Our Fate Will Be Sealed By The Fire And The Folly Of Our Youth: Celtics-Bulls Game 4

Good. God.

Put that sucker up on instant classic. Now is the time when it kills me that the NBA doesn’t have a download deal in place to where we can buy this game off iTunes. Can you imagine the resale value of this game?

On to the notes.

• I’ve always respected the Celtics bigs as role players. But they’ve been absolutely phenomenal in the first week of the playoffs. Glen Davis’ ability to hit open jumpers puts the defense in an almost impossible position. You have to keep men down low to try and handle Perkins, you have to trap either Rondo, Allen, or Pierce, whoever has the ball, and you have to keep perimeter pressure on the other one. The bigs’ ability to hit jumpers has been phenomenal. Additionally, Perkins has just been beastly. Jump hooks, offensive rebounds, and the gap between his knowledge of positioning and the Bulls’ bigs is a mile wide.
• I’m severely disappointed with the Boston flopping in Game 4. For a team that preaches toughness and pride, to resort to those kinds of tactics really makes them less impressive as defending champions. Particularly this gem by Glen Davis.
• I said it a lot last spring. Doc Rivers outcoached Phil Jackson by leaps and bounds in last year’s Finals. He deserves all the credit for how he handled that series.
• Now that I’ve said that, he’s still not a good coach. You can tell that the only thing he’s coaching in huddles is “STAY TOUGH! WE’VE GOT TO STICK! TOGETHER! WE ARE FAMILY! I’VE GOT ALL MY FORWARDS WITH ME!”  Meanwhile, the Celtics make very few adjustments. He essentially just puts his awesome players in and says “BE AGGRESSIVE!”
• Meanwhile, I’m having problems with breaking down VDN. For every good thing he does, he matches it with something negative. And vice versa. I’ve forgiven him for giving Salmons long minutes, because it’s pretty clear he’s coming out of his shooting slump and he’s done a terrific job on the Truth. He put in Tyrus Thomas late, and Thomas ended up making a boneheaded miss on a free throw.  Miller had his fair share of usual disasters, like continuing to believe he can hit bounce passes into the paint versus a great interior defense. But he also played physical, made a couple of shots, and was an astounding +21 for the game.  Popcorn Machine is going to be interesting on this.
• I don’t know how Rondo will do in subsequent series, but I will still maintain that Rondo has been more important to his club than any other player in the first round for their team.  James has been his usual brilliance, but it’s been a team effort from the Cavs centered around James, along with a complete Pistons surrender, that’s gotten them there. Meanwhile, if it weren’t for Rondo, the Celtics would be losing this series, no question. He’s everywhere. He dogs them on defense full-floor, he attacks the rim full-floor, he doesn’t waste possessions, and he rebounds.
• In the third quarter, we had the prototypical Ben Gordon possession. The Celtics trap him at the elbow. He doesn’t pass out of it. Instead he allows it to get stripped, gets it back, and hits a picture perfect leaner. So to recap, terrible possession, beautiful shot. And that’s Ben Gordon. Same deal when he goes high off the glass over two defenders. The three to send it to double overtime was gorgeous, but man, there were about five possessions where he just swallowed the possession like an anaconda.
• Let’s talk about announcing. There is a network convering the playoffs who employ a very popular announce team with a former player and a former coach. The former player talks about defense constantly. Then, when good defense forces a bad shot, the former player complains that the other team is playing bad basketball. Unless someone hits a low percentage shot. Then it’s “great players make great plays.” Conversely, if a player just slices down the lane because the defense is trying to set up their halfcourt defense to not allow easy looks, it’s “poor defensive effort.” I’m just saying. There’s more to defense than just effort, and there’s more to offense than just making it.
• As brilliant as Rose has been on offense, he’s also been a liability on defense. His lack of experience against screens has hurt the Bulls considerably.
• Celtics fans, this game was a pretty good example of why I believe Pierce is injured more than he’s letting on.  Letting Gordon blow by him to tie the game? Not finishing at the rim? Shooting 9 of 24? GETTING BLOCKED BY JOHN FREAKING SALMONS on a game-tying attempt? If Pierce had had one poor game, two okay games, and one awesome game like Game 3? Okay, everyone has a bad game. But he’s consistently having trouble in things like running, jumping, and moving side to side. Those are pretty important for basketball. You can point at his points, but so many of those are coming from open jump shots because of Rondo and Allen or free throws. I fully expect him to go off for 25-30 in Game 5. It’s not about him not being able to hit Truth level, it’s about him being able to consistently bring it at that level. And physically right now, I don’t see him doing that.
• Joakim Noah has really turned into a great addition. He plays with a ton of energy and never gives up on a play.  One complaint. There were a lot of instances when Noah would come under the screen on defense, and stay up to prevent the drive. Which would either lead to an open look down low or an offensive rebound. Noah’s got to respect their bigs and trust the wings to hold and man-help.
• So it’s a three game series, two games in Boston, one in ChiTown. We’ll go ahead and say we expect the C’s to win for all the obvious reasons.
• But then, we said that about Games 1 and 4, didn’t we?