Thank you, Lakers!
As much as that game hurt to watch on Sunday, I'd be willing to wager my autographed #5 Ron Mercer jersey that the Celtics will point to this specific loss as the turning point to their season when everything is all said and done. For the Green to have any shot at bringing Banner 18 back to Causeway, they needed a swift kick in their collective ass.
Guess what? That's exactly what they got thanks to Kobe Bryant and that dagger he hit with 7.3 seconds left in a 4th quarter in which the C's had held an 11-point lead.Championship teams don't lose 11 point leads in 4th quarters, especially to their biggest rival. The Celtics, thanks to Kobe & Co., now realize they aren't (as presently constituted) a championship team.
Questions were already being raised in the national press way before they lost to the Lake Show, but now they're deafening: What's wrong with the Celtics? Should they trade Ray Allen? Is KG still hurt? The Celts, in their myriad of press conferences and interviews, played all of it down, saying that they weren't worried about any of it, and that it was all nitpicky, false alarm type stuff. I bet they're worrying about it now. I hope instead of poo-pooing it like Glen "Big Baby" Davis does a 7-layer chili dog a few hours after the fact, they're looking for answers, and no; not the kind named Allen Iverson.
They've lost 3 straight, and 6 out of their last eight games. January was their first losing month since KG and Ray came to town. It's time to for them to worry. But not us fans. If I couldn't get a three game sweep through the brutal Magic/Hawks/Lakers stretch of games, I wanted them to lose all three. Why? Because they can't poo-poo it any more. If they had beat the Lakers, we'd all be happy, relieved, screaming "KOBE SUCKS!!!" from our rooftops and glossing over the fact that this team has real problems that need to be addressed. We could coax ourselves into believing the games in Orlando and Atlanta were tough back-to-back road games, but at least we beat LA, right? Wrong.
They're not going to get a chance to play the Lakers in the playoffs unless thry get by two of these three teams: Cavaliers, The Magic, and the Hawks. Those teams will be the final 4 in the East, and it's going to be a dogfight good enough to make Mike Vick jealous. The C's can't hang with those 3 unless something changes, and if they had kept going about their business pretending they'd be just fine and able to flip the switch at playoff time, we'd all be interested in watching the Sox play games in May for the first time in 3 years.
Now that they're flaws are out in the open, Danny Ainge and Doc Rivers can go about addressing them. I'd start with the rotation. The starters are playing too much, the bench not enough, and at the wrong times. Tony Allen did all he could to try to prove me wrong in my previous post (check out Truth Bomb #4) in the 1st half against LA, yet Doc didn't ride his hot hand in the 2nd, but decided it was better to run Ray, Paul Pierce and Rajon "MVP" Rondo into the ground instead. For all the people saying Ray couldn't have guarded Kobe any better on the game-winning shot; yeah, I agree. Ray couldn't have guarded him any better. But Tony could.
- Getty Images
TA's one plus quality (besides being able to squiem and create the most impossibly & needlessly difficult layup attempts I've ever seen) is his one-on-one defense. Ray was gassed anyway, but come on!: he's one of the last guys I would've had guarding Kobe in crunch time even if he'd just jumped out of the fountain of youth. Young reserves are always better options (especially on defense) than exhausted starters.
Fresh legs are key. That's why Phil Jackson stuck with Jordan Farmar in the 4th instead of the brittle and slow Derek Fisher to chase Rondo around, which stopped the bleeding and aloud the Lakers to come back. If Doc realized this, we'd be celebrating the win. He's got to get a better handle on how he dishes out minutes, or the starters won't be able to keep up when the games actually mean something.
But it doesn't end there. There are a ton 0f problems on this team. Here's a short list:
1) They're too old
2) Rasheed Wallace is taking too many threes
3) They're relying way too much on Rondo
4) The offensive rebounding is non-existent
5) They can't play hard for a full 48 minutes
6) The focus on defense that won Banner #17 is gone
7) Did I mention Sheed's taking way too many freakin' threes?
That's quite a laundry list of stinkstains to work out, and we wouldn't be talking about any of them if Kobe hadn't hit that shot. Instead, we'd all be crowing about how they beat the big bad World Champs ("NAW, FOR REALS, SULLY! KOBE SUCKS!!!") and the Celtics should be considered the favorites in the seemingly inevitable Finals reunion in June. Now we're left wondering if their window of opportunity to win a championship has already closed.
The seeds of doubt have been planted; not only in the fans and the media, but across the rest of the league and hopefully, within the organization and in the team itself. Nothing is a given anymore, and any respect, fear, and/or reverence they'd built up since the magical 2008 run is now gone. The Celtics are beatable, and right now, they're bloodied. I hope they treat this game like the rest of us would treat a nosebleed. You drop everything you doing and deal with it. This is "Priority One". No one walks around with a gushing nosebleed: you stop it with your sleeve, a kleenex, anything to stop the bleeding. That's exactly what the Celtics need to do.
People are writing them off, and if I know anything, it's that if a KG-led team isn't getting respect, he won't let them be for long. Losing to the Lakers at home will prompt some long looks into the mirror, and hopefully light a fire under this team's ass. This ain't nitpicking, and it damn well sure ain't no false alarm. Kobe rang that bell loud and clear for everyone to hear. And for that, all I can say is: Thanks, Kobe.
(You still suck, though.)
Big Head Braden doesn't work for the Sports Hub, but for Karlson & McKenzie on 100.7 WZLX. (Yeah, he thinks it's weird, too.) You can read his other tepid and not-necessarily-Celtics-related musings over at coltmonday.com.
