I'm kind of confused with the congratulations. I was under the impression Boston needed 4 wins to clinch the NBA championship.
Call me crazy, I'm not discounting LA. Last I checked they're still the most potent offense in the Finals, and when their defense starts feeding from the offense, its usually lights out for whoever is playing them. I didn't watch the entire 2nd half but from hearing what happened, it sounded like LA just gave the ball to Kobe the entire time and played not to lose instead of playing to win. I don't think they make that mistake again. I think Boston has to TAKE the 4th game and its not going to be easy.
I'm also going to agree with Westkoast on fickleness/lack of insight of some of these national sportswriters. Some guy was actually dense enough to write, "guess Kobe wants a refund on that Gasol trade, heh, heh". Ummmm, NO!, I'll keep the guy that's integral to my championship level club, thank you very much. Even Phil went a little overboard saying ". . .maybe this is why we got Gasol at a discount" and .."not being a tough enough Center". I mean when you think Phil, you don't ever think classy, but still, even he can't believe that malarky.
Skandery, you didn't even see the Celtics demolish the Lakers and then you discount the scenario, by saying the Lakers played stupidly by relying on Kobe and therefore, you have hope for the future of the series.
This is delusional thinking. What happened is that the Celtics won by using their strengths: better defense and superior rebounding. The assets I talked about when I projected the winner of the series.
On balance the Celtics will outscore any team in the league, because their defense is that much better, and there isn't a team out there that can stay with them without getting second shots.
Against the other teams in the league, LA might find a way to win, but against Boston, they don't have quite enough talent. Boston is one of the few teams that has a player that can really bother Kobe on offense. Name another team in the league that can contain Kobe like the Celtics have with Pierce.
Odom isn't a good enough role player and neither is Fisher or Radman, at least compared with their Boston counterparts.
LA went out to a big lead, but could not put Boston away, and they could not stop them from coming back in the second half. Bottom line, is they couldn't shoot well enough, only managing a 41.6 percentage. They rebounded with the Celtics got to the foul line as often, and still couldn't win. In other words, they took the game away from the Lakers and ripped their heart out. They interviewed Phil after the end of the third when the Celtics came back to within 2. Phil said they (meaning the Lakers) would be alright, but he was delusional as well.
The only way that LA can win is for the Lakers to get Kobe loose, and their other scorers aren't good enough to create openings for Kobe. The Celtics don't have that problem since they have 3 great scorers and LA can't shut all three of them down. In fact, they haven't stopped Garnett at all, and Ray Allen is having a great series since he knows no-one on the Lakers can stay with him.
You are right that the series isn't over, but it will take an injury, massive disinterest from the Celtics, or NBA interference to stretch this series past 5 games. I am actually sympathetic to Laker fans since I didn't think the Celtics were really that much better and the outcome is somewhat surprising. But the play has demonstrated that the Lakers collapse when they are placed under relentless pressure. This is likely because so few teams can put the Lakers in that situation, so they don't have experience handling the pressure.
If they could play the Celtics more during the season, they might have learned how to execute under those circumstances. Instead they collapsed themselves, and aren't feeling to good about their situation.
