In what qualifies as must-see regular season basketball in the NBA, there is no better matchup than the Celtics and Lakers.
Well, that’s one theory. The resurgence of the Celtics combined with the ongoing success of the Lakers once again rekindled this wonderful rivalry, which dates back to some searing competition in the 1960s. Larry Bird and Magic Johnson brought it back in the 1980s (while pretty much saving the NBA in the process) and now we have them once again among the league’s elite, accounting for the last two NBA titles.
But a little bit of the bloom is off the old rose as the two teams meet for the first time this season on Sunday afternoon in Boston before a national television audience. The Lakers are upholding their end of the deal, entering with a 36-11 record, best in the demanding Western Conference and second overall to Cleveland.
The Celtics? Well, let’s be charitable and just say they’re in a bit of a funk. They’ve dropped their last two games and have lost 10 of their last 16 to fall to No. 3 overall in the not-so demanding Eastern Conference. The Friday night loss to Atlanta could cost Celtics boss Doc Rivers a berth as the coach of the Eastern Conference All-Stars next month in Dallas. (That is not exactly high on Doc’s priority list right now.)
Not much has gone right for the Celtics since they thrashed the Magic on Christmas Day, improving to 23-5. Paul Pierce missed five games with a knee ailment and the team lost three of them. Kevin Garnett missed 10 games with a hyper-extended knee and the team struggled without him, losing six. Although he has returned, he bears little resemblance to the fiery and feisty KG who led the team to the NBA championship two seasons ago. He moved around like Billy Paultz in the Thursday night game in Orlando and was marginally better the next night in Atlanta.
Ray Allen and the words “expiring contract” are now being mentioned in the same sentence as the trade deadline nears, a heretical thought not too long ago. Allen, who scored only 9 points on Friday, is averaging 15.9 points a game, second fewest in his career. He’s also taking the fewest shots per game since he came to Boston, all the while leading the Celtics in total minutes played.
While Rajon Rondo has blossomed into an All-Star, and Pierce continues to play at a steady clip, the bench is a nightly challenge for Rivers. Rasheed Wallace has been up and down (but still leading the league in technical fouls) and sharpshooter Eddie House is in a slump. Rondo has no real backup and the Celtics miss the almost-forgotten Marquis Daniels, who is due back after the All-Star Game. He will have missed almost 30 games with a thumb injury.
The Lakers? They took advantage of a ridiculous, home-heavy schedule early in the season to break away from the rest of the West. They are 3-2 on their current Eastern swing, beating the tomato cans (New York, Washington and Philadelphia) while losing to Cleveland and Toronto. The Celtics are the third winning team they’ll face on the trip.
The defending champs have been very tough to beat with Pau Gasol in the lineup. The talented Spaniard has played in 30 games this season and the Lakers have won 25 of them by an average of 10 points a game. Gasol has missed 16 games with hamstring injuries and LA is 10-6 in those games.
Kobe Bryant, meanwhile, is poised to pass Jerry West as the all-time Lakers scoring leader. He is 47 points behind West and wouldn’t Bryant love to pass the man who drafted him against the team that so tortured his old boss in the 1960s? He averages 25.1 against the Celtics, but erupting for 48 would not be unBryant-like, even as he finishes up an uncharacteristically cold month for him (24 points a game versus more than 30 a game in November and December.)
The atmosphere in the Garden will be wall of sound stuff. The ‘Beat LA’ chants started here in the 1980s. But the Lakers won in Boston last season (110-109 in overtime) after getting beaten four times there the year before, including three in the NBA Finals. LA has won six of its last 10 regular season games in Boston, which is relatively unremarkable given how bad the Celtics were over most of that time period.
In the 1980s, these meetings were full of high drama and expectations. The two teams followed each other on a daily basis on the assumption they’d probably meet in the NBA Finals. ML Carr called them ‘The Fakers.’ The Fabulous Forum brought us Dancing Barry, the Rambis Youth and Randy Newman for the mood music. There were Hall of Famers at every position.
They may have another Finals meeting and it might be this year. But that’s a long way from now. The real injustice is that they see each other only twice during the season. That’s what makes this one so appealing.
There’s a deadline looming in Rajon Rondo’s mind – and it’s not the one about which most NBA watchers are talking. It’s not about a contract extension for the slick Celtics’ point guard, who is beginning his fourth season in Boston. He claims that doesn’t occupy a single minute of his thinking.
“I gotta get ready for the season,’’ Rondo said. “I haven’t even given it (the extension) a thought.”
His nose did not appear to be growing as he spoke and, in fact, Doc Rivers said he has seen no evidence that a possible extension is consuming his point guard’s thinking. On the contrary, insists the Celtics coach.
“It has not been a distraction for anyone, not for him, not for us,’’ Rivers said. “And he has been sensational (in the preseason.) Look, it’s not exactly revolutionary for an NBA player to be in this position. It happens all the time. Rajon has handled it great and I think it will work out. It usually does. It’s rare when it doesn’t.”
The Celtics have until Oct. 31 to sign Rondo to an extension which would kick in starting with the 2010-11 season. If nothing is done, then Rondo would become a restricted free agent at the end of the 2009-10 season, with the Celtics still holding the right to match any offer. However, there is some risk in letting that scenario unfold because a number of teams have targeted the summer of 2010 for spending on prospective free agents LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. If they all stay put, the money might be redirected elsewhere (to, say, a restricted free agent point guard from Boston.)
Rondo certainly has made a case for a significant raise on the $2.6 million he is due to earn this season, an amount determined by the NBA rookie scale. (It is roughly half of what the Bulls’ second-year point guard, Derrick Rose, will earn this season and some $300,000 less than Jonny Flynn, the Minnesota rookie and No. 6 overall pick in 2009, will earn.) In three years with the Celtics, he has gone from being SebastianTelfair’s backup (with even a DNP-Coach’s Decision along the way) to an almost indispensable member of arguably the best starting five in the NBA, inarguably on one of the handful of NBA teams with legitimate championship aspirations. And he has done it the last two years with no real backup.
But how valued? And how valuable? Those are some of the issues that the Celtics and Rondo’s agent, the estimable Bill Duffy, are trying to hash out by Halloween. The Celtics don’t see this first deadline as all that important, given that they can always re-visit the issue next summer if things don’t work out this week.
“I honestly think that he will be a Celtic for life,” Rivers said of Rondo.
Says Rondo, “You gotta live for the present. I can’t think too much about the future because nothing is guaranteed. You never know what might happen.”
While Rondo’s improvement has been dramatic – last spring, he became the only Celtic other than Larry Bird to have three triple-doubles in the same postseason – he still is only 23 (he turns 24 in February.) If, as Rivers suggests, Rondo is going to be a Celtic lifer, then Rondo might want to think about what a 2011-12 or a 2012-13 Celtics team might look like. Ray Allen, for instance, is in the final year of his contract, although he shows little sign of wearing down. Paul Pierce has two years left on his deal, Kevin Garnett three. All will be well into their 30’s and slowing down when Rondo theoretically would be hitting his prime.
There were rumors this past summer that the Celtics were shopping Rondo, despite his brilliant play in the postseason. The thinking was that Rondo, who can be either high maintenance or simply complex depending on your view, might not handle a big contract the way the Celtics would prefer. Both Rivers and Celtics GM Danny Ainge denied that was the case.
Ainge, after all, was the one who saw something in Rondo, trading a No. 1 pick to Phoenix in 2006 so the Suns would pick the sophomore out of Kentucky at No. 21 overall. And, it was Ainge, with the blessing of ownership, who refused to include Rondo in either the deal for Allen or the deal for Garnett, even if it meant the deal would fall apart. That’s how much the Celtics thought of Rondo back then. (Neither Ainge nor Duffy would comment for this article.)
The sticky part now, potentially, is putting a monetary value on Rondo. The top-flight young point guards in the league (Chris Paul, Deron Williams, Tony Parker) all make more than $11 million a year. Does Rondo deserve to join that elite trio? In all likelihood, this is where Duffy would like to see Rondo land. Or is the next level down (Jameer Nelson, Jose Calderon, Andre Miller, Mo Williams) more indicative of his worth? All of those gents make between $6 million and $9 million per. This probably is where the Celtics would prefer to slot Rondo.
The two gray eminences at the position, Steve Nash and Jason Kidd, both will pocket around $8 million each this year in the first year of new deals signed over the summer.
“The second contract you get is for what you have done in the league, and what you can do, even further down the road,’’ Rondo said.
Rivers has spoken warily in the past of the perils of young players looking for big deals and focused on things other than winning. He does not see Rondo in that category.
“The (second) contract that a player gets will be a good guideline as to where his career is and where it is going,’’ Rivers said. “If you are like Rondo, who will get a big deal, it’s because he has put the work into his game and he’s proven it. It’s good for him.”
Regardless of whether a deal is reached by Saturday, the Celtics’ plan for Rondo to be there, hopefully, in June when they raise another championship banner. And if they do, you can bet that No. 9 on the Celtics will have had a big hand in it.
Can we make this one a best-of-nine? Can the Celtics and Bulls keep playing until Kevin Garnett and LuolDeng are healthy again, then do a best-of-seven?
Glen Davis begs to differ.
“We want to end this series. We want to be done with this series,’’ Boston’s self-proclaimed Ticket Stub said after the Celtics exhausting Game 5 victory on Tuesday night.
Sorry, Baby. We want more.
Entertaining doesn’t begin to describe what’s going on between Boston and Chicago in their first-round playoff series. A seemingly mundane matchup between a depleted defending champion and a team going nowhere most of the regular season has turned into a must-see series full of game-winning shots, game-tying shots, physical play, coaching gaffes and everything else you’d want to see in this ‘Where Amazing Happens’ time of year.
Where this one ranks among the all-timers is still anyone’s guess. But we know this much: It’s the greatest Celtics-Bulls playoff series ever (OK, given that the three previous ones were 4-0 Boston, 3-0 Boston and 3-0 Boston, that isn’t saying much) and it already has done what no playoff series in 63 years has ever produced – three overtime games. And there still could be two more to play! (Please, basketball Gods. Two more.)
The Celtics hold the upper hand, 3-2, courtesy of their come-from-behind, 106-104 OT thriller Tuesday night, which could well have gone to a second OT (and who knows what else) had Brad Miller, an 80 percent free-throw shooter, not missed at the line with two ticks left. Or had Miller not missed the rim with his second, an intentional brick, denying the Bulls a chance at a put-back.
The series resumes in Chicago on Thursday night and, well, how about a triple OT game to add spice to the occasion? It’s about the only thing the teams haven’t done in the first five games. You have to think the United Center is going to be at Defcon 5 for this one.
Most NBA observers figured this to be a competitive series, given the Celtics’ absence of the game-changing Garnett and the fact that the Bulls are sort of the anti-Celtics: young, frisky, free-wheeling and callow. But what we’ve witnessed so far has been extraordinary.
ESPN waited one day to re-air Game 4 as an ‘Instant Classic.’ Four of the five games have been decided by a total of 10 points. There have been more than 80 lead changes and more than 45 ties.
There was the Bulls’ surprising OT victory in Game 1, with Rookie of the Year Derrick Rose scoring 36 points in his playoff debut. Only one other player in NBA history had ever scored that many in a playoff debut: LewAlcindor, aka Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Game 2 brought us the vintage shootout between UConn alums Ray Allen and Ben Gordon, with the Celtics (barely) prevailing.
After a Game 3 stinkbomb by the Bulls, we had a double-OT gem in which both teams seemingly had the game in hand, only to watch as the opponent made big play after big play. Allen hit a big three (when the Bulls should have fouled) sending the game to overtime. Gordon hit a ridiculous three (when the Celtics should have fouled) sending the game to double overtime.
Coming off that one, the bar was pretty high for Game 5. But these teams just keep raising it. Another overtime. A controversial conclusion. And a vow by the loser to return to Boston one more time.
“We will be back,’’ said the Bulls’ Joakim Noah, who, like a lot of players in this series, is opening more than a few eyes. “We have another chance so it’s a learning experience for all of us. Learning experience is not an excuse because I still feel like we can win this series.”
And you know what? They can. This isn’t Atlanta from a year ago, where the Hawks were never once competitive in four blowout first-round losses in Boston and looked shell-shocked on the road. This isn’t even Cleveland from a year ago, where LeBron was MIA in the first two games.
The Bulls have won once in Boston already and they’ve been in position to win all three in Boston. They’re not playing like a group going through their first playoff series under a rookie head coach.
Speaking of the rookie head coach, did Vinny Del Negro once think it might be a good idea to double PaulPierce in OT in Game 5? Ray Allen had fouled out. KG was wearing suit that cost more than a Camry. Del Negro already has taken heat for his use of timeouts in Games and 1 and 2, but why not run someone at Pierce when it’s clear to everyone in the building he’s going to shoot it? (They did it once in the final minute of regulation and Pierce dished it off to Stephon Marbury, who immediately turned to stone.) The Bulls never did when it mattered, however, and Pierce made them pay.
“We talked about coming with different players but they’ve picked us apart a little bit with that on the glass (offensive rebounds) and he hits some tough fadeaway shots with hands in his face,’’ Del Negro said of Pierce. “That’s what great players do, they make big plays. That’s something we’ll talk about again, but we’ve come with double teams, we’ve come with single teams, we’ve come off bigs, we’ve come off littles, and he’s seen it all.”
Pierce put on his 2008 Finals MVP face for the end of Game 5, a face we haven’t seen much in the series. The Celtics have gotten sensational play from Rajon Rondo, who is leading them in scoring, assists and steals in the party of all Coming Out Parties. (Until Kendrick Perkins inhaled 19 rebounds on Tuesday, the 6-foot Rondo, who had 8 in the game, also was leading the team in rebounds.)
He also was the one who clocked Miller at the end of the game, preventing a layup, while the Bulls cried for a flagrant foul call. He played 55 minutes in the double-overtime game and then came back and played 49 more in Game 5, though it seems he’s never not on the floor.
Allen has hit big shots throughout after stumbling through the first six quarters of the series. Pierce has been hesitant, tentative and, it seems at time, maybe a little cooked or even hurt, even as he has been putting up decent numbers. But the Take Charge Pierce had been missing. But there he was at the end in Game 5, hitting the last two Boston hoops in regulation and the last three in OT. As Davis put it, “I think since I’ve been here I’ve seen him do it a million times, so nothing surprises me.”
But surely more surprises await for Game 6. For instance, after moaning about the officiating, Perkins, a human wrecking ball if there ever was one, managed to play 48-plus minutes and never got called for a foul. That’s like watching Hubie Brown on TV and never hearing the phase “off the dribble.” Doc Rivers already has been fined $25,000 for commenting on the officiating.
Both coaches have shrunk their rotations. Mikki Moore never got off the Boston bench in Game 5 and played sparingly in Game 4. And this is one a team desperately in need of big men. Perkins and Davis are going to play till they drop. Ditto for Rondo. Marbury might as well start researching jobs overseas they way he has played so far. For Chicago, Gordon has to stay on the floor, lest his sore hamstring tighten up. Rose and Noah are logging long minutes as well, but they’re young.
The Bulls want to bring this one back to Boston for one final shootout. The Celtics want to end it and go on. But if these teams keep playing the way they’ve been playing, two more games won’t be enough. We know it has to end. We just don’t want it to.
From the moment he took over the Boston Celtics, and continuing on to this very day, Danny Ainge has had one enduring philosophy: think outside the box. As in, way outside the box.
He doesn’t care where you’ve been or what you’ve done. He will roll the dice. Sometimes, it comes up 7’s and 11’s, as it did with Rajon Rondo, Leon Powe and Glen Davis. Sometimes, it will come up snake eyes, as it did with Sebastian Telfair, Marcus Banks or Ricky Davis.
But in virtually every instance where his intuition failed him, Ainge has been able to recover by getting some other unfortunate soul to take on his mistakes. As the saying goes, it only takes one. And there always is that someone (unfortunately for Minnesotans, that someone has more often than not been Kevin McHale.)
The 2008 NBA Draft once again showed Ainge’s willingness to take a chance. It had nothing to do with the fact that he had just won a championship and could afford to gamble. He was doing the same thing when he was drafting after 24- and 33-win seasons. With the last pick of the first round, he drafted JR Giddens out of New Mexico, a somewhat surprising selection among the so-called cognoscenti. (The website NBADraft.net projected him as the No. 58 selection.)
Once the intrepid press went to work, it was discovered that Giddens had basically been booted out of Kansas, where he had been stabbed in a bar fight. An artery in his right calf was cut and the wound required 30 stitches to close. He ended up at the University of New Mexico where, in his first season, he twice wadaaincels suspended for what then-coach Richie McKay termed his inability to adhere “to the pillars of the program.”
Did any of that concern Ainge? If it did, he didn’t let it affect his judgment. He loves the kid’s explosiveness. He loves the kid’s defensive promise. So what if he transferred after a bar fight at one school and was suspended at another?
Ainge has shown himself to be extremely open-minded on matters like these. Take the case of Rondo. After a stunning freshman season, the Kentucky guard went backwards as a sophomore. The body language stunk. There were clashes between a headstrong kid and the do-it-my-way head coach. What, Ainge wondered, had happened to the player the Celtics had targeted the year before?
The Celtics had the 7th pick in 2006. That might have been a reach for Rondo, but Ainge might well have taken him there, especially since Brandon Roy was gone and Randy Foye didn’t excite the Celtics all that much. But instead, Ainge engineered a trade for Telfair.
Then, Ainge went to work to try and get Rondo, as he saw the Kentucky guard drop further and further in the first round. Finally, at No. 21, Ainge got the Suns to draft Rondo, trading a future first-rounder in a loaded draft class (2007.) Where others saw a history of conflict, a cocky kid and a guard who wasn’t anything close to a classic point guard, Ainge saw athleticism, defensive ability and intelligence, and wasn’t the least-bit put off by all the negativity emanating from Lexington, Kentucky.
“You know,’’ he said, “it isn’t always a bad thing when the player and the coach don’t see eye to eye. We interviewed a lot of people before we drafted Rajon. We heard all the stuff; he was cocky, uncoachable, all that stuff. But at the end of the day, we thought he’d be a good addition to our basketball team.”
Clearly, they’re hoping the same thing from Giddens, although he will have to fight for minutes. Giddens had an uneventful senior year at New Mexico (in terms of distractions, that is) The Celtics also are hoping for similar things from their second-round pick, Billy Walker out of Kansas State. His story brings to mind one of the recent Boston successes – Leon Powe.
Like Powe, Walker was a high school hotshot. Like Leon Powe, he suffered two torn anterior cruciate ligaments. Like Leon Powe, Walker went from being a likely lottery pick before the injuries to a second-rounder. (Sonny Vaccaro, the legendary shoe mogul and high school talent guru, told ESPN The Magazine that the pre-ACL tear Walker was the second coming of Vince Carter.)
The actual drafting of Powe was the result of some quick work by Ainge’s lieutenant, Leo Papile, who had fallen in love with the University of California big man while scouting him in the 2005-06 season. Papile also had seen Powe in high school, when, in 2003, Powe was mentioned (almost) in the same breath as LeBron James. Powe thought about turning pro out of high school; destitute does not begin to describe his home situation at that point in his life. But the ACL tear did him in. Another tear came after his first season at California.
Powe declared for the 2006 draft, despite having two years remaining of eligibility, but the knee injuries and questions about where he would fit in combined to send him tumbling into the second round. Papile started frantically working the phones. The picks go quickly at that point – two minutes a choice – and Papile finally convinced the Nuggets to draft Powe and trade him to the Celtics. The Walker transaction was essentially the same thing. If it works out as well as Powe, the Celtics will really be on to something.
Should Walker or Giddens be any kind of help to the Celtics, they will join the list of late first- and second-rounders who have been able to contribute. Kendrick Perkins was the 27th pick in 2003. Delonte West (24) and Tony Allen (25) were picks in 2004. Ryan Gomes was the 50th pick in 2005. Powe was the 49th pick in 2006 and, in 2007, the Celtics feel they got a couple of keepers in Gabe Pruitt and Glen ‘Big Baby’ Davis, both taken in the second round.
While Pruitt should get time this season, Davis was a revelation of sorts as a rookie. On draft night in 2007, there were rumors he had a deal with a team to take him in the first round. It didn’t happen. He was large (to be charitable) and that could have scared away some teams. But watching the guy on the floor, he simply knows how to play. He has power, good hands and even some beguiling finesse. He held his own when Tim Duncan came to town. He personally beat the Pistons in a huge regular season win on the road.
But, knowing Ainge, any or all of the above could also be future ex-Celtics. That was the case for Al Jefferson, Gomes and Telfair, all of whom went to Minnesota in the Kevin Garnett trade. West went to Seattle in the Ray Allen trade.
By now, however, Ainge has enough chips, not to mention newfound cachet, to keep doing what he’s always been doing. Whether it’s trying to coax Reggie Miller out of retirement for one last run, slightly preferring Kevin Durant to Greg Oden, or drafting a kid with so-called “issues,’’ he is not going to shy away. Expect the unexpected.
Where others see potential trouble, Ainge sees only potential. More often than not, history has shown him to be on the mark.
In what qualifies as must-see regular season basketball in the NBA, there is no better matchup than the Celtics and Lakers.
There’s a deadline looming in Rajon Rondo’s mind – and it’s not the one about which most NBA watchers are talking. It’s not about a contract extension for the slick Celtics’ point guard, who is beginning his fourth season in Boston. He claims that doesn’t occupy a single minute of his thinking.
Can we make this one a best-of-nine? Can the Celtics and Bulls keep playing until Kevin Garnett and Luol Deng are healthy again, then do a best-of-seven?
From the moment he took over the Boston Celtics, and continuing on to this very day, Danny Ainge has had one enduring philosophy: think outside the box. As in, way outside the box.