With the NHL building an extra day into the schedule for the Stanley Cup finals, we all have more time to dwell on the game one defeat. The Bruins should take an extra day to figure out how to handle Vancouver's physical play and speed, two areas the Canucks excelled at Wednesday.
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How did that happen?
How did the Celtics play almost perfect defense and lose? How did they make 2010 Kobe Bryant look like rookie chucker Kobe Bryant for most of the game and lose? How did the strategy of "make Ron Artest beat us" backfire so soundly? How is it that the Lakers are celebrating this morning and we're feeling like this?
The Red Sox won. The media's wondering how Fenway fans will treat Manny when the Dodgers come to town (Why is this up for debate? Stand up and cheer for him and get on with your life. Without him, we'd still be thinking about 1918. End of story.) And the World Cup continues. But we can't keep a thought in our head that isn't about green and gold or Big Baby or whether Scalabrine will be called upon in Perk's absence. Or whether Ray has found his shot again, or whether KG can put the muscle on Gasol again, or whether Rondo can get the offense back to his pace again. Or anything else. Game Seven tonight. Why worry about anything else?
Hey everybody! Or mostly, hey ladies! So you know how basketball is like so incredibly confusing, what with there being a ball and baskets and large sweaty men (ooh, hot!), and it being way unclear what the object of the game is? And you know how most men are totally into basketball, especially right now because there are some kind of finals going on or something? And even though finals completely sucked in college, and made you study a lot, or at least pretend to study and stuff, apparently they're kind of important in sports or whatever, and everyone is super excited?
We suspected it would happen, but it's official. Kendrick Perkins will miss Game Seven, not because of technicals, but because he tore both his MCL and ACL when he wrenched his knee last night. Yes, the same thing that knocked Wes Welker out for the Patriots' brief playoff run. Perk wants everyone to focus: "I don't want anybody to feel sorry for me...it's not about me. It's about winning the title." This means Rasheed Wallace will probably get the start with big Big Baby minutes off the bench. Hopefully, Perk will have to temporarily put off surgery and recovery because he'll be needed for a large civic event this weekend.
For five games in this series, the team on the losing end could look back and say," if we had just done this {better defense/better shooting/Tonya Harding'ed the refs}, we easily could have won this game." Not last night, brother.
Take a moment to process how you're feeling today, Celtics fans. Odds are good you're never going to feel quite this way again.
The bad news is, if there's one guy in the NBA who could win a game singlehandedly while his teammates stand around like mopes, it's probably Kobe Bryant (yeah, yeah, LeBron, we know you're a regular reader, but still). And Kobe pretty much had to do it all himself last night. But even as he was going on a legendary run - 19 straight LA points, including some shots that cause MIT physics faculty to stay up all night - the Celtics were matching buckets at the other end. Kobe cooled off, as human beings do. The C's...not so much.
We've seen some surreal sights in our time as Boston sportswatchers. And honestly, we thought "Gagne getting a ring" would never be topped. But there we were last night, watching as Doc Rivers sent two and a half future Hall of Famers to the scorer's table, then called them back to the bench, in crunch time in the Finals, because he didn't want to take Glen Davis, Nate Robinson and Tony Allen off the floor.
- The Boston City Council voted 12-1 to approve a new firefighters contract the union and Mayor Menino agreed to on Tuesday. [WCVB]
- It took less than a week for a newly hired MBTA bus driver to break the agency's cell phone ban. [Boston Herald]
Let's take what we can out of this. Since we knew that the refereeing crew was about as bad as it will ever get (they reviewed three plays in the fourth quarter and learned all of them were wrong, now extrapolate that to the 650 calls they make or don't make over the course of the game and we're going to stop now because we're making the exact same face as Kevin Garnett seen here and we're just going to start this paragraph all over again.)
Bostonist never uses the N-word. Some people unfortunately still choose to use it. A yet unnamed member of the Boston Celtics entourage dropped the n-word during Game 2 of the 2010 NBA Finals. We clearly heard it - so did the person who put it on YouTube - being used in an apparently positive way by the speaker (we didn't recognize the voice) as ABC was headed to a break. Surprisingly (to us) the media is ignoring this despite being unable to ignore such pressing topics as Doc Rivers hiding money at the Staples Center. There's a second N-word we rarely use: NASCAR. Yes, the cars riding really fast in circle. Well, we're using it today because 20-year old Sprint Cup driver Joey Logano produced a quote-of-the-year candidate by calling out Kevin Harvick's wife after an on-track incident. Logano said "It's probably not his fault. His wife wears the firesuit in the family and tells him what to do."
We know it wasn't a two-man game. We know that Pierce's defense and Baby's hustle and Rasheed(!)'s good positioning were all part of last night's win. But if you want to say that Ray Allen and Rajon Rondo won that game double-handedly for the Celtics, you can go ahead and do so.
Buchholz pitches great; Celtics must wait
Clay Buchholz must have known basketball fans were watching him pitch last night as his complete-game shutout victory over Baltimore was much more memorable than Thursday's NBA Fnals opener. Buchholz allowed just five hits as he went nine innings in the 11-0 rout. He's now 5-0 with a 0.99 ERA in his last five starts and is 8-3 with a 2.39 ERA in 2010.
Bostonist is ready for Game 2. We think the Lakers are, too. We sure as hell hope the Celtics are also ready to resume the NBA Finals after suffering what Phil Jackson calls a "smackdown" in game one. Of course, the NBA isn't ready to play again until Sunday.
Well. Guess that answers the question of whether the Lakers learned in 2008 that defense is pretty important, and also the question of whether playing in the West softened them up. L.A. came to play last night. The Celtics....sigh.
We're all happy about Daisuke's good start, and outraged about the worst call ever, but baseball takes a back seat today. We've got a basketball game to watch tonight.
We'll start with some shocking news out of Los Angeles: our counterpart at LAist thinks his Lakers won't be able to pull the series off. We wish we could be that gracious and humble. In a rare example of cross-Finals and cross-country camaraderie, we'll be posting the results of a back-and-forth between the sides sometime tomorrow, though we have to admit LAist's pre-concession will take a little of the wind out of our sails.
Everyone did the right thing, and qualified every Finals Preview of the past 48 hours with the technically-correct "well, it might be Phoenix." But come on. As soon as it looked like there was even a chance that the Celtics might be Finals-bound, you had to know that Game One would be in Los Angeles. And so here we go.
Hopefully, the Red Sox weren't planning on going out dancing after their first two games in Philadelphia. Extra innings on Friday, and an hour-and-a-half rain delay Saturday. At least Pat's is open 24/7 for a late night cheesesteak.
OK...did everyone take a deep breath last night? The parade is over, there were no vital basketball events to watch last night, and we just have to bide our time until Opening Day when they raise the banner. Opening Day, by the way, might be the first time Kevin Garnett puts down the trophy.
CelticsBlog and Adam at Universal Hub have pointed us to plenty of reading material today. We thought we'd spotlight some of our favorite bits:
This was just about as sweet as anything could ever be.
Objectively, the Celtics are right where we want them. They did their job and took one in LA, and have two chances to finish the Lakers off at home. Realistically, though, the C's had a golden opportunity - just waiting there - to snatch another game, and thus the series, away from the Lakers last night, but just couldn't finish it off.
12:02: Allen fouls Kobe to stop the clock. He's gone, and so is this game. Anyone who really thinks this LA team can win two at the Garden? We see a Game Six where the Celtics don't dig themselves into an early 19-point hole, and this sucker ends Tuesday night. We'll keep our fingers crossed...
NOTE: We're going to try to liveblog the Finals again tonight, so check in around 9 to make sure everything's working. It may get a little incoherent near the end. We hope so, anyway.
All right, fess up. Who went to bed at halftime?
Bullpen troubles? Late inning collapses? The Sox have been dealing with these issues lately, so the offense did the helpful thing and staked starter Bartolo Colon to a 5-run first-inning lead last night at Fenway. Jason Varitek, woozy and eventually replaced, capped the first off with a 3-run homer (his seventh) and JD Drew (now hitting 1.043 in June) doubled in a run as well.
We, to be honest, had the exact opposite of high hopes for last night's game. The Lakers were going to be in front of their home crowd, energized, with the referees desperate to be on their side to avoid another four-hankie Phil Jackson press conference. And if you'd told us before the game that Paul Pierce would be a train wreck, KG would be way off his shot, and Rondo would get hurt, we'd assume about a 114-91 blowout.
It was night of rest for the hometown teams. The Celtics are leading the NBA Finals 2 – 0 and they’ll be live from The Staple Center tonight for Game 3. If the Celtics were looking for another reason to beat the Lakers, they can look no further than Lamar Odem.