with outstanding efforts. We have Phil who will do all he can to figure out how to use the abundant offenive talent we have to find holes in Bostons defense. He already began his message by saying we need to get more physical. There is also the adjustment factor. Like we did with Utah and San Antonio, this team may mold and contour it's play to meet the challenges presented by Boston. The physical dominance those two clubs had over us slowly eddied away as those series went on.
Game two Sunday night will be a looking glass into the future of this series. If we can come back, find some keys to unlock what so far has been the Celtic mystery, and take that game, then our road to the championship is still very open and readily accessable.
If Boston wins, then the 2008 Lakers will be asked to win four of the next five games agains a team that has beaten them four straight times. As a realist and a long time observer of the NBA, I have a very hard time envisioning that possiblity.
Game one is over, and Laker blood is on the marble floor. Game two will tell us just how bad and deep the wound really is.
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