Kevin Garnett Clutches up For the Win

Talk about a difficult game to watch tonight between the Celtics and the Cavs. Both teams just were not able to get into any kind of rhythm and neither team was able to get any transition offense going.

Ultimately, the game came down to Kevin Garnett of the Celtics making some shots down the stretch and Lebron James missing some shots down the stretch. The last 3 real possessions for the Celtics ended up with KG scoring a 20-footer to tie, Sam Cassell free throws from a post-up ISO to go ahead, and KG spinning into the lane on a post-up ISO to go ahead again for good. Here were the 2 last Garnett plays,



As mentioned, just a real tough game to watch. With a final score of 76-72, you would've expected that it was just a defensive battle. Not so. This game was simply the case of the lid shut closed on the hoop, especially for Lebron and Ray Allen. The defenses were decent but not exceptional. Take this clip for example, Ray Allen and Garnett run a PNR, Szczerbiak and Joe Smith go to double Allen who had not scored a single basket all game. Lebron goes briefly to rotate to cover KG, but is splitting both KG and Pierce in reality. The pass goes to KG who is wide open for the 20-footer, which he knocks down,


In what essentially was the game winner by KG, the Cavs decide to play 1v1 on the ISO with Joe Smith. I think if I was Mike Brown, I probably would have gone with a double-team on the first dribble instead. The other possibility would've been to use Ben Wallace instead of Joe Smith, but Doc Rivers did something very astute. After the Ilgauskas tip-in, he didn't call a timeout, thus Mike Brown was not able to get his defensive substitutions into the game, and so Joe Smith was left to guard KG 1v1,


Summary:

On the TNT after show, Chuck was ripping Mike Brown for using "a crappy offense". That may be the case, but the Celtics weren't running anything much better and he was mum on them, at least call it both ways Chuck!

The Celtics may have won the game, but in a way, they should be feeling extremely lucky because despite a 2-for-18 and 10 TO performance by Lebron, the Celtics barely won the game. And the Celtics did not even play great defense on Lebron who was able to penetrate and get good shots off. Having said that, KG came up big when they needed him and so credit to the Celtics for holding serve in the series.

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Credit to Coach Finamore for the Doc Sadler link.