Tuesday, June 10, 2008

We Let 'Em Off The Hook

I'm exhausted and don't have much to say about this one right now. However, there are indeed some things that need addressing, starting with this: it definitely seemed as though the Celtics had the Lakers in a goddamn stranglehold for a little while tonight and now it's not exactly like that, am I right? Halfway through the fourth quarter the dream of taking an insurmountable 3-0 series lead was still very much alive, and now we're kind left with table scraps, in the form of a 2-1 lead with two more games to play in LA. Some bitter scraps to swallow indeed, correct?

Well, yes... er, no... well, you see, the scraps are pretty delicious if you're a Celtics fan and inclined towards optimism. Look, the Lakers barely squeezed a win out of a game that they pretty much had to win and which Bennett Salvatore & Co. were obviously inclined to nudge towards the home team. To say that the Celtics had a subpar offensive game doesn't even begin to cover it: Garnett and Pierce combined for 19 points tonight, and for someone like Pierce--who's probably already started writing a chapter of his autobiography about eating the Lakers alive over the course of his career--it's hard to believe we'll see a repeat of tonight in Game 4.

Look, the Lakers played their hearts out in Game 3 and won, like everyone thought they would. But they only won by six points, and it took Sasha Vujacic scoring more points than Pierce and Garnett together to make it happen. While it would have been so, SO fantastic to take Game 3 and send Boston into a state of anticipatory euphoria, the fact is that very little we saw tonight should change the impression that, from what we've seen, the Celtics are the better team in this series. And for the record, I'll maintain that position regardless of what happens on Thursday.

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