Seven Notes for Game 7
Saturday, June 19, 2010Posted by Jeremy Conlin
I have way too many thoughts about the 2010 Finals to collect them all in any coherent way. Instead of writing a traditional column with a beginning, middle, and end, I am simply going to assemble a series of semi-related notes that should give you an impression of how I feel about the series, and specifically Game 7. And if you don’t get any strong impressions, I should probably quit writing and become a greeter at Wal-Mart. Here are 7 Notes for 7 Games:
I.
20 years from now, we’re going to remember Game 7 of the 2010 Finals as one of the most memorable games in the history of the league. I really believe that. Not necessarily one of the BEST games, or one of the GREATEST games, but one of the most MEMORABLE. Because frankly, it wasn’t a particularly well-played game. Together, Boston and LA combined to shoot 36% from the floor and 28% from three-point range. The best player on the floor, Kobe, battled through one of the worst shooting performances (6 for 24 from the floor, 0 for 5 from three) in his career.
However, from a intense, dramatic, and suspenseful standpoint, Game 7 of the 2010 Finals ranks up there with (and probably exceeds) Game 5 of the 2005 Finals (The Robert Horry Game), Game 5 of the 2007 Eastern Finals (LeBron’s 48 Special), Game 4 of the 2002 Western Finals (Robert Horry’s Game-Winner vs. Sacramento), Game 7 of the 2000 Western Finals (Portland’s collapse vs. Los Angeles), Game 5 of the 1997 Finals (MJ’s Flu Game) and Game 7 of the 1998 Eastern Finals (Chicago vs. Indiana – more on this later) as the most dramatic and memorable playoff games of my lifetime. I don’t have any kids, but one day when I do, and I’m telling them about the most unforgettable basketball games of my life, Game 7 of the 2010 Finals will be one of the first ones I mention.
II.
If I plan on writing or discussing a basketball game in an in-depth and intelligent fashion (like most playoff games), I always make a point to watch the game from beginning to end before I even THINK about glancing at a box score. That way I can form my own opinions about which players stand out in a good way, which players stand out in a bad way, which players get lost in the shuffle, and which players ultimately didn’t matter.
However, this Game 7 box score threw me for a loop, and might serve for all eternity as a shining example that stats don’t tell the whole story. After watching the game and looking at the box score, I only saw two individual stat lines that made complete and total sense: Kobe’s and Ray Allen’s. And for obvious reasons, I feel, no? Both missed a ton of shots, neither was able to really get it going offensively, and it showed in the box score. Kobe was 6-24, Allen was 3-14.
However, there were two players that had lines in the box score that really confused me. For instance, if I told you that Ron Artest shot under 40% from the floor and the Lakers actually got outscored in the 46 minutes he was on the floor, you probably wouldn’t believe me. But the box score says what it says. Artest shot 7 for 18, had just one assist and four turnovers, and had just two defensive rebounds. Now, does that even begin to tell you what kind of impact Artest had on Game 7? Of course not. He carried the Laker offense in the first half when Kobe and Gasol couldn’t get anything going, kept them in the game, and then hit probably the biggest shot of the game to extend the lead back to six after Rasheed had hit his desperation heave at the other end. He played great defense, forcing five turnovers, and played with great energy, grabbing three offensive rebounds and getting to the line five time (his 2nd-highest total this postseason).
The other confusing line in the box score? How about Paul Pierce? Do you think his 5-15 shooting performance with just 2 assists and 3 turnovers accurately portrays his contributions to the game? I vote no. If you look deeper, you’ll find that he had 10 rebounds (9 defensive rebounds – led the team), and plenty of them were in traffic. Early in the game, Los Angeles was killing Boston on the offensive glass (and finished with 23 O-Rebounds as a team), but Pierce had a nose for the ball and got Boston the possessions they needed. As strange as this may sound, Boston is one of the deadliest transition teams in the league, because Rondo is so dynamic in the open court and Allen and Pierce are both super-adept at spotting up for threes on the fast break or secondary break. If Boston is getting stops and running, they can beat anyone. Early in the first quarter, they were forcing misses, but they couldn’t secure rebounds and get their running game going. Once Pierce (and Glen Davis, who must be mentioned here also) started crashing the boards, it allowed Rondo to get out on the break and create easy points for Boston. If not for Pierce, Boston wouldn’t have had a halftime lead, LA might have ended up with 30 or 35 offensive rebounds, and it would have been curtains for the Celtics much sooner than it was.
III.
Celtics fans will complain that if Perkins hadn’t gotten injured, Boston would have won the series, and they do have a fairly good argument. Perkins got injured six minutes into Game 6 and Boston never recovered. It wasn’t so much Perkins’ presence on the court that was missing for Boston, it was the emotional and psychological effect of watching a teammate get hurt like that in a big game. After Perkins left, Boston was noticeably different. It was like the fight had been taken out of them. Yeah, they lost by 20, but LA’s biggest push came at the end of the third quarter and into the fourth when they stopped a Boston run and pushed the lead from 17 back up to 25, and most of it came off of penetration by guards or deep paint catches by Gasol, two elements that Perkins is very good at limiting.
In Game 7, Perk’s absence was even more noticeable. The Lakers had 7 offensive rebounds on the first two possessions of the game, something that wouldn’t happen in a million years if Perkins was in the game. Throughout the entire season, Rasheed Wallace made Boston a significantly inferior rebounding team, and it showed in Game 7.
However, Rasheed added a wrinkle to Boston’s offense that Perkins never gave them. ‘Sheed scored the first two baskets of the game for the Celtics, stretched the floor for Pierce and Rondo to operate, and hit one of the biggest shots of the game, a three to cut the lead to three with just over a minute to play. All told, Rasheed had 11 points and 8 rebounds, and two blocks (21 total), a higher total than Perkins had in any playoff game except three, and higher than any of Perkins’ games in the Finals.
IV:
If I had an MVP vote, mine would have gone to Pau Gasol, not Kobe Bryant. If you look at LA’s four wins in the series, Gasol played as good or better than Bryant did in all of them. In Game 1, Bryant had a 30/7/6 on 10-22 shooting, while Gasol had a 23/14 on 7-10 shooting and added three blocked shots. In Game 3, Kobe scored 29 points, but needed 29 shots to do it (shot 10-29, 1-7 from three); meanwhile, Gasol had a 13/10/4 on just 11 shots and made a number of fantastic defensive plays. In Game 6, Gasol had a near triple-double, sporting a 17/13/9 and had the offense flow through him for most of the game, while Kobe played an amazingly efficient and energetic 39 minutes, scoring 26 points and grabbing 11 rebounds. In LA’s first three wins, Kobe and Gasol were even in Game 1 and Game 6, and Gasol was slightly better in Game 3. In Game 7, however, Gasol was clearly and obviously the best player on the floor for the entire game. He continually abused Boston on the glass, grabbing more offensive rebounds than Boston’s entire team did, got to the line 13 times, and made a backbreaking layup with 90 seconds left (which technically should have been a travel, but that’s beside the point). From a scoring/dominating/evisceration perspective, Kobe’s two best games in the series were both losses for the Lakers (Game 4 and Game 5). Conversely, whenever Gasol played well, Los Angeles won. Whenever Gasol played poorly, Los Angeles lost. Was Gasol the best player on the 2010 Lakers? No. Was he the MVP of the 2010 Playoffs from beginning to end? No. Was he the most important player on the floor in this seven-game NBA Finals? In my opinion, yes. And that’s why he deserved the 2010 Finals MVP.
V:
A few things that will eventually get lost in the shuffle 20 years from now:
-Rasheed Wallace, Ron Artest, Rajon Rondo, and Sasha Vujacic all scored in the final two minutes of an NBA Finals Game 7
-Rondo’s near-steal of Kobe with 15 seconds to play almost gave me a heart attack. It was a two-point game at the time, and the ball bounced directly to Ray Allen. If soccer/tennis rules were in effect (in other words, line is in), Ray Allen picks up that ball and Boston has a chance to tie.
-On second thought, considering how Allen botched 92% of his fast breaks and open layups in this series, he probably would have turned the ball over or missed a left-handed layup off his wrong foot.
-If Boston had won, there wouldn’t have been a clear choice for Finals MVP. Ray Allen won them Game 2, Baby Davis and Nate Robinson won them Game 4, Pierce won them Game 5, and Rondo would have hypothetically won them Game 7 (he was Boston’s best player in that game and hit the turnaround desperation three with 15 seconds remaining). Who would have won the MVP? Could Kobe or Gasol have won it in a losing effort?
-This was the first Game 7 in the history of the NBA Finals that didn’t have a 25-point scorer.
-The Celtics lost the game at the end of the third quarter and into the fourth. From 3:27 left in the third through 9:11 to play in the fourth, the Celtics score 1 point. Boston fans will say the Lakers shouldn’t win a title when their best player shoots 6-24, but the Celtics shouldn’t win a title when they score 1 point in a six-minute stretch.
VI:
After watching every game in this series at least once and twice for most of them, I STILL don’t know which team was better. Overall, I thought that the teams were dead even over the course of seven games, and if anything, Boston was .00002% better. I thought the Lakers were definitively better in Games 1 and 6, I thought that the Celtics were definitively better in Games 2, 4, and 5, and I thought they were dead even in Games 3 and 7. So, if we give each team half a win for the games that I thought were dead-even from an execution and competitive standpoint, the Celtics won the series 4-3. However, that’s not how the NBA Finals work. For instance, if Ray Allen had just been really, really, really bad in Game 3 instead of really, really, really, amazingly, historically bad, the Celtics would have won the series in 5. On the other hand, if Ray Allen had just been really, really, really good in Game 2 instead of really, really, really, amazingly, historically good, Los Angeles would have won the series in 6.
In the end, I thought the series came down to Home Court Advantage, and as an extension of that, officiating. The Lakers got the benefit of the doubt from the refs in Los Angeles, and the Celtics got the same advantage in Boston. If Boston had been the team with HCA in this series, the Celtics would have won the series. I can say that with 100% certainty. Just look at Game 7, when the Lakers won by four, or another way to look at it, two fouls. If Game 7 had been in Boston, the Celtics would have gotten those two whistles, those four free throws, and probably won the game. I’m not complaining about it, I’m just saying that’s how it is. And that’s how it SHOULD be. The Lakers spent the regular season fighting for home court advantage in the playoffs and they got it. The Celtics spent the regular season waiting for the playoffs to role around, and as a result, they had to win Game 7 on the road. The Lakers deserved to win the series because they earned HCA in the regular season. That doesn’t make them a better team in the Finals, but it does make them a better team over the entirety of the season, which should count for something.
VII:
Kobe shot 6 for 24 from the field in Game 7. He played legitimately terrible basketball in the first three quarters. Normally, I would be doing backflips about this. But I’m not.
Why?
Because Kobe’s 4th Quarter of Game 7 might have been the most important quarter of basketball in his entire career.
Was it his best-played quarter? No. Was it his most dominant quarter? No. Was it his most memorable quarter? No. But for arguably the first time in his entire career, he asked himself WWJD? (What Would Jordan Do?), and executed it perfectly.
Remember back in the first section when I mentioned Game 7 of the 1998 Eastern Finals? I was getting seriously flashbacks to that game throughout the 4th Quarter of Game 7 on Thursday. In Game 7 in 1998, Jordan’s shot wasn’t falling (shot 9-25 for the game), the Bulls were getting beat up, and Reggie Miller was going strong, but Jordan decided “Screw it, we’re going to win anyway.” So what did he do? He (along with Pippen) crashed the boards, clamped down on defense, and started a parade to the free throw line. Jordan finished with 9 rebounds and 15 free throws, Pippen added his own 12 boards and 9 free throw attempts (and also won a critical jump ball over Rik Smits) and the Bulls willed themselves to victory.
Kobe was eerily Jordan-esque in the 4th Quarter of Game 7. In the final 9 minutes, Kobe grabbed five rebounds and got to the line nine times (making eight). Kobe, playing on dead legs, couldn’t help his team by shooting the ball, so he found other ways to contribute. He finished with 15 rebounds and 15 free throw attempts and put his team on his back for the final 9 minutes of the game. He played terribly for the first 39, but when the money was on the table, Kobe played as well as he could have given the circumstances. For the first time in his career, Kobe can be compared to Jordan and the comparison actually works. Prior to Thursday night, Kobe’s history of responding after getting punched in the mouth wasn’t good. There were the 2003 Western Finals, 2004 Finals, 2006 Round 1, and 2008 Finals, where when things started to go bad, Kobe either [1] went into Teen Wolf mode and tried to shoot his team back in the game (usually failing) or [2] mentally checked out and tried to expose his teammates for being inferior or soft. The 2009 Lakers never got punched in the mouth, especially not in the Finals. The 2000-2002 Lakers never really got punched in the mouth, and even when they did, it was Shaq that responded, not Kobe. The 2010 Lakers got punched in the mouth and Kobe regrouped and got back in the ring. Kobe’s history of battling through adversity and coming out on the other side smiling was basically non-existent. Until now.
So where does that leave us? Well, Kobe definitively passes a few guys on the All-Time Greats list. Prior to this year, you could make fairly convincing arguments to have Hakeem, Moses, Jerry West, Oscar, and even John Havlicek ahead of Kobe. Now? He’s ahead of all of them. He’s been the best player on two title teams, the best player on two runner-ups, and the 2nd best player on 3 title teams. Also, his five rings now gives him the same amount as Magic, one more than Duncan and Shaq, and two more than Larry Bird. So, if you really, really wanted to, you could make an argument for Kobe ahead of all of those guys. Granted, it would be a galactically stupid argument and I would laugh you out of the room, but still, the argument CAN be made. I mean, Larry Bird won three straight MVPs and was the best player on one of the three best teams ever (The ’86 Celtics). Magic Johnson won three MVPs, three Finals MVPs, and was the best player on one of the three best teams ever (The ’87 Lakers). Duncan was the best player on four title teams, in the company of Jordan, Russell, Kareem, and… that’s it. That’s the whole list. Shaq was the best player on a team that three-peated, in the company of Jordan and Russell, and that’s it. I don't see Kobe ahead of any of those guys.
The way I’ve always made my list is in tiers. As far as I’m concerned, Kobe has leapfrogged out of the Hakeem/Moses/West tier and into the Duncan/Shaq/Wilt tier. That doesn’t make him better than Duncan or Shaq (and I will physically fight anyone who tries to argue against this), but he’s at least IN THE DISCUSSION. So here’s how my list works:
Tier 1:
1. Michael Jordan
Tier 2:
2. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
3. Bill Russell
Tier 3:
4. Larry Bird
5. Magic Johnson
Tier 4:
6. Tim Duncan
7. Shaquille O’Neal
8. Kobe Bryant
9. Wilt Chamberlain
Tier 5:
10. Hakeem Olajuwon
11. Moses Malone
12. Jerry West
13. John Havlicek
14. Oscar Robertson
In the grand scheme of things, Kobe didn’t rise that much. Prior to this title, I would have had him 11th (behind Wilt and Hakeem), but he is significantly closer to Duncan and Shaq than he was 3 weeks ago. Another title next year, and I’m not so sure than Shaq and Duncan’s spots are safe.
The NBA season is over. Only three and a half months until next year.
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