NBA Playoffs: Cavaliers Withstand a Good Celtics Start, Clamp Down Defensively, Win at Home

Game 1 of the Cavs/Celtics series was a pretty good representation on what we will see throughout: an excellent-to-watch, hard-fought game with momentum shifts, highlight-reel plays and various guys carrying their respective teams for long stretches.

And, oh yeah, a Cavs victory.

Boston played just about as well as they could in the first half — with Rajon Rondo playing just about as good as any human could — yet it still wasn’t enough. Cleveland ramped up its defensive intensity after the break, closed off the paint and forced the Celtics to take tough (although more makeable then they showed) jumpers, leaving little room for error after the shooters went cold.

The Cavs were already starting to look like the superior team by the time Mo Williams got out on the break and dunked — for the first time since he got to Cleveland — over Paul Pierce. Mo mean-mugged, got fired up and scored 10 straight for his squad, including the thunder stuff. Then the Cavs did some Thunder stuff — applied some suffocating defense.

With no one on the Celtics able to get going against this teamwide-ramped-up effort (and Anthony Parker taking over the job that Mo had failed at throughout the first half: keeping Rajon in front of him), LeBron did the rest. 10 points, 3 boards (2 offensive) and 2 blocks in the fourth for the King, who finished with 35 points, 7 assists, 7 boards, 3 steals and those 2 blocks for the game. This, while shooting 12/24 and getting to the line 11 times. As odd as I seems, this is what we should expect most of the series. If so, the Cavs’ much-deeper bench (Jamario Moon, Delonte West, Anderson Varejao and JJ Hickson combined for 26 points compared to just 12 for the Cs reserves) and much-younger legs (Delonte, Hickson and Jamario in particular showed the age gap) should be plenty to shake off Boston in six games.

(Doc Rivers might want to think about giving Nate Robinson a little run to squeeze a little energy out of his roster. Think about how loud the Banknorth Garden would get if the little guy hit a three? Has to be worth a shot. Especially if you’re giving Mike Finley four minutes for whatever reason.)

All it took to close out this one out for Cleveland were a few nice buckets by LeBron after he was able to Shinobi the less-effective-as-the-game-went-on Boston defense and some solid interior work by Shaq (see more below). James hit the dagger three with 22 seconds left on a pick-and-roll where Paul Pierce just totally pooped the bed.

As it turns out, however, they barely even needed all that late-game execution. The Celtics fumbled around so poorly on offense that they only managed three points over the final five minutes. Credit some of that to Cleveland’s close-outs and rotation, credit some to Boston simply missing makeable shots and not forcing the action into the paint.

Either way, it’s pretty tough to beat a better team when you can’t score. I think John Wooden said that once. It’s in that pyramid or something.

A few other thoughts

• Sideshow Varejao grabbed a huge offensive board at the end of the third that gave the Cavs a 2-for-1 to end the quarter. The re-set got JJ Hickson a nice bucket on the interior. Then the Cleveland D forced Paul Pierce to settle for, and miss, a bad three. And after LeBron attacked the hoop for two points to close the quarter, Mike Brown’s boys found themselves up one going into the fourth. The Cs, who had just watched Mo go off post-posterization and watched a nice first-half lead evaporate, now had to look up at the scoreboard while sitting on the bench and see themselves losing. Even being up one point there might have helped them say, “OK, we withstood their run and played poorly in the third, but we are still up … This is still our game.” Down one, they couldn’t do that. The third turned from merely a bad quarter by a team with a lead to a quarter that changed which team controlled the game. Without that Varejao rebound, that doesn’t happen. What he does doesn’t make the box score, even though the boards are sometimes impressive. You just have to watch. Please do.

• Mo talked in the post game about how the Cavs always like to keep going to a guy when he’s hot and/or capable of exploiting a favorable match-up. They did this with Delonte in the second quarter, and he was able to drive into the paint on, by my count, at least four occasions. Then they did it again with Shaq late. Perkins bit on his shot fake with the score 90-90 and Shaq worked him in the post with an up-and-under out of the Kevin McHale collection. Diesel got Perk out of position on the next trip, too — which was likely beneficial for both Shaq and the Cavs low-post game for the rest of this series, even though he missed that particular look. The following is my speculation, but this perhaps helped keep Shaq ready to score a few minutes later when he ran a pick-and-roll with LeBron. Boston doubled the ball-handler, Mr. James, but LeBron was able to thread a pass to O’Neal who missed the lay-up but stuck with it and got the tip-in. The lesson here: Feed the big fella and the big fella stays happy. Keep the big fella happy and the big fella will stay engaged late. Keep the big fella engaged late and he can be more than just a space-eater. As I mentioned on Twitter, “The rumors of Shaq only being relevant as a big body to bang with Dwight Howard have been greatly exaggerated.”

• Paul Pierce was excellent early, but faded after half-time and was down-right ineffective. 1/10 shooting in the second half, with the one make and seven of the misses coming in the fourth. (KG followed a similar pattern, shooting 1/5 in the final period.) It’s safe to say that the Celtics can’t win this series — and perhaps not even a game — if Truth doesn’t act Truthier. The script for Celtics’ victories should play out similar to how Game 1 started for Boston: Rondo runs the show early with Ray Allen getting off for a stretch or two (two treys for him in the third and a few buckets in the second) and KG alternating between good jump-shooter and offensively irrelevant as his oldness and inconsistency allow. Paul, of course, needs to be involved throughout and the bench must play better (Big Baby was particularly garbage: 5 points on 5 shots with 3 turnovers in 12 minutes), but what Pierce needs to do is be Boston’s closer. When the Cleveland defense is really on its grind late, Doc Rivers needs to be able to count on Pierce for a few “I got this possession” buckets. They wouldn’t have won the title in 2008 without him doing this. In fact, they wouldn’t have even beaten the Bulls last year without it. So they sure as hell need it to beat the Cavs.

• Apparently LeBron has a boo boo on his elbow. He looked 100% to me. If you care about the topic, go to any other NBA website for more.