One reason I'm optimistic is that from a personal matchup standpoint, to a lot of the Celtics this could almost feel like switching from the weighted on-deck baseball bat to the reglation one; the Bulls are much stronger than Orlando in certain areas.
The most obvious of these areas is shooting guard. Ray isn't going to have to work on defense like he did against Chicago, and Orlando has nobody who can stop Ray from scoring. I also like Paul Pierce's individual matchup better in this series than in the last one. Turkoglu is a great offensive player, but Pierce will no longer have to deal with the (defensively) pesky Hinrich, and he won't have to worry any longer about staying in front of the faster Salmons. Rondo also gets a much easier matchup in Rafer Alston. Perkins' job all of a sudden becomes much tougher, but in the past he has handled Howard well. Sidebar: The chances of seeing Bill Walker on the court while the game is still close just went from 0% in the last series to about 0.1% in this one. We all know the Cs are big man-deprived, so they can't afford to waste fouls, and maybe Doc would be inclined to go to Walker in a desperate situation or at the end of a quarter to hack Howard.
Bottom Line: Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and Rajon Rondo will not have to go through quite the same physical grind that they did against the Bulls. It's a playoff series, so it'll be tough, if you look at those players' individual matchups, their Magic counterparts aren't as physically tough as the their Bulls counterparts. The Magic are a better team than the Bulls, but the Celtics' best three players won't wear down as much, and that is a good thing.
Cs in 7.
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Topic: Boston vs Orlando (Poll) (Read 7385 times)