The legendary Bulls vs. Celtics series came to a rather anticlimactic end thanks in part to Vinny Del Negro's inability to make proper defensive adjustments in addition to his tendency to binge on 20-second timeouts. Some blame also falls on Ben Gordon going ice cold and dragging the Bulls through the mud with a "no-pass, no-defense, i'm-the-hero" mentality with a bevy of terrible shots.
The next round is up, with the boys in blue facing the big green machine. The Celtics have slowly been running out of frontcourt players due to injuries with Perkins and Big Baby as the remainders. Mikki Moore, in spite of looking like a total badass, is completely worthless and Scatterbrain can't even post-up a guard without getting stripped of the ball. The Magicians meanwhile are without Courtney Lee's whose nose got smashed by D-12's shotgun elbows as well as all-star pointman Jameer Nelson, whom every damned analyst seems to forget about when citing difficulties for the Magic.
The Magic bigs have an advantage over the Celtics, Rashard "Money" Lewis especially has an upper-hand over the shorter Big Baby. The Celtics have an edge with Pierce and Allen. The key matchup is the one at point-guard. As shown here, Rafer Alston and Rajon Rondo have given each other fits in each of their meetings.
The key to victory is that the Magic need to make sure they have more points than the Celtics at the end of the 4th quarter. This would be incredibly helpful and may perhaps lead to a few wins.
Monday, May 4, 2009
The Rumble In The Jungle (Magic versus Celtics)
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Yeah, everyone keeps forgetting about Nelson. When I suggested that both the Magic and Celtics had major injuries going into the playoffs a Boston fan I know shot such a look of disgust at me I might have said that I'd wished death on his entire family. As if you couldn't compare the injury of our starting PG to the loss of Boston's starting PF! I don't know why, but for some reason most non - Magic fans seem to think that the loss of Jameer Nelson - who was named an All-Star for Chrissake - is now relatively inconsequential.
ReplyDeleteSure, Rafer seems to possess a genius basketball IQ, but he's not always firing and he's still a newcomer to the team. Plus, he doesn't have the same athleticism that Jameer has. Nelson is more like a burgeoning Chauncey Billups: a muscular, shooting point guard who represented an absolutely crucial ingredient to the Magic's mid-season brilliance over the last year.
Words can't express how badly I want us to win this series.