A Mid-Series Meditation

Due to vacation in New Orleans this weekend, we asked the Celtics die-hard fan that you know and love, Jeffrey Coots, to post some personal thoughts as the defending champs find themselves once again caught in a first-round dogfight.

Makes even more sense after last night's double - OT thriller:

"After Ray's shot fell with two seconds left to seal the win on Monday night, the knot that had been growing in my stomach throughout the fourth quarter settled a little deeper in my gut. Not that I needed a physical manifestation to remind me that the Celts were no longer the team to beat in the Eastern Conference. Unable to sleep after such a terribly executed game, I was left to wonder what else my gut was trying to tell me? If only I could channel dubya or Stephen Colbert, then maybe I could get a good night's sleep during round one. Here's what the sheep and I have come up with so far:

In Game 1 we saw Ronda and Pierce play pretty well, with Ray struggling to find his shot the whole night. Obviously Rose took over the main stage, answering every good play by Rondo with a layup at the other end, but Gordon and Salmons didn't really have much of an impact. They looked like what we'd expect from the Baby Bulls in their first road game of the playoffs. Nobody anticipated Rose would outplay Rondo like that, but most people would also doubt that Rose can maintain this level throughout the whole series (See: Game 2). All in all, Boston played pretty well and I thought we should have won that game -- and likely would have if Pierce didn't miss a key free throw at the end of regulation.

For game 2, Rondo gets hurt after responding to Game 1's loss with a solid performance in the first quarter, but Starberry's a no-show and Ronda has to play hobbled for the entire second half. Pierce looks tired after the first quarter, settling for jumpshots and giving up on possessions at the other end. Ray starts slow...again. Then Powe tweaks his knee (we later find out he's out for the year with a torn ACL), and Perk gets his third foul two minutes into the second quarter, leaving Baby on the court to make his way towards a team-leading 21-shots for the night. With Garnett already in street clothes, dapper as they may be, this is basically the perfect storm for the Celts to find themselves down 0-2 for the series, and I'm thanking my lucky stars that the coaching staff wasn't complacent and didn't wait until year two of the Garnett Era to make a serious run at the championship (Did I just compliment Doc Rivers?).

There was actually one sequence in the second quarter where the Bulls were forcing the Celts to run their entire offense through Blackjack Baby, and he took 5 shots in 8 possessions. Mixed in there we had Starberry throwing a pass out of bounds to Eddie House, which he stupidly tried to save, starting a 4-on-2 break the other way. I remember looking to my Dad and saying "This is not how you win playoff games."

The Bulls, meanwhile, have all the momentum going into halftime and Gordon continues to explode in the second half, while Miller and Salmons are running the floor and taking advantage of Boston's shitty transition defense. This is also the point in the game when I realized just how much I hate Joakim Noah. Does anyone on the Chicago coaching staff think he should be putting his finger to his lips to hush the Boston crowd in game 2? Has he seen the opening credits to The Departed with footage from the busing riots? If he keeps shit up I wouldn't be surprised if he gets a beer dumped on him heading into the locker room after the game, maybe even halftime if we're lucky.

Ultimately Ray saved the day again with solid shooting in the second half and some last second heroics, but the Celts got outplayed the last three quarters and should have lost that game. If you're the Bulls, and you're able to convince Boston to set Blackjack Baby loose on the floor, you've gotta be disappointed to lose that game.

The only challenge for the Bulls seems to be figuring out how to share the ball so that they can be firing on all cylinders. If they find their comfort zone at home and win 2 out of 3, all they have to do is steal one more game in Boston to advance. Scary.

Looking back at earlier predictions:
"Even without Kevin Garnett, the match-ups don’t work for the Bulls. Is Ben Gordon better than Ray Allen? Is John Salmons better than Paul Pierce? Is Derrick Rose better than Rajon Rondo? No, Hell No, and Not Till Next Year."

After two games I'm felling like: Maybe this year, if so we're in trouble, and one out of two ain't bad. This is my hoops nightmare. "

Play-Off Predictions in the Key of Cliche

The world of NBA playoff analysis is full of stale aphorisms and the unimaginative commentators who love to repeat them.

Experience matters. Defense wins championships. Don’t worry, Tracy’ll be back next year.

Sure these statements are generally true, but who wants to hear them for the umpteenth year in a row. And what about the really interesting scenarios that act as exceptions to the rule? Scenarios like…

Defense wins championships…except when you’re the Utah Jazz playing Michael Jordan in the ’98 finals during which you can hold home court advantage, execute a solid game plan, put in the team defensive effort of your life, and he will still stab you in the neck because Michael Jordan is a basketball machine who lives to murder the dreams of his adversaries.

Well in the spirit of trying something new while still giving a nod to convention, I figured I’d take a crack at breaking down the playoffs using an equally pervasive yet inane tradition: political clichés!

Nobody does the tired and supposedly astute like the DC elite. So here are some of their favorite phrases used to shed light on the newly released match-ups:

Round 1
All politics is local...

Long-time Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill’s famous maxim supposedly came out of a lesson from his father, a colorful Irish pol in Boston, to never lose touch with your constituency. The idea is simple: while politicians often get caught up in peripheral matters, elections are won on basic, local issues. Kind of an appeal for electoral common sense.

Sometimes is best not to get too analytical in basketball too. The first round looks pretty straight-forward:

The Cavs and the Lakers will both win easily, because they are excellent, they hold home court, and they are both playing teams that stink and hate each other. Both Utah and Detroit will sneak one at home, but that's it. Boston and Orlando should also roll, because Chicago and Philly simply don’t have enough talent to compete in a seven-game series. Even without Kevin Garnett, the match-ups don’t work for the Bulls. Is Ben Gordon better than Ray Allen? Is John Salmons better than Paul Pierce? Is Derrick Rose better than Rajon Rondo? No, Hell No, and Not Till Next Year.

Dwayne Wade is good enough to beat the Hawks by himself. You can doubt it if you want, but I'm not sure you do…

Blazers-Rockets is interesting, because Ron Artest is likely to do as well as anyone checking Roy, but how can you get behind Houston in this one? The Blazers have a great home crowd, a great coach, a deep bench, and the best player in the series.

I’d love to take the City of New Orleans against Denver, but I recently saw them lose a game with play-off implications to the Golden State Warriors, so…no thanks.

Only the Mavs seem poised to upset the expected order. And I only say that because (1) Jason Terry looked ludicrously hot on Wednesday night and (2) a lot of the problems that Dirk has had over the past few years, and by extension the problems of Dallas as a whole, have struck me as principally psychological.

Ever since losing to Wade in the Finals, losing to BD in the first round, and receiving the most emasculating MVP award of all time, Dirk has looked shook. In the past, those kind of public humiliations have occasionally motivated players to elevate their game to a new level. But Nowitzki isn’t Michael Jordan. He’s an introverted, German oddball, and all the negative scrutiny changed what he was capable of as a player.

The pressure is finally gone, though, and the Mavs look like they’re having fun again. And when it’s on, Dirk’s high-release jumper is still one of the only truly unstoppable moves in basketball.

Plus, the Spurs just feel old. Of course, a solid counter-argument would be that Tony Parker is going to incinerate Jason Kidd all series long, but I doubt that it will be enough.

Cavs over Pistons in five.
Miami over Atlanta in seven.
Orlando over Philly in six.
Botson over Chicago in seven.
Lakers over Utah in five.
Portland over Houston in five.
Mavs over Spurs in six.
Denver over New Orleans in seven.

Round 2
Some candidates fight best with their back against the wall…

Remember two winters ago, when the Republican presidential nomination looked like a two-man race between Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee (with Rudy “Benito” Guiliani as the tantalizing sleeper pick)? Then the ‘Live Free or Die’ State interceded, and a Mavericky Come-Back Kid named John McCain came out of nowhere to seize the crown.

Every DC pundit with a press pass opined on McCain’s ability to campaign best when he was cast as the underdog. And to a certain degree, they were right.

Well, the most exciting match-up of the second round could definitely end up being the Orlando Magic against the suddenly-underdog Celtics. Can't you hear the Doug Collins tidbits about how this adversity has galvanized the Boston locker room? Can't you visualize Kevin Garnett on the bench in street clothes, howling at the jumbotron after a Kendrick Perkins dunk? Can't you imagine a 30 point game from Rajon Rondo?

And doesn’t Orlando seem a little soft to be twisting the knife against the defending champs? I mean, I know Dwight Howard is a “dominant big man”, but I think he’s the first “dominant big man” that I’ve ever seen get out-scored and out-rebounded by David Lee and Robin Lopez in consecutive games in the last week of the season.

I’ll take the team with the Win-One-For-The-Manically-Competitive-Gipper narrative.

In other news, I have to believe that the Cleveland will handle their business at home against the Heat, and I’ll take Denver over Dallas. Not that I like Denver. Just that their flaws seem less glaring than Dallas’s.

The Blazers-Lakers match-up is intriguing, as every print columnist has already mentioned, but I just can’t see it this year. Blake is too slow to exploit the Fisher/Farmar combo, Pryzbilla is too limited to bother Gasol, and I still get the feeling Lamarcus Aldridge is a little too…uh…emotional to control a play-off series.

Cavs over Miami in five.
Boston over Orlando in six.
Lakers over Portland in seven.
Denver over Mavs in six.

Confernce Finals:
Elections are won by turning out the base…

Back to basics. Sometimes the better team is just better at doing what they do than you are at stopping it.

Remember how that whole comeback kid tactic that had worked against Mitt Romney fared once McCain went up against Barack ‘The Real Deal’ Obama? Not so well.

Who exactly is going to guard LeBron? Is it (a) Paul Pierce or (b) no one? Neither of these is a good scenario for Boston, since they’ll also be counting on Pierce to carry a significant load on offense. Simply put, the Cavs win this series, because they have home court advantage, a much deeper bench, more flexibility offensively, and the best player on Earth.

The Lakers have similar advantages out West. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Nuggets got a game or two with particularly explosive performances from Carmelo or J.R. Smith, but you got to think that, at this point, the Black Mamba will be smelling another title shot.

Can snakes smell?

Cavs over Boston in five.
Lakers over Denver in five.

NBA Finals:
No contribution is too small…

The saying seems particularly apt in politics these days, after seeing the Obama campaign outcompete a pair of fundraising juggernauts by collecting thousands and thousands of $10 and $20 checks from all over the country.

The saying also seems appropriate for a match-up between two dominant teams that have relied on their benches all season long. Of course both of these teams have singular talents, but it is also the Varejao hustle plays and the random threes from D-Fish that got these teams here.

To some degree, we know what we will get (or at least what we should get) from Kobe and LeBron. But will Odom finally step up and demonstrate his superior athleticism on the big stage? Does Delonte West have a few crucial shots in him? What is Trevor Ariza capable of when the money is on the table? Could J.J. Hickson get in the mix with a rebound or two? In a series that will likely see dozens of different line-up permutations, there’s a lot to be intrigued by.

Of course, none of this is likely to matter too much in the final two minutes of these games. At that point, it all comes down to the whole reason we watch these play-offs to begin with: Kobe vs. Lebron. The two best closers in the world in a game with serious legacy implications.

I’ll take the the King.

Cavs over Lakers in seven.

The Chip Comes Back To Tobacco Road

If you’re a young college basketball player today, would you rather win a National Championship in front of millions or run the break with President Obama?

Obviously you take the championship, but the choice might give you a surprising amount of pause. After all, we’re not talking about Dick Nixon here. This is Barack, America’s first black President and arguably the nation’s most inspiring politician in forty years. Wouldn’t the opportunity to play pick-up against a world leader with a jump shot hold some allure?

Well, if you’re the North Carolina Tar Heels, you’ll never have to worry about a choice like this. You can just have your cake and eat it too.

Late last April, with vitally important primaries in hoops-obsessed North Carolina and Indiana on the horizon, President Obama received a much needed boost in the press by getting in some high-profile run with the Tar Heels. Of course, back then the President was still a Senator, and the Heels were still smarting from a disappointing Final Four exit, resigned to the notion that half their starting line-up would be playing in NBA uniforms in 2009.

A year later, everybody from that pick-up game is feeling pretty damn good.

On Monday night, Roy Williams’s ball club ended their season exactly where they started it: as the consensus best team in the land. Carolina dismantled Michigan State from the game’s opening whistle. They went straight at the Trojan big men, banging the ball inside to Tyler Hansborough and Deon Thompson. Wayne Ellington rained high-arching jumpers from beyond the arc. Carolina even got an impressive performance the baby-faced freshman Ed Davis, who notched eleven points in 14 minutes and offered a tantalizing view of what future might hold in Chapel Hill.

The game’s most important performance, however, came from Ty Lawson, who demonstrated once again just how dominant a superior guard can be at the college level. The lightning-quick junior dictated the pace of play at will, turning the national championship game into a frenetic, forty-minute track meet. Once Lawson got going, Michigan State never had a chance.

Carolina won because they played their game effectively. They dominated because they took a page out of President Obama’s playbook and turned their supposed greatest weakness into a strength.

Having heard all week that their defense was inconsistent and even lazy, the Tar Heels applied suffocating pressure to the Spartan backcourt. Lawson had seven steals in the first half. Seven. He picked up one more in the second half to set a championship-game record.

The Tar Heels also gave the President another boost on Monday: Obama was on record picking them to win in his ESPN-televised bracket.

Hoops has often had a slightly political shading at ‘The People’s University’. Dean Smith is revered in the Old North State for his two NCAA championships and his eleven Final Four appearances. But North Carolinians also remember him for the courageous stand he took on integration in the state. They remember Charlie Scott and when the coach spoke out against the death penalty and the war in Vietnam. Some of them even still hold out hope that Dean will run for office himself.

The Tar Heels are a cultural obsession in a state with a complicated history. In March of 1995, North Carolinians fell in love with Jerry Stackhouse, Rasheed Wallace, and a UNC team that came damn close to earning Smith a third title just before his tearful retirement. Two years later, they re-elected Jesse Helms to a fifth term in the US Senate.

This past November, Barack Obama carried that same state with the complicated history by less than one percentage point of the vote. Along with Virginia and perhaps Indiana, North Carolina was the most impressive pick-up in the candidate’s electoral landslide. The state now has a Democratic governor, eight Democratic congressmen in Washington, and clear Democratic majorities in both houses of the state legislature. As for Mr. Helms’s old seat? Despite a costly and bitter campaign from her incumbent opponent, a Democrat picked that up too.

As the political landscape of North Carolina changes, it is the enduring success of Tar Heel basketball that remains a constant.

Just another one of those ‘have your cake and eat it too’ situations.