Celts Winning Despite Rivers, Not Because of Him

Don’t get me wrong. I love the fact that my hometown Celtics are closing in on the franchise’s 17th championship. Better yet, they’ve doing it at the expense of the hated Lakers and probably the most despicable player in the game today, not to mention a coach tied with Red Auerbach for most championships.

Those are all good things.

The only problem is the campaign to give Boston coach Doc Rivers so much of the credit. His team is winning the Finals, the logic goes, so he must be a great coach. Let’s not forget, though, that Al Attles once coached the Golden State Warriors to a title and Rudy Tomjanovich coached the Houston Rockets to two titles, and I don’t see anyone recommending them for the Hall of Fame. For that matter, LA won its first Showtime championship under the guidance of Paul Westhead, who has since been ridiculed as an NBA coach. So before everyone crowns Rivers as Coach of the Century, let’s get a few things straight:

Rivers had little or nothing to do with what makes this team so powerful. 

When contrasting this Boston team against the recent entries that lost so many games and competed so fiercely in the Greg Oden lottery less than a year ago, coached by that same Doc Rivers, observers cite three primary reasons for the turnaround:

1. The arrival of Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen to join Paul Pierce to form a modern-day Big Three (and, unfortunately, launch the most over-used phrase in recent memory when describing the top three players of almost every team in the NBA). Danny Ainge drafted and traded for the multitude of players used to bring these stars aboard, and Rivers’ only contribution was to coach his team to such consistently poor records that Boston got plenty of good draft picks.

2. The addition of assistant coach Tom Thibodeaux to correct the team’s most glaring deficiency under Rivers: A porous, pathetic defense against which rival players padded their stats. There’s plenty of credit to spread here, as Garnett brought a manic dedication to defense and hustle, and Pierce and Allen ramped up their defensive games to the point where their coverage of Kobe Bryant draws praise instead of snickers.

3. The determination of Pierce, Garnett and Allen to set aside their personal goals and glory in favor of doing whatever it takes to win a championship. Rivers might claim some minor credit here, at least for fostering a locker room that emphasized teamwork and sacrifice, but let’s face it: the Big Three arrived ready to do what it took, regardless of who was coach. If they hadn’t brought that mindset, Rivers wasn’t likely to have changed it any more than he was able to transform former Celtics like Mark Blount, Ricky Davis and Gerald Green into selfless players. In case anyone forgot, nobody ever accused those Rivers teams of selflessness.

Rather than exploit the deep talent on his bench, Rivers has squandered and crippled it. 

James Posey, Eddie House, PJ Brown, Leon Powe, Glen Davis and Sam Cassell would be prime contributors on any NBA team. But Rivers, after mining them for valuable contributions all season long, had almost all of them racking up more DNPs than points, rebounds or loose balls. Except for Posey and Brown, Boston’s bench players have only broken their sweat during warmups and a few brief appearances when someone was in foul trouble. Most recently, Rivers has been described as some sort of mastermind for inserting Leon Powe in Game 2 and Eddie House in Game 4.

There are two problems with this fuzzy logic:

1. If it made so much sense to play Powe and House (and it does, as each has demonstrated so dramatically), then why did Rivers bury them on the bench for three prior playoff series and most of the Finals so far? When Ray Allen was colder than Mount Rainier throughout the first three series, why no House? When the Celtics were being mauled on the boards by Atlanta’s young leapers, why no Powe? If Kendrick Perkins and Rajon Rondo hadn’t gotten injured against Los Angeles, Powe and House would have stayed exactly where Rivers has long wanted them: firmly riveted to the Boston bench. So much for the coach’s so-called insight.

2. Even in Game 2, when Powe was rammed in 21 points as the Celtics exploded for a 24-point lead over the Lakers, Rivers held his minutes to 15. while the lead was still in the 20s and showing no sign of fading, Rivers took Powe out in favor of Garnett, who hadn’t played particularly well and had already racked up more minutes and needed rest more than anyone. Instead of weaving younger, fresher players into the lineup and keeping Boston’s game at high rev, Rivers kepts his starters out there as LA’s fresher players began to find it easier and easier to get open for jumpers or drive to the hoop. The lead shrunk all the way to two points before Pierce saved the day with some late-game heroics.

3. Through the first three rounds, Boston never went three nights without a game — and they were tough games, for the most part. The first two series went to tense seventh games, and the third went six. And through this entire stretch, even though his bench had provided critical defense, scoring and rebounding all season long, Rivers turned his back on it and rode his starters into the ground playing heavy minutes in a game every other night. This went on for more than three straight weeks. And people wonder why Boston looked so ragged in game after game.

The one aspect of the game Rivers controls, the offense, is one of the NBA’s worst. 

As much as I thirst for Boston victories, they can be painful to watch. Rivers’ offense resembles nothing so much as a pickup game between strangers. You know, those chaotic affairs where no one knows anyone else and everyone passes the ball without any idea of who can shoot jumpers and who needs to post up; centers wind up shooting from the perimeter while guards collide with each other in the post. Which is pretty much how Rivers’ offense works. Watch in most games and you’ll see Ray Allen forgotten on the far side of the court, well away from the ball or any perimeter scoring opportunities. Count how many times Garnett, the Celtics’ tallest player, takes 20-footers  jumpers from the top of the key rather than post up where he can dominate the paint and stay in position for offensive rebounds. It’s no accident Ray Allen hauled down nine rebounds in Thursday’s clutch game; he spends more time down low than Boston’s big men. Count how many times Pierce, the man through whom the offense should flow, touches the ball; if Larry Bird went without touching the ball for as many long stretches as Pierce does, his hallowed 80s teams wouldn’t have made the playoffs much less won them. Many nights end with Perkins and Rondo taking more shots than two of the Big Three; check out the box scores, at least from the games before they got injured, and you’ll see what I mean.

So the next time you hear someone talk about Rivers’ great coaching, remember that the only thing really working for Boston is at the defensive end, where Thibodeaux calls the shots. When they talk about Rivers guiding this year’s Celtics to a championship, remember that he’s the same coach who blew a playoff series his Orlando team was leading 3-1 and whose prior Celtics teams were league patsies.

These Celtics are on their way to a title despite Doc Rivers, not because of him. If Rivers had any conscience at all, he’d be giving half of his hefty pay check each week to Thibodeaux, without whom the Celtics probably wouldn’t have made it out of the first round.

  

Cry Me A Rivers

Rivers nearly blows the game, then blames his players

It reached the point in Game 2 where the Celtics were playing so well I started to believe not even Doc Rivers’ coaching could sabotage them. The lead was up to 22, Kobe and the Kobettes were misfiring from everywhere on the court, and the Lakers were facing the prospect of having to win three games in a row (from a team they haven’t been able to beat all season) or else come back for two games on Boston’s home court down 3-2.

Then Rivers stepped up. With 9 minutes less and the Lakers in total disarray, the Celtics scoring at will, any other coach would have begun working in his bench players. You rest your starters and avoid injury (all the more important when Paul Pierce is playing on a strained knee and Kendrick Perkins is playing on a sprained ankle), you give valuable court time to players who haven’t played yet in the Finals, and you maintain the high energy your players have established. Eddie House, for instance, is the perfect player to insert in such situations: A guy who scrambles all over the court, hustles on every play and makes the defense play for any letdowns with 3-pointers. Guess how many minutes Eddie played?

Instead, Rivers kept his starters on the court (even inserting Kevin Garnett back into the lineup) and then watched as they grew tired. And slowly, steadily, the difference between fresh Lakers and weary Celtics (Phil Jackson give five bench players big minutes, as opposed to Rivers who played only three bench players plus Sam Cassell, who went out of the game after 6 minutes with a wrist injury) began driving past weary Celtics and hitting wide-open 3-pointers.

After the Celtics survived to win 108-102, Rivers opened the post-game press conference by saying his players lost the lead by trying to attempt difficult shots. Although he’s paid to know the game, Rivers apparently didn’t notice that his tired players were getting beaten on passes and loose balls and rebounds.  Somehow Rivers didn’t see that Kobe Bryant was getting into the paint on drives that had been denied to him the first 7 quarters of the Finals by a team that no longer had the legs to stay with him.

The sad part is that this is nothing knew. Ever since the playoffs began, Rivers has inexplicably abandoned the bench that helped the Celtics to a league-best 66 wins. Leon Powe, who powered the win with 21 points, surely wouldn’t have played serious minutes if Perkins hadn’t been injured and picked up early fouls to boot. After all, Leon — who turned in lots of games like this given the chance during the season — had seen more DNPs than Ps throughout the first three rounds as the Celtics struggled against the Hawks, Cavaliers and Pistons. Don’t expect to see much more of Leon unless someone gets injured or in foul trouble, even though he’s Boston’s best inside player. Or unless Rivers gets hit by a bus and someone with half a brain takes over as coach.

Good vs. Evil III: The Phil Factor

There’s no question Phil Jackson is the superior coach in this series (hell, it’s not even close). There’s also no question he’s an asshole. And judging by the events of the last few days, he’ll always be an asshole.

Jackson reacted to Boston’s Game 1 victory by suggesting Pierce had faked a knee injury. He opened tonight’s press conference by blaming the refs. 

First, the knee. Set aside the fact that  Yes, there are players who milk injuries when their seasons go south (see Tracy McGrady and Vince Carter). There are even players who fake injuries to create drama and draw attention (see Kobe Bryant). But no players in a Finals game fake injuries, and especially not a player like Pierce who’d hungered all his career to make it to this stage. What was there to gain? This is a time where players would run over their grandmothers to stay on the court. What player would willing leave?

What makes it worse is that Jackson would make light of a player’s injury. Much is made of Jackson’s rivalry with the late Red Auerbach, as the two are tied for most championships in NBA history with nine apiece. And Auerbach was no shrinking violet. He once punched an opposing owner in the jaw, he ran onto the court to confront a 6-10 backboard destroyer named Darryl Dawkins, and he made few friends outside the Celtics with his rabid determination to win. But Auerbach never ridiculed players on other teams. In fact, Auerbach spent years complimenting and nurturing opposing players in summer camps, all-star games, coaching clinics and the like. Jackson, in contrast, attacks even his own players — witness his psychological assaults on Scottie Pippen during the 2000 playoffs and his assassination of Bryant in his most recent tell-all book. Now, with his team needing to win three straight games at home, it will be interesting to see who he blames next.

After Game 2, it was the refs. Borrowing the blurry prism through which Doc Rivers seems to watch games, Jackson somehow failed to notice that his players rare drove or created contact, settling instead for the perimeter jumpers the Celtics’ defense is designed to allow. The assembled press somehow listened with straight faces, but ESPN’s David Aldridge laughed away Jackson’s whining minute slater in a post-game interview of his own. Maybe he can also send Jackson a tape of Game 2 so Jackson can actually watch it and count the fouls himself.

It’s hard to root for in idiot like Doc Rivers, but it’s even harder to root for him to be undressed by a jerk. Even a jerk with 9 titles to his resume.

Radmanovic’s end run

If nothing else, the Celtics’ victory spared everyone the familiar NBA spectacle of another ridiculous game-deciding blunder by referees. Never mind the contact when Vladimir Radmanovic bumped James Posey to steal a pass (that happens only every four seconds in any NBA game, although Jackson would probably whine about it); but what about the four or five extra steps he took in ramming home the breakaway layup that closed the gap to 4 points? It’s not like the refs were screened out on the play; Raddy was all alone in the open court, and besides, there are three different refs with a view of the action. And it would have really stank if the Lakers had won and then the NBA ruled a day later that they should have called the travel, much the way it ruled Derek Fisher had blatantly fouled Brent Barry on the game-tying shot the day after it cost the Spurs the key game of the series. The NBA: Where “my bad” happens (but doesn’t affect the score).

 

Good vs. Evil II: The Kobe Factor

For much of the year – or at least once Kobe Bryant quit complaining about his teammates and management and demanding a trade and started playing the basketball that he’s paid $19.5 million to play – pundits have more or less anointed Bryant the modern-day Jordan. And, in a historic nod eerily similar to 1969, when the press all but crowned the Lakers the champs over the Celtics even before the Finals started, reporters filled newspapers and web sites with stories of an inevitable Lakers’ title and a Bryant legacy – again, all before any players even took the court for Tuesday’s Game 1.

Not only is Kobe Bryant not the modern-day Jordan, and not only aren’t the Lakers assured of winning a title this year and cementing a Shaq-free legacy for Bryant, the Lakers’ biggest obstacle in winning the title may be Bryant himself. Here’s why:

Myth 1: Kobe Bryant has learned the value of playing team ball.

Unless you’ve been in a coma the past half a dozen months, you’ve read and heard reams about this. The Lakers are winning because Kobe has learned to pass the ball. The Lakers are winning because Kobe has learned to trust his teammates. Gone is the player who forced bad shots throughout the 2003 Finals in an attempt to seize the limelight and prove he wasn’t Robin to Shaquille O’Neal’s Batman. Gone is the player who grudgingly entered the 2006 playoffs against the Phoenix Suns passing the ball and helping the Lakers to a 3-1 lead before reverting to his gunning ways as the Lakers lost the next two games and then, in Game 7, famously quit on his team and took only two shots in the second half in a childish effort to show up his teammates as benchwarmers who couldn’t win on their own.

The Truth:

In a close game, with the clock winding down, passing isn’t the last thing on Kobe’s mind — it’s not even on his list. He demonstrated this in the final minutes of close games against the Spurs, even though Gregg Poppovich wasn’t smart enough to double Kobe as the Celtics have done (and as they did with Lebron James) under Tom Thibodeaux. In the Lakers’ infamous Game 4 victory that was sealed when referees ignored a game-winning foul by Derek Fisher in the final seconds of play, the only reason the Spurs were in a position to win was because Kobe had made two consecutive, selfish plays at the other end.

The first came with the Lakers comfortably ahead and needing only to eat up the clock and watch the Spurs whither; instead, Kobe made a hasty drive to the hoop and missed.

The second came when the Lakers had the ball back and, again, were comfortably ahead and needed only to use up the 24-second clock and take a good shot, then wait out the final tense seconds; instead, Kobe took and missed a difficult corner jumper under pressure even though his teammates were less crowded and there was plenty of time to work the ball for a better shot.

Last night, in Game 1 against the Celtics, Kobe stuck to the script for the most part and passed for much of the game as the Lakers slowly took control and led the Celtics by halftime. Not only were Pau Gasol and Derek Fisher LA’s leading scorers, the Lakers were playing so well as a team that they actually gained ground with Bryant on the bench. But late in the second half, as crunch time got closer, Bryant reverted to form and stopped sharing the ball. As Kobe forced a series of shots that missed badly, his teammates could do little more than stand around and watch as Kobe shot his team out of the lead and the game. Why? This brings us to:

Myth 2: Kobe Bryant has put his ego behind him.

The other popular fantasy about Kobe this year is that he tamed the selfish, egotistical drive that steadily unraveled the three-peat Lakers team led by Shaq and that discouraged Kevin Garnett from joining the Lakers (the Lakers were set to deal Lamar Odom, Andrew Bynum and Kwame Brown for Garnett last summer until Kobe’s high-profile criticisms of his teammates and front office convinced Garnett that the last place he wanted to go was the circus in LA, according to today’s New York Post)

The Truth:

Kobe may have learned to say more of the right things, but the mamba has not changed its stripes. The self-absorbed player who so desperately sought the spotlight that he chafed alongside Shaq and used to dramatize supposed injuries and illnesses in an attempt to mimic Jordan’s famous heroics surfaced again last night. It began midway in the third quarter, when Paul Pierce collapsed to the floor with a knee injury and had to be carried off the floor. Kobe went to the bench soon after, and was sitting and watching when Pierce emerged from the locker room minutes later in a flourish that had onlookers comparing him to triumphant returns from injury by Willis Reed and Larry Bird — exactly the kind of moment Kobe had always sought to manufacture. It had to kill Kobe to see that, after all his energetic but fruitless efforts at melodrama over the years. Worse yet, once Pierce had warmed up he drilled consecutive 3-pointers oves Kobe in the closing moments of the third quarter. Until then, Kobe had been shooting more but still more or less within the LA offense. But after Pierce’s flurry ignited the Boston crowd, Kobe spent the final quarter impersonating a human tommy gun. Passing was no longer an option; Pierce was stealing the mamba’s glory, and the only way to steal it back was by winning the game singlehanded — vintage Kobe style. There were three problems with that. One, he was missing as many as he was hitting. Two, when one player is gunning, his teammates stop moving for the ball and wind up standing around watching. And three, teams that stand around are in no position to rebound. The rest of the way, Kobe alternated between forcing up bad shots and passing in desperation once he began to realize his shots weren’t falling. Neither approach worked, as it alternated between ignoring his teammates and giving them the ball when they weren’t in good position to score.

Myth 3: Kobe Bryant has matured and is now a better person.

Instead of ridiculing them in the press, Kobe now buys his teammates dinners. Instead of calling for them to be traded, he praises them to reporters. Kobe is no longer the rape suspect who bought his wife’s forgiveness with a ring the size of a basketball, no longer the player who blamed everyone but himself when the team went on a losing streak in 2001 when Shaq was hurt.

The Truth:

All anyone really knows for sure is that as recently as the pre-season, Kobe was dismissive of Andrew Bynum and the rest of the Lakers’ cast, and derisive of the owner who stuck with him over Shaq and Phil Jackson in 2004.

Can someone’s personality change so profoundly so quickly? Anything’s possible, but nothing in his past suggests that Kobe is anything but a frustrating defeat away from his next public eruption. The only sure thing, when it happens, is that no one will be surprised.

 

Good vs. Evil, or Celtics vs. Lakers 2008

Before I get started, you need to know I grew up in Massachusetts and came of basketball age in the lunchpail Havlicek-Cowens-Silas era. The team that shaped my basketball brain wasn’t pretty. John Havlicek, the highest-scoring Celtic ever, moved like a knock-kneed geek who should have been working at Microsoft.  The only time Dave Cowens didn’t look like he was in the middle of a barroom brawl was when he was sitting on the bench in foul trouble. Paul Silas not only had no jump shot, his set shot looked like the Statue of Liberty. Jo Jo White was a fine shooter who looked like he was fighting off an epileptic fit each time the ball left his fingers. And Don Chaney … well, let’s just say there’s a reason his nickname was “Duck” (no offense, Oregon fans).

Why is this important? Because this was a team short on flash and long on winning. Nothing came easy to them, and yet in two of three years they won titles by fighting their way past the league-darling Knicks (back in the day long since removed when New York boasted talented, selfless players and smart coaches), the domineering Bucks with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in his prime and Oscar Robertson filling in the spaces (the NBA might have chosen Jerry West to be The Logo, but the Big 0 should have been). In other words, this was a working-class team who mowed down more flamboyant opponents. While Oscar was rightly dubbed “poetry in motion,” it was brutish Dave Cowens who dove a dozen feet across the parquet to beat him to a crucial possession in 1974’s title game.

Which brings us to 2008 — and an irresistible duel for a staggering number of reasons:

* No teams have gone head-to-head for more championships in the history of the NBA than the Celtics and Lakers. From West and Baylor vs. Russell and Cousy to Bird vs. Magic, these franchises were born to duel.

* The Bird-Magic decade known as the 1980s spilt fans across the country into one of two camps. No one can watch a Boston-LA series without hating at least one of the teams. Even fans who hate both inevitably hate one more than the other.

* Boston, more than any other team save the fleeting phenomenon known as the early-70s Knicks, is the poster franchise for unselfish, team-oriented sacrifice. LA, in turn, is known primarily for individual achievement at the cost of success — see West, Baylor, Chamberlain, Bryant (more about him in a minute) and glitz (see Dyan Carroll, Showtime, Jack Nicholson, balloons in rafters).

* This year’s Celtics squad only adds to the team’s persona. Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen spent most of their careers excelling on teams that sometimes stunk and always came up short. Joined on the Celtics, they have put their individual goals aside to the point they’ve actually drawn criticism for passing too much. Throughout the regular season, you see see the team’s stars rooting as hard or harder for its bench players as the bench for the starters. This year’s Lakers, meanwhile, are led by a player widely agreed to have driven off the league’s best big man and its smartest coach several years ago so that he could hog the spotlight. He’s spent his career attacking his teammates (when Shaq was injured in 2002, he blamed the ensuing string on losses on everyone but himself, and last summer he lobbied for the team to trade Andrew Bynum, a player now viewed as one of the most coveted centers in the league) and working harder to show them up than help them succeed (witness his quitting at  halftime against the Suns in 2006, refusing to shoot in the second half of a seventh and deciding playoff game that eliminated his team). This year Kobe padded his resume by ripping his team in the pre-season and insisting on a trade, then sleep-walking through the early season as the Lakers racked up losses until Memphis inexplicably handed them Pau Gasol for a few draft picks and a wad of used chewing gum. If you think I’ve forgotten to mention Kobe’s rape charges a few years back, well, they were dropped before the case went to trial and anyway Kobe made up to his wife for his night of sex/assault/whatever with another woman by buying her a ring the size of a basketball. Similarly, he made up to his teammates by buying them dinners this year, so you can see what a warm guy he is.

* Some times the bad guy is the bad guy more for who he isn’t than who he is. Sure, Phil Jackson is a consummate whiner and back stabber (he famously wrote Kobe off as impossible to coach before returning to the Lakers and suddenly declaring Kobe just fine after all), but he’s really not that bad a guy. But he did luck into a career coaching the best players in the league (see Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant) and ringing up easy championships in a watered-down era (let’s face it, the likes of John Starks’ Knicks, Rick Smits’ Pacers and Karl Malone’s Jazz were more pretenders than contenders. Nevertheless his nine titles (six with Jordan and three with O’Neal and Bryant) tie him with the redoubtable Red Auerbach for most by a coach, giving Boston fans and traditionalists everywhere extra incentive to want to see Jackson’s Lakers fall short of giving Jackson more rings than Red.

* Which brings us to Jackson’s opposite number. No drama is complete without conflict, whether in the form of a key injury, traitor, Achilles heel, you name it. In this case the Celtics’ primary stumbling block is their coach, a man who had never won a playoff series until he finally wound up this year with so much talent and heart on his team that the players have been able to overcome his imbecilic coaching. But you can’t count Doc Rivers out, because he works hard. Earlier today I chuckled while reading a series preview that touted Boston bench players like Leon Powe and Glen Davis. Who? Sure, these guys are good, damn good in fact. They powered Boston to innumerable wins throughout the season, and any team in the league would covet them.  But they play (or sit) for Rivers, who won’t even let them off the bench in the playoffs. Although each has enjoyed a momentary cameo here and there, they’ve both gone several games without a single minute of playing time while Rivers has run his starters into the ground, keeping them on the court even when the team was up by 20 and 30 points in playoff blowouts with scant minutes to play.

Finally, we have a morality play: Good vs. Evil. For no fan who outwardly cheers Kobe’s skills can privately overlook his lack of character. No fan who believes in underdogs can root for a coach whose career was built on lucking into the most talented lineups in the league and who never had to rebuild or coach a dying team. Such a matchup isn’t unprecedented. In 1977, Bill Walton’s notoriously unselfish Blazers upended perhaps the most egotistical team ever assembled, the Sixers of Julius Erving, George McGinnis, Lloyd Free and — you can look it up — Joe “Jellybean” Bryant, who halfway into the series announced he should be starting ahead of teammate Steve Mix because “I can beat his face in at any phase of the game.” Of course, nothing in Bryant’s mediocre career, which ended up in Europe, backed up his ridiculous claim. Indeed Jellybean will forever be known not for his limited skills but for his progeny: a son named Kobe whose career has proven him every bit as disloyal to his teammates as his father was to his.

More recently, the “play the right way” Pistons upset the massively dysfunctional Lakers for the title in 2004, and Jordan’s Chicago Bulls put an end to the “Bad Boys” Pistons, a team that set basketball back light years, in the early 90s. Of course, good doesn’t always win out over evil. Those same Pistons won back-to-back titles before Chicago put the stake through their heart, but that’s what keeps you at the edge of your seat for series like these: You know who you want to win, but nothing’s certain until the final buzzer sounds and the balloons fall from the ceiling. Or, as in the case of the 69 Lakers that Russell beat in Lalaland for one final championship in his last year, the balloons don’t fall from the ceiling.

So the stage is set for David Stern’s ultimate wet dream: Celtics vs. Lakers. Pull up a chair and a tub of popcorn. And pour a stiff drink.