Heard on the Big Show and read some postings on basketball forums about how Perkins' ejection of having no effect on the outcome of Game 5.
I just don't understand the reasoning behind "Celtics lost by 21, Perk's ejection would not have prevented that loss."
First: It wasn't a 21 point game at the time of Perk's ejection. It was in fact an 8 point game prior to Jason Williams making the FT leading to a 9 point differential.
Second: Perkin's ejection, prior to the close of the 1st Half, forced Doc Rivers to start Rasheed Wallace at the beginning of the 2nd Half.
Rasheed picks up his 4th Foul at the 10:43 mark (a little over 1 minute of 3QT game time!) of the 3rd Quarter, he is forced to sit replaced by Big Baby Davis who proceeds to play all but 9.7 seconds of the remaining 3rd Quarter time. We all know what happens to Baby before that 9.7 seconds mark.
Now normally our rotation calls for Baby to sub for KG, not for Wallace. (Wallace is supposed to sub for Perk.)
Perk only had 3 Fouls so even if he committed a 4th Foul at the start of the 3rd Quarter, Wallace would have been able to sub for Perk and Baby would still be on the bench waiting to sub for KG.
So now, because of Perk's wrongful ejection, we have 2 bench players, playing extended minutes against the Magic Starters. Wallace works extra hard at everything he does & ultimately suffers a back injury.
We all know what happened to Baby.
Despite all that, it was still only a 9 point game at the close of the 3rd.
But the nature of the Celtics team, heading into the 4th Quarter, was totally changed. Our rotation suffered. Our players were working extra hard & consuming more energy.
The injuries and the ejection caused our team to run out of gas in the 4th quarter and the Magic were able to pull away.
The Perkins' wrongful ejection caused a chain reaction that lead to the abnormal rotation and abnormal PT for our bench, which ultimately led to unnecessary injuries of our players.
Topic: Perk's Ejection: "A Chain Reaction" (Read 937 times)