I wasn’t able to watch this game as it happened. In fact, I just finished watching the tape. Maybe that’s a good thing.
I would have posted great superlatives about the Big Green Celtic Machine and such. Boo-ya! and woo-hoo! Indeed, they rocked….and rolled the Rockettes, 94-74.
By getting time to ponder the recent 2 wins against two of the west’s best (Houston and San Antonio) on their home courts and without Ray Allen, it has made me rethink a few well accepted propositions.
The West is the better conference?
The west may be deeper but I’m suspicious that it is not better. They don’t play something on the left side of the country the way they play it on the right side. It’s called defense.
Granted, it is played best by only two or three teams in the east, but is really only one team in the west that hangs their hat on defense, and that team is San Antonio.
The points allowed by the Rockets and the Hornets notwithstanding, only the Spurs have proven they can play lock down defense in the play-offs to turn it into wins. And everyone knows it is defense that wins play-off games.
I am as surprised as anyone about the Celtics defense this year. But darned if it isn’t exactly the right way to win ball games. More important, it is the right way to prepare for a title run. The increased physicality of the play-offs, the regression to half court basketball, and the inside/outside game all make the strategies of the Boston Celtics look dead on. They are going to be tough to beat and the toughest play-off series of all just might be the Eastern Conference Finals.
Is the west over rated? Boston has now faced most of the west’s best and has come out looking very, very good. They don’t have battles out west like the Detroit and Boston battles. They just don’t. The shiny, bright records of 10 teams makes the west looks imposing. But that just might be fool’s good.
As Tracy McGrady said last night….
I’ve never seen a defense like that. I mean, if they play defense like that, night in and night out, the NBA is in trouble because that was defense at its finest.”
That is what Boston does on a regular basis. They play defense at its finest. When they forgot that was what made them a special team, they lost to two western teams (Denver and Golden State in consecutive games) at their own game – offense.
Defensively, the top 2 teams are the Celtic and Pistons. The Spurs are right there.
Houston plays good solid defense. By points allowed, as the benchmark, the Hornets do too, though I haven’t seen enough to really make a judgment call on them. Yet, beyond Tyson Chandler, who on that team scares you defensively?
The modus operandi of this year’s Celtics is to play championship level team defense and to win the battle in paint.
If you take a look at the points in the paint numbers on most any night, Boston wins, and wins that category big. Boston has three point shooters, but they are mostly decoys and outlets. They, no doubt will make you pay if you pack the middle. But that ball is going inside, and going inside often, no matter how hard you try to stop them from doing it.
Boston beat Houston by 52 -34 in the paint. Houston has the best record in the west. But they are not the best team in the west. Boston outscored the Spurs in the paint by only 34-30. The Cs lost to the Jazz at home and lost the battle in the middle by 50-40. It’s not a coincidence.
Control the middle and you control the game. A more solid tandem defensively than Garnett and Perkins, I haven’t seen. Perkins’ inside defense has been quite good since the very start of the year. He is now becoming even better and he is contributing in other ways much more often now. Garnett is definitely the quarterback and the cornerstone of the Celtics’ inside defense. When KG went out, the Celtics kept winning, but they weren’t controlling the middle as they do when he plays.
There are a number of teams that could win it all, but it is rare that you win the NBA title by outscoring the opponent.
Boston’s handling of both San Antonio and Houston certainly levels the commonly accepted tilt to the west, in my opinion. If they can sustain it throughout this trip, it also speaks well to their ability to maintain a high level of play against top competition for multiple games – like is needed in a playoff series.
Boston is showing it can match up against a variety of situations, styles and opponents. They now have depth at every position where a Sam Cassell, Glen Davis, Leon Powe, Eddie House, James Posey, or P.J. Brown can come in and hurt you while you are paying attention to Garnett, Pierce, or Ray Allen. And don’t forget about Rondo.
I used to think that the east is handicapped because their top teams don’t face high level competition like the western teams do on a regular basis. I’m beginning to think that the west might be handicapped because they don’t face Detroit, Boston and even Cleveland style defense on a regular basis.
I am a believer that there is more than one way to win a championship. But it is the way that the Celtics are going that is the tried and true way.
