Kobe Bryant’s third quarter in game five was truly amazing to watch. With that being said, I have to agree with Matt Moore who wrote at ProBasketballTalk that this run ruined any chance the Lakers had of winning. They Lakers played their best basketball and were most competitive when they were passing the ball around and having contributions from all players. However, where Moore blames Phil Jackson for this run (for essentially allowing Kobe to go off), I want to give the Celtics defense credit.
When you are dealing with a superstar like Kobe you always here of two defensive strategies. You can double him and force the ball out of his hands and let his teammates beat you, or you can let Kobe get his but not let anyone else go off. The Boston Celtics decided to go with the latter and it worked for them. Think about it, during Kobe’s spectacular run, did you see a double team? No. In fact, the Celtics didn’t overreact and completely change their defensive strategy:
This is Kobe’s first basket of the third, and it is a pretty good look at the Celtics’ defensive strategy. Kobe gets the ball in the corner and starts to back Ray Allen down as no double comes (Paul Pierce fakes a double and stays with his man). Kevin Garnett eventually brings a double, but only when it is apparent that Kobe is going to take a shot. They force Kobe Bryant into a tough shot, but he is able to knock it down.
I briefly mentioned this on Twitter last night, but I wanted to expand on it today. Paul Pierce’s sweet spot is that right elbow, everybody knows this. However, last night in game 5, Paul Pierce was ale to get to his spot at will:
Pierce attempted 11 shots from that right elbow area and he made 6 of them, and his six makes count for half of his total makes for the game. Just by looking at the shot-chart, it is no surprise to find out that Paul Pierce had his best game of the series. If the fans know that this is Pierce’s sweet spot, the Lakers have to know about it, so I think it is safe to assume that one of their goals when defending Paul Pierce is to keep him out of this area. The Lakers failed to do this last night:
The Celtics found themselves in a pretty interesting situation up five points with around 40 seconds left. Taking the ball out of bounds, they had four seconds to advance the ball from the backcourt (where they were inbounding it) past the halfcourt line in four seconds. The Celtics could have advanced the ball with another timeout, but because they only had one left, Doc Rivers decided to draw up a play for the Celtics to quickly advance the basketball. As Trey Kerby so accurately described it, it was basically the NBA version of the “The Annexation of Puerto Rico.” However, the Lakers made a few mistakes that aided to the play:
As Kevin Garnett gets the ball to inbound it, Rajon Rondo and Paul Pierce switch places. They don’t set a screen, they just switch. It looks like the first option was Rondo curling towards the basketball (trying to get it to him in a dead sprint so he can just run it across half court) and Paul Pierce was the second option curling out towards the halfcourt line.
