If I had played that game in NBA Live or something I would had quit half way the fourth quarter.
Very chippy played, marquee players didn't played like they are scripted to play, officiating was terrible ( I know that doesn't apply to video games. Anyhow!). That game was odd. I wanna see some type of study out of it from basketball-reference.com.
The game was close from the the third quarter on, the Celtics kept shrinking the difference but never got over the hump. Ray Allen shot 0 from 13! ( 0 from 8 from downtown) Pierce had his second straight bad game ( 5 from 12) . The Celtics played a very bad game offensively, the TO's were pretty low though, their struggled running their sets. The looked and waited so much for Ray to get open that their offense never moved from second gear. Pierce got locked down again by Artest. KG was the only Celtic scoring. Look, Boston has 4 great players we all know that. In order for them to win either Ray Allen or Paul Pierce need to have a solid game. KG is a 15 ppg player at this point of his career. He is their inside presence they can do it without his production because of Rondo and the timely contributions of Big Baby. Rondo is not a scorer. They will struggle every game if their two wing player gives them crap. There is no rhythm in the offense and much less space to do anything. You combine that with LA's length and defensive activity and you can say the the Celtics were close at the end of the game.
It wasn't all luck thought, the Lakers won despite playing terrible. Kobe played like he was shooting the Lakers out of the game. He needed 29 shots to score 29 points. He was shooting anything withing 16 feet no matter what defender was him or how many. He took the same amount of shots that Gasol, Bynum, Artest and Odom combined. Just saying.
Gasol, he disappeared again in the fourth. I'm not putting this on Gasol at all. Kobe was just shooting anything that touched his hands. I'm putting it on Phil Jackson. The Lakers got lucky last night and Phil didn't do anything to push that luck. You know how lucky they were? Derek Fisher was the start of the game. He scored 11 points in the fourth. At some point he scored 6 straight points. It doesn't sound that impressive but the timing of those points were gold. It wasn't offense by accident he saw how Kobe was playing he knew he needed to take the ball out of his hands. He saw how Gasol wasn't being all man in the inside, he had a little bit of a regresion against 2008 GK, he couldn't be trusted. So yeah, he give it a shot and push his Lakers to a 1 game lead.
Good game Mr Fisher!
Oh...almost forgot to make emphasis on this: RAY ALLEN MISSSED 13 SHOTS. 8 FROM THREE. If Ray goes 4 -13( 2 - 8 on 3 pointers) Boston wins this game. The pull a comeback win and get their second straight victory against the Lakers. That's A LOT of momentum!
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