Back again, to swim against the tide of "Gloom-and-Doom" threads that flood the blogs at such (admittedly) perplexing times, and say once again, (despite the questions concerning my mental stability that are bound to arise as a result), that I am decidedly
encouraged, despite this loss. (I'll try not to focus too much on the fact that if versions 1 & 2 had not been
correct, there'd be no V.3 now, but it does add a little more weight to the optimism thing
).
It's much more simple this time, however ... yes, the same qualities of "Celtic Pride" and never-say-die attitude, etc., that I focused on before are still just as important, but what really makes me feel better this time around, is the
score. We lost by 13 points, folks ... and
three of those points came from a garbage-time tres by the "Black Reptile" that he made with four seconds-or-so left on the clock, so theoretically the margin was around
ten points!
We played horribly, for the most part ... we were out-hustled, we were out-rebounded, the second-chance points were 16-to-
nothing in favor of the Lakers, we were out-scored by
eighteen points in the paint, and we only had
one three-pointer. Tony Allen had three personal fouls in the first quarter, so his contributions were very limited, KG struggled as he has been for a few games, Perk had only three rebounds and struggled as well, Ray was also mostly a non-factor, and sat on the bench thanks to some questionable calls. Rondo didn't score in the fourth quarter and only had thirteen overall, and the bench only gave us sixteen
altogether, nine of which were Sheed's.
Sixteen points from the bench ... that's
terrible, folks. On the other hand, the Lakers played like a team, got to all the loose balls first, played in
their building, with
their fans, clicked on offense and defense, and played one of the better games I've seen them play all year long. Yet they
still only won by thirteen points! We truthfully played one of our worst games of these playoffs, and the Lakers played extremely well ... nothing went our way, and almost
everything went the way of Los Angeles, yet they
still only won by thirteen! (Including the meaningless tres in the closing seconds).
To over-simplify, they were great, and we sucked ... yet they
still only won by thirteen! If I were the Lakers, I'd be a bit worried by that margin, and I'd be very concerned about just why they didn't win by at
least thirty points going away. This was an example of a great team playing poorly, and a very good team playing their best. We are
still the better team, and we are a team that very rarely plays two such games in-a-row. Yeah, I'm very disappointed we lost, but after seeing how lousy we played, I'm also
completely shocked at the win/loss margin ... and very encouraged about our chances in the games to come.
By all indications and stats, this should have been a thirty or forty-point blowout by the Lakers ... and
they are the team that should be most concerned about that.
Go Celtics!
