Had a friend who was in town for a week. Wanted to see her, but I had to work around watching the NBA Finals. I’ll give up basketball if that’s the only way I could hang out with her, but maybe she wants to see the games with me?
“No,” she said, emphatically. “You don’t have to tune in till the last two minutes anyway.”
That wasn’t necessarily true in last night’s Game 7 of a tight and rugged championship series, but if you expand the scale you can draw a similarity. The guys on ABC’s broadcast mentioned many times how this is the last game of the 2009-10 NBA season. If that was the case, what a casual fan would need to see if she or he wanted to just get the gist of the NBA season was to watch the fourth quarter.
For the die-hard fans, of course, the entire game was riveting. Echoing the college final between Duke and Butler ten weeks ago, the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics were determined to battle for every loose ball and extend their arms into as many passing lanes as possible. If you are willing to look hard enough, every important game explodes in a bouquet of complexity, like a fine wine. You don’t need a track meet to be blown away by what you saw.
Hell of a game, huh? This was a fistfight that certainly determined the tougher team, not necessarily the more talented. And with each missed shot, more and more this became a game where one team would hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy despite. Turns out the Lakers won 83-79 despite star Kobe Bryant shooting 25% from the field and the team missing 12-of-37 free throws.
What they were able to do was rebound the hell out of the ball. The team that got more boards won every single game in the series, and the Lake Show did it Thursday night by a 53-40 margin, punctuated by a stupid 23 offensive rebounds. The second chance points that came as a result were a crucial reason why they still had a chance despite being down by as many as 13 points in the second quarter.
Their other huge advantage was, ironically enough, at the charity stripe. Although they shot only 67.6% from the line, they made 20 more attempts than the Celtics, so their frequency was high enough to overcome their poor shooting. That aggression was evident in the back six minutes of the series-clinching stanza, when they went had 14 free throw attempts (making 12) to Boston’s two.
But if you saw Game 7, one more noticeable thing happened in the fourth quarter: The Celtics’ shooting touch completely vanished. Neither team was having a great night from the field, but Boston didn’t make one single damn shot for 4:41 smack dab in the middle of the fourth. Ray Allen’s three free throws prevented a complete drought; nonetheless, the Lakers went from three down to four up in that Celtic dry spell, and they never trailed after Bryant made a free throw with 5:56 left.
One final thing stands out: The Big Three of Allen, Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett finally looked … old. They were playing well beyond what I thought was their “Sell By” date, and I thought they had a chance to take their second title in three years. And they almost did. But it was the Lakers who finished the game bloodied but unbowed. Ron Artest – who had 20 points?!?!?! – made a clutch three. Pau Gasol hauled in the next-to-last of his 18 rebounds – an offensive one, natch – with 27 seconds to go and the Celtics down by three. And Boston went 5-of-13 from the field in the last half of the last quarter of the game. For once, Showtime became Go Time, and the C’s just didn’t have enough energy to answer L.A.’s intensity at the end.
So now, the questions:
- Is Bryant now The Best Laker Ever? Damn good question now. He already proved he could win a title without Shaquille O’Neal last year; now he could show the Lakers forefathers and Lakers fans the green scalp he helped peel from their sworn enemy, the key to the Purple-And-Gold Pantheon. But geez, a 6-for-24 shooting night in the most important game of the year, when one could say he was only the third-best player on the squad (behind Gasol and Artest)? I’m pretty sure The Logo, Wilt, Kareem and Magic all had their clunkers. However, they were lucky enough to play without a 24-hour news cycle and parasitic bloggers chronicling their touches. What would bolster Kobe’s case would be winning another one, whereby he’d be the most decorated player ever to play only for L.A. Which leads me to my next question:
- Can the L.A. Lakers repeat? Oh yeah. Bryant’s under contract. Gasol, the greatest top-tier baller ever to willingly be a wingman, is under contract. Artest, who neutralized Pierce for nearly the entire Finals series and kept his emotions in check, is under contract. In fact, with the possible exception of the oft-injured Andrew Bynum, you don’t need to change the roster at all. They’re the favorites to three-peat next year … which means Lakers fans will have a chance to be more insufferable than the other front-runners plaguing American sport, Yankees fans.
- Is this it for the Big Three? Yes, or at least I can see it. When Garnett was traded from Minnesota, I thought the C’s had two, three years tops to claim a title. The rings they won in 2008 proved the move was worth it, and coming oh-so-close to a second would’ve been a very sweet cherry on top. But Allen seemed to have blown his wad with that record-three night in Game 2. His 3-for-14 performance in Game 7, including making only 2 of his 7 shots from Threeville, might convince him to make good on his flirtation with retirement.
- Is this it for the Celtics? Could be, and maybe should be. Pierce (18 points, 10 rebounds) proved he’s as tough a guy to cover as anybody in the league, even if he was neutralized by Artest. And Garnett (17 points on 8-of-13 shooting) still has the silky inside game to remain a force when he’s not injured, even if Gasol out-rebounded him 18-3 last night. (I’ll say it was a draw for the series, which means it’s a win for L.A. because this was the biggest mismatch in favor of Boston in ’08.) This just seems like a turn-the-page type of moment for this club, you know? It might be time for General Manager Danny Ainge to build around Rajon Rondo (who boosted Celtics fans with his fearlessness, something that will be overshadowed by his inability to shoot free throws next year, trust me) and Kendrick Perkins. If not for Perkins’s absence from Game 7 because he hyperextended his right knee in Game 6, Boston very well could’ve won.
Congratulations are in order to the Bastard Minneapolis Lakers, then, for winning its 16th