Defense wins championships. The Lakers do not play championship defense, the Celtics do. That has been the story of the first two games of the 2008 NBA Finals.
The Lakers allowed the Celtics to shoot 53%. That is not supposed to happen in the Finals. The Lakers have no one to guard Pierce, and tonight in Game 2 they had no one to stop Leon Powe. They allowed Powe, a reserve forward, to score 21 points in only 15 minutes.
A championship team never allows that to happen in the Finals.
The Lakers back court does not play defense. They were not able to stop the Celtics penetration, putting even more pressure on their beleaguered front line.
With all that, and considering the Celtics got to the foul line 38 times to only 10 free throws for the Lakers, you might think the Celtics won by 24 points or more.
But actually, the Lakers were able to cut a 24-point Celtics lead in the final seven minutes of the game to just two points, 104-102.
It was a lack of focus on the part of the Celtics that allowed their blow-out margin to disappear.
But it was a lack of defense on the part of the Lakers for three-and-a-half quarters that eventually cost them the game, 108-102.
There is no reason why Pau Gasol, Lamar Odom and Vladimir Radmanovic should not play even-up with the likes of Powe, P.J. Brown, and Kendrick Perkins. Their inability to post up will wind up costing them the championship.
The Celtics on the other hand, having played against two good defensive teams (the Cavaliers and Pistons) so far in the playoffs, have had no trouble putting up points against a basically finesse team like the Lakers. They have been able to do just about anything they want, whether it's getting wide-open perimeter shots or driving to the basket.
Their defense, on the other hand, has stopped the Lakers cold in all but those last seven minutes of tonight's Game 2.
Once again the Lakers looked out of sync. They were unable to build any kind of rhythm until those final seven minutes. But is it possible that they can take the momentum from those last few minutes back to Los Angeles for Game 3?
Kobe Bryant said, "I think so. I think we can build on it."
But Phil Jackson disagreed. Jackson flatly said, "No, we can't take it 2500 miles. That's too far to carry it."
Of course, one of the reasons the Lakers were unable to build any momentum in the first three periods may have been the officiating.
Reporting on ESPN, Michael Wilbon said, "The officiating was embarrassingly one-sided."
When a reserve player like Leon Powe gets to the charity stripe 13 times in just 15 minutes and the entire Lakers team only gets to the line ten times in 48 minutes, something is definitely wrong, Mister Stern.
Yes, the Lakers were somewhat passive. But not THAT passive that one team gets to the line 38 times while the other team gets to the line only 10 times—the fourth lowest total in an NBA playoff game.
Phil Jackson called it, "Unbelievable." Referring to the disparity in foul calls, Jackson said, "In the thirteen years that I've been coaching, I've never seen anything like it."
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