I often wonder what opposing teams, their beat reporters and
bloggers
are saying about the Celtics after playing the Celtics. Here's a dose
of 'enemy chatter' from Dallas.
This Boston squad was dead, pronounced, autopsied, and buried months
ago. What we have here is a team of undead soldiers. Kevin Garnett walks
again in the Romero mold, lacking the quickness, explosiveness, and
general transcendence of his previously human self. But he’s as
belligerent a defender as ever, and he hounded Dirk into plenty of tough
shots. Paul Pierce and Ray Allen are perhaps a bit more self-aware in
their second chance at life. Both are pained by the limits of being the
walking dead, but they tirelessly carry out the goals of their mortal
lives. Rajon Rondo follows the contemporary Danny Boyle model: a
relentless, physically intimidating, quick, reactive, and utterly more
frightening force. These guys have unearthed themselves and they’re
hungry for brains.
Zombies or not, dead or undead, the Celtics are a better defensive team than the Mavericks. It showed last night and should there be a rematch in the Finals, it would be the glaring difference between the two teams. A difference that would put Boston over the top.
when Rajon Rondo started to exploit the speed of Jason Kidd helping to
land the knockout blow against this Dallas team.
Only compounding the
fact that Kidd was slow on defense was the final miss cue on offense
that led to a turnover in the waning minutes of the game with the
Mavericks desperately needing a score to try to even the game. Give
both teams credit, they played amazing defense all night but when it
really mattered Boston turned up the heat on the Mavericks and they
couldn’t take it. Before the game got to this point, it
would have been nice to see Beaubois come in and put some pressure on
Rondo. Instead, Dallas let him drive and dish his way to a
Boston victory.
You can fault Jason Kidd all you want, but prior to the closing minutes, I thought he was having a decent game. Calling for Beaubois is blatant hindsight analysis. The Mavs were also struggling offensively in the final minutes and needed their table-setter.
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