THE BLURST OF TIMES

FINALS OVERVIEW

OK, OK, let's not overreact here. Yes, the Lakers got stomped as bad as any good team has ever been stomped in a deciding game in NBA history, they were soft, got physically overpowered, were terrible defensively and couldn't find a way to reliably attack the Celtics' defensive scheme. In short, they got wrecked.

But let's not overreact. Basketball's a game of matchups, and some matchups are really unfavorable to you and make you look a lot worse than you are. Going back to my favorite example of this, do you really think Golden State last year was better than Dallas? Sure, head to head, but what if they both played a round robin tournament against every other playoff team? The Mavs would have crushed the Warriors.

Look at Boston this year against Atlanta, who took the Celtics to 7 games. Do you think Atlanta is better than the Lakers? No, they just matched up better. Do you think the Spurs this year, whom the Lakers beat somewhat easily, were substantially worse than the Celtics? I don't. Hell, I think that would have been a great NBA Finals, and I'm not sure who I think would win. Tim Duncan ain't Pau Gasol, y'know?

And the people dogging the Lakers for "not wanting it" enough, give me a break. Yes, Gasol and Odom and others played real soft, but I think physical toughness often gets mistaken by fans as mental toughness. The Lakers are almost entirely a finesse team--Gasol, Odom, Vujacic, Farmar, Radmanovic, Walton, even Kobe. Kobe's tough as nails mentally, but he's mostly a finesse player--if he takes 25 shots, at least 15 of them are going to be jumpers. He's not Dwyane Wade, he's not going to go to the basket time and time again.

So you have a mostly finesse team playing against the most physical team in the league, a team with a really good defensive center (Perkins), an all-time physical/aggressive/tough guy at PF (Garnett), a big and strong SF (Pierce), and a super athlete at PG (Rondo). Heck, these guys even rubbed off on Ray Allen, who played tough and physical defense the whole way through. I don't think they "wanted it more" than LA (with the possible exception of the 2nd half of game 6, when the Lakers looked pretty defeated), I think they're just a lot physically stronger and tougher than LA, and to regular fans, that superior toughness looks an awful lot like superior effort. I think even Gasol played as hard as he could, he just doesn't deal well with really physical defense. Obviously that's an issue going forward, but I don't think it speaks to the degree to which "he wanted it".

KOBE

So does this answer once and for all whether Kobe is as good as MJ? No, that was done over the course of Kobe's career, which left absolutely no one arguing that position. Maybe Kobe's wife. Yes, Kobe completely sucked in the series, but again, don't overreact here. He just got done torching Bruce Bowen and a fantastic Spurs defense, I don't think he forgot how to ball in the one week between series. And I don't think he stopped sufficiently "wanting it".

Allen and especially Pierce played great individual defense on him, but they also had a lot of help from Perkins & KG when Kobe tried to penetrate. I think during Game 4, when they really started to collapse on him whenever he drove, he decided he needed to score on jumpshots and pass on penetration, which was probably the right thing to do. You can't score inside when you have Pierce on your left, KG on your right, and Perkins hovering right behind them for the help shotblock. The problem with passing off penetration was twofold:

(a) The Lakers' shooters (Fisher, Vujacic, Radmanovic, Farmar) were largely cold and surprisingly hesitant to put shots up--how many times did Radmanovic & Fisher pump fake/pass up an open shot? And how many bricks did Vujacic toss up? Your job as a Laker shooter is to make the other team pay for devoting so much of its defensive attention to Kobe, Gasol and Odom, and they did it well all year--but not in this series.

(b) The Celtics really are a phenomenal defensive team. The Laker shooters had a bad series, but that was partially due to how unbelievably fast Boston rotated out to shooters once Kobe or Gasol passed back out. A Vujacic or Radmanovic would appear to be wide open (as they usually are on a team with 3 dangerous offensive weapons), but then someone like Posey or Pierce or Rondo would materialize out of nowhere and force a contested shot--or no shot at all. Boston's great defense starts up front with Perkins and KG, but their perimeter defenders had a fantastic series as well.

BOSTON

I'm glad to see Paul Pierce get the recognition he deserves, he's always been a great player and he's always played his ass off even in bad situations. He was brilliant in the series. I'm also happy for Garnett, the guy in the league who most deserves to win a championship. He wasn't dominant offensively, but it was his versatile and imposing defense that really made their "take Kobe away from the basket" scheme work.

After a somewhat quiet series, Rondo really showed what he can do in that game 6, which he finished with 21-7-8 with 6 friggin' steals. He was all over the court on both ends, disrupting the Lakers' offense, breaking down the Lakers' defense with his penetration (and forcing them to play honest by making a few jumpers), and even killing the Lakers on the boards with his unbelievable athleticism and excellent hands. He's a keeper, man, he's going to be a really good player in this league.

Boston's shooters were excellent, constantly killing the Laker defenders for doubling Garnett in the post. Ray Allen was ridiculous--he shot 22-42 from three, and played really solid defense on Kobe. James Posey furthered his reputation as a Lakers killer, shooting 12-24 from 3, playing his usual tough defense and also hurting LA on the glass.

So why were there so many open threes for these guys when they were shooting the ball so well? Do you think Phil Jackson and the rest of the Lakers don't realize Ray Allen can shoot the ball a little? Of course not--it's that LA struggled so much with Garnett around the rim and Pierce going to the basket--and keeping Boston off the offensive glass--that their perimeter defenders had to start sagging down to help out. Maybe you'll get killed with the three (they did), but taking your chances with that is better than the certainly of being killed with layups, dunks and 5-foot runners.

The problem is that the Lakers just aren't a very good defensive team, so (a) perimeter defenders couldn't rotate out to open shooters fast enough, unlike Boston who did pretty much the same thing (giving help inside), and (b) even with the help by the perimeter defenders, Boston was still able to score inside quite a bit and get a bunch of offensive rebounds. I don't think there's anything Phil Jackson could have done about that, you scheme in a way that's supposed to help Gasol and Odom inside--but it's still not enough; AND you give up a ton of threes by red-hot shooters in the process. Sometimes you just gotta say there's no way any coaching maneuver could have changed that outcome. And in the NBA, I'd say that's the case about 97% of the time.

LOOKING AHEAD

OK, so where do we go from here? I think Boston's going to remain a monster for the next couple of years at least. Yes, they're an older team, but did anyone on that floor look it? Fuck, even PJ goddamned Brown was super energetic out there. That doesn't mean they're unbeatable, it just depends on the matchup. They struggled against Atlanta, and they got pushed by Detroit with their most important player dinged up (and a rookie who may or may not explode in the next year or two). I'd definitely make Boston the Eastern Conference favorite for 08-09, but I'd have the Pistons lurking somewhat close behind. (BTW, I predict no moves in the offseason and Rasheed still on the team, but I won't be shocked if I'm wrong).

As for the Lakers, well, you can probably guess what I'm going to say...and you're right: Andrew motherfucking Bynum. I think Bynum would have changed this series a lot, especially with regard to the Laker defense. I'm not saying LA would have necessarily won with Bynum, just that the series would have looked a lot different. As I said above, they had to have their perimeter defenders sagging down to help out Gasol and Odom, but I don't think they would have needed to do that with Bynum, who was becoming a serious defensive force when he got injured. LA still probably wouldn't have shut Boston down, but I think it would have allowed them to play a more straight-up defense--even a more aggressive defense, since you can live with funneling penetrators into Bynum; doing the same with Gasol just means an easy layup.

Same goes for rebounding. LA had to keep defenders hovering around the basket to keep Boston from getting a million offensive boards--which they did anyway. With Bynum out there, I think that becomes a non-issue. LA wouldn't have dominated the glass, but they could have played it more straightforward (with perimeter defenders sticking tight to their men), and that's a big difference.

I also like what Bynum will do for Gasol and Odom. Both players were physically overmatched by their Celtic counterparts, and both players played intimidated. I swear, I don't think Gasol had 5 post plays where he took the ball hard to the basket, he almost exclusively relied on that fading-away mini-hook that he makes about 12% of the time. Same with Odom, he just didn't have anything against the bigger, more athletic Garnett, which is what I expected/feared. But what happens when that defender is Paul Pierce of James Posey? All of a sudden it's Odom who has the physical advantage. The point is, it won't matter as much that Gasol and Odom are finesse players if they get to play against mostly smaller defenders.

So I said all along that I could live with a loss in the Finals because of the prospect of adding Bynum to this group next year, and I was sorta right. The loss was still extremely painful, but I am super optimistic about the next 5 years with this franchise. I don't think they'd be a slam dunk over New Orleans or Boston or Detroit in the playoffs, but I do think they'll win in the high 60s in the regular season (assuming--please god--no significant injuries) and I definitely would make them the championship favorite at this point.

What a difference a year makes. Then, as now, the offseason was all about Andrew Bynum and what he'd bring to the table the following fall--but the stakes are just a little different these days. When a year ago it was about needing Bynum to break out in order to become a solid playoff team and save the rapidly-disintegrating Kobe Bryant era in LA, now it's about that incremental improvement necessary to be an NBA champion.

I think most of the Lakers are what they are, they're never going to be any different. Gasol and Odom are going to continue to be soft ('soft-ish' in Lamar's case) finesse players, they're not going to suddenly start "wanting it more" and turn into KG-like beasts. And Kobe is going to continue to be a jumpshooter, Radmanovic & Walton are going to continue to be godawful defenders, etc. But adding Bynum, that's the great leap forward this team needs. Maybe Farmar, Vujacic and Ariza can improve, they're all young and promising players, but I feel like the answers to this team's biggest question marks--rebounding and interior defense--lie with the big fella.

It was a hell of a season, you really can't ask for much more than this as a sport's fan. Between Bynum's explosive development, the additions of Gasol and Ariza, the emergence of Farmar and Vujacic, it feels like almost everything went right all at once ("almost" = Bynum's injury). Kudos to Mitch Kupchak for not panicking in the face of criticism and staying the course, the man became Midas overnight.

So farewell to another NBA season. The playoffs may have been disappointing, especially the Finals, a crappy ending to a spectacular regular season, but I'm still pretty excited about where we are heading into 08-09, with Boston, Detroit and LA as the league elites, New Orleans right there on their heels, San Antonio, Phoenix and Dallas struggling to hold on, and Portland due to arrive next year--and another couple of what appear to be no bullshit superstars about to join the league in Derrick Rose and Michael Beasley. The Finals may have sucked, but the on-court future for the league is still as bright as it's ever been.