If you do you would have loved the Lakers tonight. They made a shitload of turnovers in Boston. Mainly ball handling mistakes and bad passes. In the end it added up to a Celtic win. Give credit to the Celtics. They played tough defense and decisively out rebounded the Lakers. But....I wasn't impressed with the Celts as much as I was disappointed in the Lakers and their lackluster game.It was a weird first half. Not much crowd noise and kind of a low key type game. By the second half the crowd got involved and the Celts were able to suck the Lakers into a half-court type game which of course worked to Boston's advantage. Kobe had a bad night shooting. So many of his shots looked like they were going in only to rattle back out. But the Celtics beat the Lakers by playing Eastern Conference type basketball and deserved to win. I fully expect a better effort by the Lakers and a win on Sunday.
2 comments:
Great analogy!
Unfortunately, I only got to see the closing minutes of the game, but from what I read this morning Kobe never really showed and Ray Allen did a great job keeping him down.
I mean to post these Playoff stats yesterday, but I was out on the road for most of it.
Lakers Boston
Points 105.9 91.6
Opp. PPG 99.5 87.3
FG% .478 .448
FT% .762 .784
Rebounds 40.5 39.4
3-pt. % .376 .332
Turnovers 13.1 12.7
Opp Turns 13.4 14.3
I know this table will look like shit in Blogger comments, but you get the picture. Other than the edge on defense for Boston, these team are nearly identical through the Playoffs.
I expect more close playing in the upcoming games. A poor performance by Kobe will only mean one of two things. . .he'll show up at the next game mad and score 45 points or his teammates will have to pick up the slack.
As Kobe said, "I had some good looks, they just didn't go down for me. I just missed some bunnies. I'll be thinking about those a little bit."
Bunnies indeed. Maybe an assist or two might help the cause.
For a team (the Lakers) that usually plays a pretty good transition game the Lakers stunk. They kept pulling up on the switch and tossing up twenty foot jumpers. The Lakes live and die by the fast break and sometimes three-point shots. Last night they died by both.
I gotta say they were in the game until three minutes were left. Not exactly what you could call a blow-out so let's see what happens Sunday. I do expect a much better game. Phil Jackson is very good at motivating these guys after a big loss.
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