2010 NBA Finals preview........ Congratulations to the Boston Celtics, the Los Angeles Lakers, and perhaps most of all congratulations to the NBA for again having the fortune of a marquee series for their Finals.....employees in the NBA marketing department can take extra time off now as there is no promotional campaign needed to drum up interest in their Finals this year as Celtics-Lakers writes itself/sells itself....


How, for a 2nd time in 3 years, did we get here?!?!


For Boston, a team that IMO had been inexplicably dismissed as a legit contender, switches were flipped into Championship Mode since the Cavs destroyed them in Game 3 of that series in Boston......C's went on to win the next 3 games and eliminate King James and needed just 6 games to eliminate the defending Eastern Conference Champions Orlando Magic (side note Orlando the collective I told you so you heard after you were eliminated came from up north where Canadians already knew Wince Carter was not the man to lead you to the promise land)......for LA it was a difficult-opponent sandwich as the first and third rounds provided worthy foes in OK City and Phoenix while the Jazz played the role of easy-to-digest meat in the middle.....what was once thought to be the Road To Repeat has become the Road To Redemption for KB and the Lakers.....they vanquished playoff ghosts of Los Suns and now have the Celtics next on their revenge tour....


Let's start with a look at the Boston Celtics......this team got Kevin Garnett back healthy to start the season (remember now he was injured for all of the playoffs last year) and romped to a 23-5 start, but then a very pedestrian 27-27 finish to the final 54 games had many proclaiming this teams run to be over and they pointed to age, and perhaps a misfire in adding Rasheed Wallace as the culprits......what was forgotten in all of that is the fact that the Celtics have won every single playoff series that KG has been a part of (4-0 en route to 2008 Championship and currently 3-0 in these playoffs) and that this veteran team was built for the post-season and was never going to put emphasis on the regular season like most teams need to.....this team has been their best on the road in fact all year so a high seed was not paramount to them.....this is a team who somehow had home losses this year to the non-playoff Rockets and the lowly lowly 76ers, Nets, Grizzles, Wizards (YIKES)......

Boston is very balanced on offense getting anywhere from 14.9 to 19.1 points per game from Paul Pierce, Jesus Shuttleworth aka Ray Allen, Rajon Rondo and KG plus contributions from Kendrick Perkins, 'Sheed aka Rasheed Wallace, Tony Allen, Big Baby Glen Davis, and recently even Nate Robinson.........LA offers 2, at times 3 7-foot shot blockers at the rim so IMO it is imperative that KG be able to knock down the 12-18 foot jumper that he will be open for as A) that is of course a great way for Boston to score and B) if he can hit that shot it will force his defender to come out and guard him 12-18 feet away from the rim thus leaving likely only one 7-footer guarding the rim and the Celtics can handle that - they just went through Dwight Howard who is a premiere 7-footer

This team is a step back on defense from the 2008 squad, but that is hardly a criticism as the 2008 team was on a historic level as far as one of the best defenses ever.....absolutely they best I have seen in my 34 years so to only be one notch below that is still a VERY high level of D......Rajon Rondo and Kendrick Perkins have raised their games 3 notches since the 2008 Championship team.....RR has gone wherever he wants and created whatever he wants for this offense in this post-season (amazing to think back to his early days when teams were sluffing off of him by 6-8 feet to insist that he shoot a jumper, and then they would just turn to the basket and prepare for the inevitable rebound) and all year Perkins has been far more aggressive on the offensive end plus he has upgraded from good, to terrific defender (does need to be more disciplined at times as he will pick up ticky-tack touch fouls that sometimes lead him into foul trouble aka bench time)

The Celtics are a rare and unique team on defense as most teams will try to limit something you do well - example the Suns tried to take away Kobe and let Artest have to beat them or most teams will either try to defend the 3 against Orlando or pack-the-paint to defend Dwight Howard but the Celtics look top attack EVERYTHING that you will try to accomplish - they will not pick their poison, rather they will be physical and try to be the aggressors on that end of the floor to try to disrupt anything/everything you are trying to do

A Celtics double team under the regime of Doc Rivers is coming at you aggressively and with a higher level of physicality then you have seen before.......we saw LeBron James looking like Adrian Peterson out there against Boston.....Peterson is a premiere Running Back in the NFL and is built like a tank but when the physical contact comes he often has the ol' fumble-itis and James looked like that while trying to deal with the Celtics defense........Kobe Bryant is such a different animal - C's fans will point out that this unit just went through D-Wade and Bron Bron so Kobe is the next "victim" but KB is a special player in that he welcomes the double-team and actually is able to attack it with the right pass, or as we saw in the Suns series when the game is on the line KB will beat the double team himself


The mention of KB is a good way to segway to our look at the Lakers.......

The 2008 Lakers were a finesse team who had the Celtics impose their will on that series and there was no answer for LA.....this unit significantly different.....I am a believer that if Andrew Bynum was healthy right now there are zero teams on this earth that could beat LA in a 7-game series, but the reality is that he looks more like a 35 year old vet with limited mobility/ups which does bring the Lakers back to the pack.......

I do believe in the balance that Boston has on offense but it surely will not be able to put the same pressure on the Lakers defense that a 12-seconds-or-less/3-point shooting fiends offense like Phoenix brings....the one thing that will carry over is the defensive rotation out to the 3-point shooter did improve as the Phoenix series went on for LA, and an opponent like Boston will still demand that you rotate hard/aggressively/on time to shooters like Pierce/Allen/'Sheed/Rondo

I think we would agree that this series could certainly go 6-7 games.......in a 6 game series the Lakers will get 4 great games from Lamar Odom, Ron Artest, Derek Fisher, Andrew Bynum plus at least 4, likely 5 great games from Pau Gasol and they also have #24, the Black Mamba, who....uhmmm.........well he will be amazing every game

A major change for the 3-time Western Conference Champs will be the rebounding that Boston brings to the table......even with limited mobility LA will need Bynum to really clear the glass along with Gasol - plus Odom and Ron Ron will have to at least match the Celtics on rebounds......Lakers have a chance to be better the Boston in several areas but Boston will try to negate some of that by dominating the boards


Who will hoist the Larry O'Brien Championship trophy?!?!

At the end of the day I really believe that LA will have an "easier" time of scoring vs Boston, then Boston will have trying to score on LA........easier in in quotes because of course it will not be easy but I just believe that Kobe is the best facilitator on the offensive end who contributes to winning better then anyone we have seen since Michael Jordan was racking up multiple 3-peats in Chi-Town.......

For me any NBA Finals evaluation/analysis has to include the MASSIVE (IMO) advantage that the home team has.....in this case LA.......the NBA is the only sport that changes its format in the Finals.....every other series goes 2-2-1-1-1 but the NBA Finals goes 2-3-2 meaning LA will get Game 1 and Game 2 at home (standard procedure there) but then go to Boston for Games 3,4,5 and then back to the Staples Centre for Games 6 and 7......Having Game 7 at home is nice, but Game 7 could be played on Mars and it wouldn't matter IMO.....Game 7 is a 1-game scenario where anything could happen and anyone could win......for me the real prize here is Game 6 in LA......if you agree with me that a split of the first 2 games in LA is a worst-case-scenario for the Lakers, and if you also agree that LA will get at least 1 of the 3 middle-games in Beantown then that means LA is down 3-2, again this is my worst-case-scenario, but they get to come home for 6 and 7 .........if the Lakers can one-up that scenario then that means coming home for 6 and 7 with a 3-2 lead giving the Black Mamba 2 chances at home (where LA is 8-0 in the post-season) to get his Shaq-less Repeat, and most importantly put himself at only one Title below Jordan as the Best-Ever debate will surely rage on.....

Most amazing thing for me in the 2008 Finals was the Celtics dominance of the 3rd quarters......the series was lost for LA in that frame and the surprise was that tells the story of the halftime adjustments Doc Rivers made trumped any adjustment Phil Jackson tried to make which was a head scratcher for me.......we know Kobe/Phil/Fisher will be placing their usual emphasis on the last 5 mins to end the 2nd quarter and the first 5 mins of the 3rd quarter and if LA points to one area of immediately needed improvement from the 2008 series it will be that above all else.....

I wish I had the you-know-what to predict a Lakers sweep, and to be honest folks if Bynum was healthy I would be, but the respect I have for the 2010 Boston Celtics, plus the fact that Bynum is banged up, does lead me to give the Celtics 2 games in this series.........we will see a scene similar to the pic on the left as the Lakers repeat as Champs 4 games to 2

craig.ballard@hotmail.com