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Posted in Columns |
Tagged Atlanta Hawks, Boston Celtics, Indiana Pacers, Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Philadelphia 76ers, Rajon Rondo, Ray Allen |
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Kevin Garnett had been written off to the dustbin of history. His skills in serious decline and his bark having become decidedly worse than his bite, a reputation for empty trash talk had caught up with KG and reduced the 36 year-old Big Ticket to a side show.
As conventional wisdom shifted underfoot, it appeared during the first half of the 2011-2012 NBA regular season that Garnett’s aging knees would only take him as far as his retirement press conference, his Celtics a one-and-done champion that would be sold for parts at year’s end.
But the sports media, they of the mayfly attentions-spans, forgot one crucial thing:
Kevin Garnett is freaking insane, and couldn’t care less what any of us think.
More than that, since the All Star break, he has reemerged as a fearsome and dominant force as the engine of the Celtics renewal- fueling a rapidly dawning realization that the old champs are far from done.
With apologies to Tyson Chandler (whose highest compliment during his DPOY season was having been compared to a prime-time KG), Garnett has used these playoffs to reestablish himself as the best defensive player in basketball. Barking out orders and anchoring Boston’s brutal defense, he has looked into the face of Father Time and spat.
Garnett has joined Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan in willful and unprecedented defiance of their age, extending their careers by avoiding the predicable decline in production that flesh has always been heir to. While Kobe has kept his remarkable numbers afloat well into his 30’s and Duncan’s fundamentals have kept him as lethal as ever, Garnett has pulled off what is arguably a much harder trick: reversing a downward trend. After multiple knee surgeries in May of 2009, he averaged career lows (excepting his rookie year) in points and rebounds during the 2009/2010 season. Over the next two seasons, those numbers stabilized and reversed themselves, eventually returning to 2008 levels- the year of the Celtics last title. Moreover, in these playoffs, his numbers have spiked dramatically – throwing up 19.2 points and 11 rebounds per game with a PER of 22.89, numbers not seen since his last playoff run in Minnesota.
Hit the jump for the rest of Martin’s piece…
The perception of the Indiana Pacers entering into their second round series against the Miami Heat was that they just wouldn’t be tough enough to contend with LeBron James and Dwyane Wade – and the same was said even after Chris Bosh went down. The big bad Heat were the clear favorites and the Pacers were just a good team that didn’t have a go to guy to score for them late in games and nearly everyone thought that this would be a sure win for the Heat.
But the Pacers showed last night that they are unwilling to back down from this team. They realized that they can compete with Miami so long as they execute offensively and force the Heat to make what seems to be impossible decisions and shots late in games. You could tell the Pacers were really getting under Miami’s skin when Dwyane Wade gave a forearm shiver to a defenseless and clueless Darren Collison on a fastbreak – an act that Wade should have been ejected and suspended for. On a play in the fourth, LeBron James and Danny Granger got tangled up under the basket and James nearly lost his cool and hit Granger with a stray elbow. And Granger got right in his face and didn’t back down.
This was the complete opposite narrative than almost everyone expected. The Pacers were supposed to fold when the Heat’s stars imposed their wills but instead, Indiana’s loaded cast made all the right plays last night and Miami didn’t know how to react. The Pacers took Miami’s run in the fourth and then hit right back with a run of their own, taking the lead late in the game. And as we’ve seen for two years now – for whatever reason – if you can keep it close against the Heat late in the fourth quarter, they will give you a chance to win. Cue LeBron missing two free throws while down one in the final minute of the game and Wade missing a wide open lay-up down two after getting the ball in the post with 25 seconds left.
Hit the jump for the rest of Mark’s piece…
Posted in Columns | Tagged Columns, Danny Granger, Darren Collison, David West, Dwyane Wade, Indiana Pacers, LeBron James, Miami Heat | Leave a commentWarning: Explicit audio content
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Chris Paul’s Playoff Averages: 20.7 pts 7.7 ast 5.2 reb
What these averages tell us all is pretty much what we already know: Chris Paul is a startlingly good basketball player. He’s the best point guard in the league. It isn’t close. But as good as these numbers are, and they are in fact great, it is entirely possible that even more will be required of Paul as the upstart Clippers advance and face what is probably the wisest team in the NBA: The San Antonio Spurs.
There are of course elements of this that work to Paul’s advantage, sure. Tony Parker is known for many things but he is not known for his defense. Which isn’t really a big deal in most cases, as the team defense the Spurs employ is more than good enough to hide individual deficiencies, but Chris Paul is not most cases. He will get around Tony Parker and make the Spurs adjust. And then, Chris Paul being Chris Paul, he will find the hold in the adjustment and either exploit it himself or set up a teammate to do so.
The thing to remember though is that while Paul is a great defender himself, Tony Parker has mostly made his name in the league on the offensive end, and possesses an absolutely uncanny ability to slither though a defense and make it to the hole. While he may save a bit of energy getting around Parker on the defensive end, Tony will be working Paul hard on the other end of the court.
The ability of Paul to win this matchup, as well as the ability of the springy frontcourt pairing of Jordan and Griffin to overwhelm the , ahem, more aged duo of Tim Duncan and Boris Diaw will be critical to the outcome of this series.
Hit the jump for the rest of Jordan’s piece…
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As Amare Stoudemire slowly walked back to the Knicks’ bench last night after fouling out of what would turn out to be the final game of New York’s season, I thought to myself: “Please let this be Amare’s last game as a Knick.” That’s not because I think Stoudemire deserves to be dealt for his underwhelming performance. Rather, I think he deserves much better than being relegated to a second or third banana to Carmelo Anthony. We have seen a still talented Stoudemire go to waste over this past season. Now that New York brass has had a chance to see this Amare/Carmelo experiment in the post-season and how poorly the two played together, I’d imagine they realize the same thing: Amare needs to be traded this summer.
Hit the jump for the rest of Mark’s column…
Posted in Columns | Tagged A'mare Stoudemire, Carmelo Anthony, Columns, Jeremy Lin, New York Knicks, Tyson Chandler | Leave a comment
The Atlanta Hawks are notorious for being an unreliable basketball team. Despite having a pretty talented group, they never seem to bring their best effort in big games and the result has been numerous second round exits over the past few years and a ton of lateral progression. The Hawks did nothing to disprove this reputation when they lost to Boston on their home floor in game two of their current series even though the Celtics were missing both Ray Allen and Rajon Rondo. And then in a must win game four on Boston’s home floor, they found themselves down 38 and playing Erick Dampier big minutes.
Based on the reputation this team has established over the past few seasons, their lack of a vocal leader and the egg they had just laid in Boston, pegging the Hawks for a season ending loss at home last night seemed like an extremely rational thing to do. But there was one player on the Hawks that wouldn’t let that happen. This player had missed almost all of the regular season and he wasn’t ready to go home after suiting up in just two playoff games. Al Horford rescued the Hawks last night. His play on both ends of the floor inspired a usually indifferent Atlanta home crowd and wouldn’t allow a group prone to folding to give up on the season just yet.
Hit the jump for the rest of Mark’s piece…
Posted in Columns | Tagged Al Horford, Atlanta Hawks, Boston Celtics, Joe Johnson, Josh Smith, Paul Pierce, Rajon Rondo, Ray Allen | Leave a comment
Hit the jump for the live blog…
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Well for better or worse guys, the playoffs are in full swing. The series seem to be playing out according to the script anyone who follows the league has already written in their head, with the possible exception of the Bulls-Sixers matchup (for obvious reasons of course). But even if these playoffs are staying within the lines, they are still using different colors than anyone could have predicted. This leaves me scratching my head, and so as I am prone to doing, I’m embarking on the task of trying to make sense of the most recent action as I write.
Hit the jump for the rest of Jordan’s piece…
Posted in Columns | Tagged A'mare Stoudemire, Chicago Bulls, Derrick Rose, Miami Heat, New York Knicks | Leave a comment
Paul Pierce will get the headlines. Paul Pierce will be the topic of conversation. And Paul Pierce will get the majority of the credit for the Boston Celtics’ game two victory over the Atlanta Hawks yesterday. None of this is undeserved. Pierce had a classic game that reminded me of his time with Boston prior to the big three era, dropping 36 points and grabbing 14 rebounds in a game that the Celtics were absolutely supposed to lose. Pierce was furiously active from the tip and never relented. After putting the finishing touches on the game with some clutch shots, Pierce did something that may garner more attention than his play, Tebow-ing on the Hawks logo for the second time of the night.
But for all that Pierce did, the person that locked in yesterday’s Celtics victory to me was none other than Doc Rivers.
Here’s a coach with a team that could have imploded at any time this season that he’s kept from falling apart. Here’s a coach with a point guard that has a quick temper and has been constantly bandied around in trade rumors that he has kept engaged. Here’s a coach that just had a playoff game without that point guard (because of his temper) and without the best three-point shooter of all-time and squeezed everything out of his role players in order to get a win. Here’s a coach with an old and slow roster that has every excuse to decline defensively but instead is coming off of it’s best season in years.
If were ignoring records and focusing more on how they controlled the lockerroom, you could make a very strong case for Rivers as the Coach of the Year this season. The Celtics have been absolutely on fire since the all-star break and now they’ve stolen homecourt advantage from the Hawks in a gut wrenching win without two of their four best players. Rivers has done a tremendous job with this group, one that is very limited offensively and is filled with some defensive players with less than stellar reputations.
The Celtics only allowed 95.5 points per 100 possessions this season, the second best mark in the league behind Chicago, reprising the performance of those vaunted Boston defense from a couple of years ago that none of us expected to return. Even more impressive is how Doc has his players defending on an individual level. Of players with at least 447 defensive possessions this season, Brandon Bass ranks first in the NBA at 0.673 points per possession allowed. Kevin Garnett ranks second at .694 PPPa. Rajon Rondo ranks fourth at 0.739 PPPa. Avery Bradley ranks fifth at 0.742 PPPa. Ray Allen ranks 13th at 0.763 PPPa. Paul Pierce ranks 31st at 0.80 PPPa. Of big men that have played 240 defensive possessions against the pick and roll, Garnett is tops in the league in PPPa.
Everyone on this team defends relentless, a quality that we didn’t expect from an old team in a lockout shortened season. And last night Rivers plucked Keyon Dooling and Mickael Pietrus and Ryan Hollins and Marquis Daniels out of the purgatory of irrelevancy and had them playing big time defense in big moments, and moving to the rights off the ball to take advantage of an uninspired Hawks defense. Pietrus didn’t look engaged in the first half of this game and it led to an in-huddle tirade from Rivers blasting him for his effort. According to reports from those at the game, Pietrus was ticked and on the edge of becoming indifferent, Ray Allen took him aside to chat and Rivers trusted him enough to put him back in the game. He preceded to play some big defense in the final minutes of the game. Just another example of Ubuntu.
At halftime of this game I didn’t think the Celtics had a chance of winning not only the game but also the series. But Boston fought back and took the will right out of the Hawks. Now I have a hard time seeing Atlanta recovering from this and with a weakened Chicago team or a starless Philly team waiting in the next round, Boston has a good shot at the Eastern Conference Finals. And though Pierce is the one with the impressive statline next to his name, don’t forget how key Doc Rivers was in all of this for the Celtics.
Posted in Columns | Tagged Atlanta Hawks, Boston Celtics | Leave a comment
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