The Celtics are Nasty!

[irvin88]

I think Detroit will put up a fight - Boston in 6

you won't be here to face failure.

 

[Nors]

Who cares. Same New Orleans team was bounced in 1st round last year.

Detroit is on a mission. SWEEP.

Yeagh, Detroit team could not do it in last year(thrashed by Cavs), now they are going to sweep 66 win Celtics that are 8-0 at home in playoffs. Seriously?

 

[irvin88]

Yeagh, Detroit team could not do it in last year(thrashed by Cavs), now they are going to sweep 66 win Celtics that are 8-0 at home in playoffs. Seriously?

the same Celtic team that went 7 games vs. Marvin Williams and Josh Chidress.

-Face it, they're not very good.

 

[Nors]

win and advance

who is better alive in playoffs? running out of teams...

 

[irvin88]

win and advance

who is better alive in playoffs? running out of teams...

Lakers, Detroit, and Spurs.

 

[irvin88]

win and advance

who is better alive in playoffs? running out of teams...

The Rondo/Ray Allen vs. Billups/Hamilton matchup is a kick in the groin for Boston fans.... same as Wallace vs. Perkins.

Give edge to KG and Pierce over Prince and McDyess, but they aint Varejo and Scerbiak either.

-Detroit has no holes, Boston has 3.

 

[Rampage]

LeBrons Cavs beat Detroit last year straight up. You realize that? This Piston team is not same team from years ago -


Lebron is all that and put up a 45 and still we beat HIM.

the cavs aren't the same team from last year either. they actually got worse. what happened last season doesn't matter. what happened in the regular season doesn't matter. but since you want to live in the past how's the big 2 and Ray Allen done in conference final sereis?

 

[MC KAos]

the cavs aren't the same team from last year either. they actually got worse. what happened last season doesn't matter. what happened in the regular season doesn't matter. but since you want to live in the past how's the big 2 and Ray Allen done in conference final sereis?

i think west was a huge upgrade over their previous point guard, and joe smith was pretty solid for them, but i think you are right, they were probably better off keeping hughes and specially gooden, they couldnt get a rebound to save their lives and i think gooden would have helped that out, considering big ben is only a shell of what he was before. the reason the cavs really beat the pistons last year was the lack of motivation by the pistons, the fact that brown is a way better coach than flip and then you add the insane series that lebron had and bang, they win. Like someone said on an article i read earlier its gonna be a checkers match(thats an insult) in the coaching matchup, and i think the pistons will play the disrespect card and beat up on the celtics.

 

[Nors]

the cavs aren't the same team from last year either. they actually got worse. what happened last season doesn't matter. what happened in the regular season doesn't matter. but since you want to live in the past how's the big 2 and Ray Allen done in conference final sereis?

Ray Allen took Bucks to Game 7 Eastern Finals versus Philly that came down to a final shot at buzzer.

They will be writing their own History next two series -

 

[irvin88]

Ray Allen took Bucks to Game 7 Eastern Finals versus Philly that came down to a final shot at buzzer.

They will be writing their own History next two series -

Ray Allen is finished.

Glenn Robinson was what carried Bucks in that series.

 

[MC KAos]

ray allen is gonna get destroyed by whoever guards him, garnett is gonna have trouble, rondo is gonna have trouble defending billups, but he will be good on offense imo. piece is gonna have a hard time against prince, but i still expect him to carry the team, since, like i have said all year, he is their best player.

 

[rkstevens]

One man Cavs ousted Detroit last year in playoffs

Boston is 8-0 at home. Thats cold hard fact
Home teams last round 22-2.

So? The Lakers and Spurs are both undefeated at home in the playoffs. Now true, neither have gone 8-0 at home, but that's the price you pay for not having to play two 7-game series like the Celtics. Detroit has lost 1 game at home in the playoffs, but also has won 3 games on the road. So they could easily take one from the Celtics on the road and the home court will be meaningless. With the Lakers and Spurs ability to win on the road during the playoffs (3 and 2 games won respectively), I wouldn't bank on the home court to save the Celtics against them either -- assuming the Celts even make it past Detroit.

 

[Nors]

ray allen is gonna get destroyed by whoever guards him, garnett is gonna have trouble, rondo is gonna have trouble defending billups, but he will be good on offense imo. piece is gonna have a hard time against prince, but i still expect him to carry the team, since, like i have said all year, he is their best player.

Allen and RIP negated
Garnett went for 26
Rondo outplayed Billups
Pierce 22 won battle's

Boston 1-0 up - Game on

 

[MC KAos]

Allen and RIP negated
Garnett went for 26
Rondo outplayed Billups
Pierce 22 won battle's

Boston 1-0 up - Game on

its just one game you know, but i was pretty impressed with the way the celtics played tonight. i still dont see how allen did anything to convince anyone besides you that he is done though

 

[Nors]

its just one game you know, but i was pretty impressed with the way the celtics played tonight. i still dont see how allen did anything to convince anyone besides you that he is done though

Something is not right with Ray Allen for sure - have never seen him miss shots like this -

That said we are winning and tonight in charge of game most all of second half. Rondo at 22 is a future NBA star - been saying that for a while.

Detroit had no answers for Garnett and Pierce took charge when he had to. Quality win - 3 to go

 

[MC KAos]

Something is not right with Ray Allen for sure - have never seen him miss shots like this -

That said we are winning and tonight in charge of game most all of second half. Rondo at 22 is a future NBA star - been saying that for a while.

Detroit had no answers for Garnett and Pierce took charge when he had to. Quality win - 3 to go

i dont think rondo is ready to be a star anytime soon. He still makes dumb decisions under pressure and hasnt done anything spectacular in the playoffs. But his ability to rebound and steal the ball is really impressive to me and my favorite part of his game. I can see him being a defensive force at that position for years to come, but as far as a creator or distributor i dont see that happening, but i wouldnt bet against it.

as for allen, he just never was that great, he had a great jump shot and that was about it. People overlook his serious deficiencies in the defensive end because everyone just cares about how many points he scores. I still think pierce is the most dangerous player on that team because garnett isnt very good down the stretch of close games, but pierce is deadly.

 

[Nors]

Glenn Robinson bailed on that big shot to win game and was out of NBA what 4 yeras later.....Who is finished in 2008?

Allen not hitting shots but Celtics still up 1-0.
He hits his stride forward look out......

 

[Nors]

Pierce will take it to the hole and crunch time thats a foul all day every day. Garnett if fed for his jumper is deadly but he can't carry a team alone with his patented fade aways.

 

[irvin88]

Pierce will take it to the hole and crunch time thats a foul all day every day. Garnett if fed for his jumper is deadly but he can't carry a team alone with his patented fade aways.

go read the sportsguys latest article on KG.

 

[Danny White]

go read the sportsguys latest article on KG.

Here it is...

Let's play word association: KG. Warrior? Sure. 2008 MVP? Maybe. Clutch? Eh.
by Bill Simmons

During the last few minutes of Game 6 of Boston's second-round series with Cleveland, poor Kevin Garnett looked like Forrest Gump right after Jenny pulled her top down in her dorm room. On one play, the ball swung to KG at the foul line; no Cav was within 10 feet of him. Strangely, he panicked, thinking about shooting an open J before realizing, Wait, I'm seven feet tall, that would be dumb, and barreling toward the basket to rush a clumsy jump hook. For a former MVP who makes $22 million a year, it was an astoundingly incompetent sequence.

It also wasn't a surprise. Garnett's crunch-time woes have been the dirty little secret of this storybook Celtics season. Sure, he saved the franchise and made the C's relevant again. He's also the reason they might not win the 2008 championship. Put simply, Garnett shrinks from pressure more times than he comes through. The NBA is a simple league to figure out: In a playoff series, the best player prevails unless his supporting cast is significantly inferior to the other team's. So when Boston's best player can't dominate close games against a quality opponent … um, that's a problem.

Fans spend an inordinate amount of time analyzing the mental makeup of their favorite players, so you can only imagine how many hours I've spent thinking about Garnett. After all, I'm the same guy who once wasted an entire afternoon trying to figure out Hickory High's box score in that final game in Hoosiers. (If you care, I had Chitwood down for 30 on 14-of-18 shooting.) The intriguing wrinkle with Garnett is he plays differently down the stretch by not playing differently. Selfless and passionate for 48 minutes a game, eight months a year, he can't raise his game because it's already raised. Like Nigel Tufnel's guitar, he's already up to 11.

Sometimes, when Garnett's adrenaline kicks in during crunch time it's like watching a diabetic in the midst of a sugar rush. His body can't handle it. When he succeeds, he loses his mind, pounding his chest, belting out profanities and hollering at the crowd like a crazy person. When he fails (and it's happened a few times this season), his mistakes are unbelievably amateurish—intentional fouls when the team doesn't need them, taking too many steps on his signature fall-away, that kind of stuff. The pressure gets to him. You can see it. In Game 4 of the first-round series with Atlanta, after a near-altercation with Zaza Pachulia, the camera found KG on the bench and he was practically hyperventilating.

Now, Garnett isn't the only NBA star who has struggled in big moments. Wilt was famous for it. The Mailman choked so many times I once wrote, "You know you're watching ESPN Classic if it's 2 a.m. and Karl Malone looks like he's about to throw up." David Robinson was an extremely nice guy who played like one in big games.

GARNETT PLAYS DIFFERENTLY DOWN THE STRETCH BY NOT PLAYING DIFFERENTLY

C-Webb passed the basketball like it was a hand grenade in the clutch. Clyde Drexler always seemed like he'd just downed too much caffeine. Even one of my favorite Celtics, Kevin McHale, got the yips. In Game 2 of the 1984 Finals, his legs shook after he missed that free throw before Gerald Henderson's famous steal.

The list of guys who came up short is as endless as the one of those who repeatedly came through in the clutch (Michael Jordan, Sam Jones, Reggie Miller, Dennis Johnson, Robert Horry, Larry Legend … ). The question is, how do you end up on one list or the other? What makes for clutch? Is it part of your DNA, or something that's honed through experience and repetition?

Here's my answer: It's both. One of the most fascinating things about Jordan's career wasn't that he nailed the title-winning shot against Georgetown as a freshman, but that Dean Smith called the play for him. If someone is born with ice water in his veins, you know it. Smith knew it. Then again, get enough reps with anything in life, and you're more likely to succeed. Trying not to sound nervous when I started to do TV and radio a few years ago, I'd overthink and make myself nervous, battling a rush of adrenaline right before my segment started. I've learned to channel that energy now—I can speak in front of large crowds and everything. Why? Because I got my reps.

How far can experience actually get you in matters of clutchness? After Garnett jumped from high school to the NBA, he played eight years without ever getting past the first round. Fellow high schooler Kobe Bryant landed on a talented Lakers team, failing famously as a rookie (remember his hideous air balls that ended the series against the Jazz in 1997?), then getting swept by the '98 Jazz and '99 Spurs. Name me one memorable Kobe moment from his first three springs. You can't. But 28 meaningful playoff games provided him with valuable pressurized situations. By the time the 2000 postseason rolled around, Kobe was asserting himself, capping it off with an MJ moment in Game 4 of the Finals for a championship team.

By contrast, poor Garnett was trapped on lousy and half-decent teams until 2004, when he carried the Timberwolves to the Western Conference finals, submitting an ESPN Classic game of his own against the Kings (32 points, 21 rebounds in Game 7) in the second round. But just when it seemed as if he was getting the hang of clutch, Minnesota imploded, missing the playoffs in its next three seasons with KG. Now he's slightly past his prime. Can you blame him for not being clutch when he never got those reps in his formative years? Probably not. Think of his career like a video game: Spend a ton of time playing Grand Theft Auto, and you're much more likely to complete a mission than some guy who doesn't own a PS3, right?

Fair or unfair, Garnett will always be measured against Tim Duncan, who has already carried the Spurs to four titles. It's easy to forget now that TD had his own blips and stumbles along the way, or that he played in 71 playoff games before famously demolishing the Nets with a 21/20/10 line in the clincher of the 2003 Finals. Wired very much like Garnett—completely selfless, phenomenally competitive, thoughtful as a teammate—Duncan learned to channel his intensity, saving peak performances for when they mattered most. He figured out that there was a crucial difference between a ho-hum January game in Atlanta and a must-win playoff game in LA. He's clearly developed a reliable mental alert: All right, unless I grab 20 rebounds tonight, we're going to lose. Or: If I don't take over this game right now and score every time down the floor, we're cooked.

Bill Russell had that switch. So did MJ, Bird and Magic. Well, Garnett doesn't have it. Like every other Celtics fan, I've been looking for it, waiting for it … and it's just not there. A wonderful all-around player, ultimately he's only as good as his teammates. Even during the emotional Game 7 victory over Cleveland, Garnett was nearly invisible down the stretch. So if we can't find a way to stick him with Kobe, LeBron or someone of that ilk, he's probably not getting a ring unless Paul Pierce has a few more 41-point explosions in him.

And we can think about what might've happened if he'd somehow switched places with Duncan back in 1997 and gotten all those playoff reps. Maybe things would have been different for Kevin Garnett.

Maybe.