Author Topic: Jumping from grade school to high school  (Read 1626 times)

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Jumping from grade school to high school
« on: May 05, 2008, 12:23:22 PM »

Offline ZoSo

  • Xavier Tillman
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Do the Celtics have enough playoff maturity to get it done?

This may sound like a ridiculous question.

66-16. Best defense in the NBA, maybe one of the best in history. Three veteran alpha-dogs in the starting line-up (though not the same kind of alpha-dog as Kobe), all three of whom have been principally responsible for taking their former teams to the Conference Finals. A veteran sixth-man with a ring. A back-up point guard with two rings and a (still) pretty reliable mid-range game. A veteran big off the bench who brings six fouls and some shot blocking ability. A hunger that pervades the franchise from owner down to 15th man.

But the playoffs are not the same beast as the regular season, and this team has played only seven playoff games as a unit, and seven games of joint experience is not much. It thus remains unclear whether this team, which faced only a modicum of adversity during the regular season, can make the necessary adjustments to weather the challenges that come with the playoffs.

What are those challenges?

Playoff Teams Don’t Give Up Easily

Unless the Cs are up by 25 or more points, the other team is unlikely to throw in the towel. Twenty-five point leads at home are pretty unusual in the playoffs starting with the second round. Twenty-five point leads on the road are even rarer. This was not the case during the regular season. The Cs were up big over the Lakers at Staples, and the Lakers, by most accounts, quit trying with around 7 minutes left in the game. Extremely unlikely any team left in the playoffs quits trying at home.

Playoff Games are Officiated More Closely

Playoff games are called more tightly, meaning that a single foul called early puts that player one foul away from being yanked. So every foul called is critical, and makes the player more cautious on defense, and a cautious defensive player is a less effective one. Even before the first foul is called, players are more conscious of being on a tight leash, something that was a far lesser concern during the regular season, and, in most instances, probably not even a concern at all.

Officials Give Home Playoff Teams a Bigger Advantage

Without calling the refs biased in favor of one franchise over another, I will say NBA refs typically call games in favor of the home team. This home-team bias multiplies in the playoffs. Refs are human, and out of 10 refs, there may be on average 1.5 who call roughly the same game regardless of where the game is played. In fact, I’m pretty certain that home-team bias is an unwritten rule governing NBA officialdom come playoff time. Now you factor in the home crowd advantage, which feeds off the home-leaning calls of officials, and winning on the road becomes a much taller order.

Teams must Thus Adjust and Mature from Regular to Post-Season

Rolling through the regular season is all fine and well, but since the playoffs are a different beast than the regular season, you can’t really succeed in the playoffs unless you are able to adjust. If you are used to having your way on the court during the regular season, then, not getting your way during the playoffs represents a level of adversity you haven’t faced but must now adjust to.

This is where maturity becomes vital.

Take a look at Game 1 of the 1986 Finals. The Rockets and Celtics were tied late in the third quarter, something many of us will find hard to reconcile with what we remember as a cakewalk at home. Hakeem scored 25 points in the first half, and the Rockets were showing no signs of disappearing—no signs that is until the C’s clamped down on D and amped it up on O. They maintained this intensity for the next 10 minutes until the game was on ice.

The 86 C’s had playoff basketball down to a science. Despite that fact, they lost game three in Houston by three points (no, this wasn’t the Ralph Sampson game). So even the greatest team in basketball history didn’t always get their way.

But not having your way once in a while on the road is much different than never having your way on the road.

So my question is how fast can this inexperienced playoff unit grow into a group of battle-tested vets who play together down the stretch of a road playoff game like they played together down the stretch of regular season roads game?