Gasol will need to be dominant in order to beat us

[Athanacropolis]

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I am just curious by the answer to this....but what exactly is misleading about your 7 game series with the Hawks?

I mean....my view is that the regular season is one season in itself and the playoffs is another......but you did in fact get taken 7 games by the losing record Hawks. I dont see what is so misleading about that.

Yeah, idrinkrootbeer, don't you know that the fact that "we" went 7 against the Hawks (which we didn't know before!) has a DIRECT BEARING on the upcoming Finals?

[John from Hemet]

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Yeah, idrinkrootbeer, don't you know that the fact that "we" went 7 against the Hawks (which we didn't know before!) has a DIRECT BEARING on the upcoming Finals?

That doesnt answer the question. And you are right it doesnt have any direct bearing on the finals that are about to happen......there just seems to be some sort of justification (that doesn't make any sense) about why the Hawks were so difficult for the Celtics.

The Celts do have home court advantage......so that is a definate plus for them and they are the more physical team by far with Bynum out of the lineup. But the Lakers do not base their game off of that....they play team basketball and good outside shooters, a big who sets everybody else up and can score himself, a excellent bench and the best finisher in the game.

It should be a interesting series no doubt.

[Athanacropolis]

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That doesnt answer the question. And you are right it doesnt have any direct bearing on the finals that are about to happen......there just seems to be some sort of justification (that doesn't make any sense) about why the Hawks were so difficult for the Celtics.

The Celts do have home court advantage......so that is a definate plus for them and they are the more physical team by far with Bynum out of the lineup. But the Lakers do not base their game off of that....they play team basketball and good outside shooters, a big who sets everybody else up and can score himself, a excellent bench and the best finisher in the game.

It should be a interesting series no doubt.

Oh, it'll be the best Finals in at least ten years, no doubt about that. I really can't call it either way--and I'm a Celtics homer!

Everyone knows that the Hawks presented a match-up nightmare because their entire roster was athletic, young, and quick: just the type of team that could sneak up on a team built like the Celtics. Plus, the Hawks were an excellent home team all year, but an awful road team, reflected in how the series played out. Further, it was this Celtics team's first playoff series together. There were still some chemistry issues to be worked out.

People who watched the Celtics all year, and not just the national pundits or fans who could only catch games once in a while on national TV, didn't know this, but a lot of us fans saw difficulty with the Hawks (and the Cavaliers) coming. It's all about match-ups, as I'm sure you know. We saw the Celtics struggle against the Magic and the Wizards this regular season, but put the beat-down on the Mavericks, Rockets, Lakers, and Spurs, in addition to convincing victories against the Hornets and the Suns. Does that mean that the Lakers, Mavs, Rockets, or Spurs are inferior to the Celtics? Or that the Wizards are better? Of course not.

So that's my justification--actually, my explanation--as to why the Celtics had a tough time with the Hawks. I, and many others I know personally and on this board thought the same thing.

Anyway, this'll be an awesome series! Please, come chat here any time--you are a good poster!

[cloverleaf]

Doc has learned that he can turn to Perk and Rondo for 40+ minutes if he has to. With the guys getting a chance to rest up and nothing left but the finals, Doc could just go long with the starters if need be. Then again, if the teams end up running, he'll need the reinforcements and both House and Powe could see their biggest playoff roles yet.

[pfm]

I think something else that is overlooked is that, yes the Lakers did add Gasol since we last played them, but they also lost Bynum who was a great interior defender for them. Offensively Gasol is obviously superior, but plays somewhat of a similar role as Bynum did. He gets a lot of his points on dunks, alley-oops, and offensive rebound put backs, but obviously Gasol does it in a much more effective manner, but at the same time Bynum was definitely much more of a presence defensively. Gasol is definitely the better player and has made a big difference for the Lakers and every mentions that when referring to the past Celtic Laker matchups this season, but forget to mention that they are now without Bynum...should be interesting to see how much of a different Gasol really does make.

[Dr Aki]

bynum and gasol are different animals

bynum couldnt operate the pinch post and face-up and pretty much had a range of 5ft to the basket

gasol can, and unless perkins is successful in denying gasol the ball 16ft out, gasol will be instructed to shoot over the top of perkins

this battle is important in the finals mainly because i believe lakers have an advantage in the frontcourt unless perkins is productive, of which i havent seen a great of productivity from

lakers frontcourt (including ronny) are a lock to score 25-40 ppg, 20-25 rpg, it remains to be seen whether perkins can consistently help negate if not help KG outproduce them

[RJM]

Bottom Line: This is gonna be a hell of a series.

[LakerLegendMikeSmrek]

I think that's just too much focus on Gasol. The Lakers were learning each other, gelling and improving throughout the year. You have to factor in "Normal Improvement" + "Gasol," otherwise you're correct, if everything was as black and white as you laid it out, Gasol does not erase your dominance on the Lakers earlier on. This will be a tight and tough series, and it won't be just because of Gasol, it'll be because of natural progression and the confidence of some the Laker role players. Is that the same Sasha as early in the year? The same Lamar who doesn't have the pressure of being Pippen? Radmonavic trusted to be a starter now, etc., etc. It'll be a good series and I'm surprised that the espn experts all picked Lakers.

Some people are picking Lakers in five. That means Lakers have to steal one in Boston, then win three in a row at home (something that hasn't been done before [I don't think]; if it has been done, it's only been a few times).

And this is assuming that the Lakers are a significantly better team than the Celtics. We can look at statistics to compare: Celtics had the better record, winning nine more games, and having a win margin +3 more than the Lakers. But the Lakers had to play in the tough conference. Well, the Celtics' record against the West was 25-5. The Lakers, meanwhile, only had a 20-10 record against the Leastern conference. Looks like the Celtics win here.

So let's compare head-to-head meetings. In the first game against them we won by 13 points, 107-94. At halftime we were up by 18. In the second game we won by 19 points, 110-91. This was before Chris Wallace gave the Lakers Gasol for a bag of Ruffles potato chips.

So will Gasol completely negate our dominance over the Lakers? Will he not only negate our dominance over the Lakers, but make the Lakers dominant over us? Seems like a bit of a stretch.

So now this brings us to the post-season records. Lakers fans will certainly deploy the "Hawks took you to seven games" argument. Well let's look at the Celtics' and Lakers' post-season records more closely.

Lakers rolled through the finals, first sweeping Nuggets. No surprise there: Lakers swept them in the regular season too, winning games 127-99, 111-107, and 116-99. A huge margin of victory.

Next, Lakers were taken to six games against Utah. They did slightly worse against Utah than they did in the regular season, in which they beat them 3/4 times. All three of these wins against Utah in the regular season were without Gasol. To spell it out for you: A Gasol-less Lakers beat Utah three times in the regular season, but got taken to six games in the playoffs with Gasol on the team.

Next, there's the Spurs. They did better against them in the playoffs than in the regular season, in which the series was split, 2-2. But one of their losses was without Gasol or Bynum. Still, the Lakers did slightly better against the Spurs in the post-season than in the regular season.

So now for the Celtics. The Hawks series was strange. People accuse us of merely squeaking past them. The fact that they took us to seven games is misleading. Nonetheless, we absolutely destroyed them at home, just as we should.

Cleveland split with us in the regular season, and played us as tough as any team in the league. It's no surprise then that they took us to seven games and almost beat us. If there's one team that was capable of doing it, it was them.

In the regular season, we won 2/3 games against Detroit, though they played us tough. This is reflected in our playoff series with them, too.

So if you compare the playoffs with the regular season, things went according to plan. The two deviances are the Hawks winning at home, and the Lakers beating the Spurs faster than they should've. And I think these two reasons are the core as to why people think the Lakers will beat us. The strangeness in our inability to win on the road seems to be solved, however, with two road wins against Detroit. Lakers are looking good in the playoffs, but their record pretty much reflects how they did against those teams in the regular season. Same for the Celtics, except for road losses to the Hawks...

So the main question is can Gasol really make that much of a difference to overcome their struggles against us? One noticeable difficulty the Lakers had with us is their ability to defend us. Gasol has always been known as a horrible defender. So this area is markedly worse than before. So Gasol's offense has to be absolutely dominant for the Lakers to have a chance against us.

So I ask you this: do you think Gasol can dominate against us? I highly doubt he can dominate Perk and PJ Brown, but that's just me. What I'm trying to get at is that it's pretty ridiculous for every ESPN expert to pick against us, some saying we will lose in five games. The ability for them to even make this a series against us will largely rest on whether or not Gasol can dominate against us.

[cloverleaf]

Big Z was a 'tall order' for Perk; Gasol, I think he can handle.

[Ortho Stice]

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I am just curious by the answer to this....but what exactly is misleading about your 7 game series with the Hawks?

I mean....my view is that the regular season is one season in itself and the playoffs is another......but you did in fact get taken 7 games by the losing record Hawks. I dont see what is so misleading about that.

Well people (non-Celtics fans) have mentioned that we barely made it past them. Yes, technically we got pushed to the edge, but the Hawks never had a chance against us. What's misleading is that people think that the Hawks even had a small chance. As if it was teetering on the edge of being another Dallas/Golden State series. But this isn't the case, there was never any doubt that we would win; it was more frustration that we would easily beat them at home, but struggled to beat them on the road.

I mentioned that the playoff match-ups played out similarly to how teams played each other in the regular season; you can say "anything can happen" in the playoffs, but this true only to a minor extent: sure, you have to play the games, but the outcome will likely coincide with how the teams play each other. This is why the Warriors upset the Mavericks: it's not because anything can happen, but it's because during the regular season the Warriors matched-up well against them.

Hawks played us tough in some regular season games, but the fact that they beat us on the road was one of the two deviances I saw that differentiated the Celtics and Lakers playoffs vs. the regular season. You could say that since the Hawks pushed us to seven games, anything could happen in the playoffs. And I said it's misleading to think this because even though they took us to seven games, we still blew them out in every win of ours, which is right on course. So even though there was the deviance in them winning on the road, the series as a whole played out the way it should've, with us blowing them out in four wins.

So what I'm saying is that if we faced the Lakers without Gasol in the finals, we would blow them out. So I guess I really didn't mean that Gasol would need to dominate in order to beat us. What I meant to say is, the Lakers have to be much, much better than they were when we played them to have a chance against us. And yes, they are much better than they were before, but are they that much better that they go from a team that we would've crushed, to a team that will crush us? I just really don't see how we go from being a team that dominates against the Lakers, to a team that will be dominated by them, just by them adding Gasol and having their young players playing better. I don't see how this suddenly makes people think we'll only win once against them this series. And I don't see how Gasol could make the Lakers a better defensive team. Sure, the offense is probably much better, but defense is the most important aspect of championship basketball, and I can't see the Lakers having a better chance at stopping us than they did when we played them.