Skip to main content

Lakers take 1-2 series lead

Have you ever heard the saying that it's not a series until a team wins on the road? If not, good for you, because it's stupid. By that logic, the Hornets-Spurs second round series this year, which went to seven games, was not a series until the Spurs won Game Seven. In other words, it was not a series until it was over.

In any event, the home teams have won the first three games of the NBA Finals, but still plenty has happened. Boston struck first, taking Game One by ten points. Paul Pierce went down (briefly) with an injury, and it appeared the series was over, but he came back, hit some memorable threes, and his team cruised.

In Game Two, the Celtics appeared well on their way to a blowout before the Lakers almost stole the win. It was one of the craziest games ever. I've never seen a team give up such a brain-dead easy basket as Leon Powe's coast-to-coast dunk and still threaten to win the same game in a championship series. I still can't make sense of it.

Finally, tonight in Game Three the Lakers returned home and defended their home court. Boston's offense was terrible, but give credit to the Lakers. Not sure if they mentioned it on the broadcast for a nine hundredth time, but it helped a lot when the Lakers had Kobe on Rajon Rondo. That made it hard for the Celtics to defend Kobe in transition!

I actually liked the Celtics' chances after a quarter, when they'd faced down the Laker onslaught and remained firmly in a game, but the offense never got on track. Ray Allen shot very well, but Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett certainly didn't, going a combined 8-for-35 from the floor. I feel bad for Cagey but he really has no excuse for not shooting better. Also, I saw quickly why the Sports Guy hates when Sam Cassell plays so much—it's like Sam wants the Lakers to win.

Kobe played well, not perfect but well, and the fact that the Lakers won despite such an unimpressive showing from other key players is a bad sign for the Celtics. But the biggest upset for me so far is how wrong I was about this series—I do care about it, and so far it's shaping up to be a good one.

Comments

John said…
The series is shaping up to be a good one, but I still like Boston to win it. True, the Lakers got nothing from their role players, but two of the Celtics' star players played very poorly, and they still only lost by 6 on the road. I expect KG and/or Pierce to come out stronger in game 4, and I don't think the Lakers' defense will have an answer if two of the Celtics' big 3 get on track at the same time.

And where was Powe last night? Have you ever seen a guy turn in such a huge performance in the Finals only to be unceremoniously benched in the next game?
8:18 AM
Mike said…
I like Boston, too, mostly because their victories were more impressive, the late comeback in Game Two notwithstanding.

I'm not sure Powe will ever play again. Sucks to be a bench guy, but it would especially suck to be a bench guy for a coach who has no consistency in his rotation.
8:50 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

And now that it’s gone, it’s like it wasn’t there at all

I never thought this blog would last longer than Jay Cutler's career with the Denver Broncos. He was a talented young prospect so good that the Broncos, a powerhouse organization only one game removed from the Super Bowl the season before, traded up to get him—or, in other words, a player whose upside was so huge, the team sacrificed its present to get his future. And now? He's gone . How did it come to this? * * * Often I'll play devil's advocate with a move like this; you know, I'll try and explain how it makes sense from the other side of the table. Today, during the most disastrous Broncos offseason in memory—and the draft hasn't even happened yet, so settle in—I just don't have it in me. I don't think move is really defensible from a football standpoint. But what the heck: as the article above says, the Broncos are sending Cutler and a fifth-round draft pick this month to the Chicago Bears for quarterback Kyle Orton, Chicago's first-rounder in t...
11 comments
Read more

Who cares?

So we finally got done with the NBA playoffs after nearly two months of stretched-out play, and tomorrow's the draft. I really couldn't care less. I'm so burned out on the sport. Sadly, there's nothing else going on worth mentioning, so we might as well get into it. (Yes, baseball, Pugs, but I haven't really started following that this year yet, sorry.) Would the NFL hold its draft five days after the Super Bowl? Of course not, and not just because the league doesn't want to distract from the highlight of its annual calendar, the Pro Bowl. Of course, the NBA's situation is a little different. College play ended two and a half months ago, and the teams want to get draftees ready for the all-important summer league play (because the kind of guys that need the summer league always end up players). Not that when college basketball is over is relevant, anyway-the league is overrun by a bunch of high school players "just months removed from their prom" (...
12 comments
Read more

Did CU ever win the Pac-12?

In 2010, I bet a college buddy of mine (who longtime readers may remember as the only other contributor to Hole Punch Sports) that CU’s football team would not win the Pac-12 in the next 15 years. Guess what? It’s time for me to gloat, because I was right. Why we were doomed Back in the day, a lot of people made the argument that CU should join the Pac-12 because we’d get so much more TV money there. Of course, given college football is the answer to the question, “what if you had a sport where multiple teams were like the Yankees, and you created a whole universe of haves and have-nots?”, then yeah, you want to be aligned with some of the haves. But the question in my mind wasn’t, “will CU be better off with more money?” That’s an obvious yes. The question I asked was, will CU be any more competitive in their own conference if they’re competing against teams who are also getting more money? I couldn’t see why they would be. The mathematical angle Legend has it that Cowboys runn...
2 comments
Read more