Sunday, May 4, 2008

Five Quickies from the Weekend

1) So let's just pretend that that Atlanta series never happened okay? The home blowouts were nice and even nicer was finally seeing KG showup with a dominating performance in Game 7. Still, I'd love to see Pierce get tracked. I figured he would be good for at least one dominating game in the series and with the exception of Game 5 and some spurts in the other games he was not much of a factor. Even though he had a poor shooting game in Game 7, they were running the offense through him consistently, he was attacking the basket, and not coincidentally things went worlds better as they consistently stuck to that point of attack.

2) Look, I know Jon Lester has put together consecutive "good" starts but I still almost refuse to watch the guy pitch. It took them about two hours to play four innings thanks to Lester's massive pitch count in the early innings which eventually lead to him throwing 112 pitches through six innings. Call me crazy, but I can't take watching marathon games against the Rays with massive pitch counts in early May. Even if Lester has only allowed one earned run in his last fourteen innings, he's still walked seven batters in that time while striking out eleven. Maybe I am being stubborn and irrational as I've been on the record countless in expressing my displeasure with the guy but I refuse to believe that you can be as good as the Sox seem to think Lester will be averaging a walk every other inning and not even striking out two guys for every one he walks.

3) I will be absolutely shocked if the Celtics/Cavs series goes less than seven games. I'll say the C's will win in seven because I am a homer and I want them to win, but I honestly believe it will be a classic. In the past, LeBron has brought the best out of Paul Pierce and I hope that trend continues. I also think the C's frontcourt matches up much better to the Cavs trio of Ben Wallace, Anderson Varejo, and Big Z Ilgaskus than the young atheletes employed by the Hawks. I will not bee sad to see Josh Smith go and neither will KG.

4) If you want an unsung hero from Game 7, look no further than Kedrick Perkins. Perkins played great on the blocks in the first quarter collecting ten points and blocking a few shots which really seemed to set the defensive tone. His final line of ten points, ten boards, and five blocks is exactly what you want to get from the guy. Bottom line, he played great in a deciding game. KG will probably get most of the pub from this one, but ignoring Perk's contributions would be a grave error.

5) Will Kevin Garnett's body-check/pick against his newfound nemesis, Zaza Pachulia be a turning point in his Celtic career? Will that set him completely over the edge and make him of the mindset to absolutely dominate every game he plays? Maybe. I sure hope so.

PS...Eric Gagne blew his fifth save of the season today. I don't think it was Boston that got to the guy. I think it was getting off the juice.

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