I know the Celtics had some trouble winning on the road in the first two rounds of last year's postseason, but it's important not to forget that Boston closed out Detroit on the road in the Conference Finals AND set a Finals record with a 24-point second half comeback in Los Angeles to win game four. Don't remember it? Fortunately, you can stop by any time and we can watch it together (WARNING: there is no way to turn off the DVD commentary). If the Celtics can get healthy and use this time to work the new players into the rotation at the expense of a few wins, that's fine. At the very least, it will allow the Celtics to fly a bit more under the radar and to possibly play the "nobody believes in us!" card (can you even do this as the defending champs?). And if Rajon Rondo, Marbury, Moore, and Kevin Garnett can come back to full strength in time to heat up for a postseason run, then I firmly believe that the Celtics are talented enough to blow the doors off the Lakers again in the Finals this year. Maybe I'm drinking too much Marbury Kool-Aid, but I can't help but be excited by his possible contributions to the Celtics' second unit.
For the time being, I'm standing pat on the Celtics and waiting to judge them until they're healthy (not a sure thing by any means, which is why I'm typing this post with my fingers crossed instead of using the normal two-finger-hunt-and-peck, ha ha). Hopefully by next Wednesday's home game against Miami (can be seen on ESPN, for those of you out of market fans) there will be some signs of improvement from the Celtics. Until then, I'm taking everything I see with a grain of salt. That being the case, I think I'll take this opportunity to go off on a tangent about Dirk Nowitzki.
I know Nowitzki plays for Mark Cuban's Dallas Mavericks who don't exactly fit under the normal parameter's you'd expect from a blog entitled "C of Green" (unless the Mavs are wearing their ugly-as-sin green uniforms), I'm tackling this issue regardless. Rick Carlisle plays Dirk Nowitzki for too damn long during games. The last two times I've seen the lanky German play, Carlisle (who rode the bench to an NBA title with the Celtics in 1986) has kept Nowitzki on the floor for the entire first quarter as well as the first half of the second quarter before spelling him on the bench. I don't want to pretend to know better than an NBA head coach (I'll leave that to Simmons, thank you), but it was evident to me that Nowitzki was fatigued during those stretches and his team struggled as a result.
Last night in Portland, Dirk played his heart out and carried his Mavericks to victory with an impressive and efficient 29 points and 10 rebounds, but by the end of the first quarter and into the second, Nowitzki was dragging on defense and didn't seem to have the legs to move and rotate when Portland attacked the Dallas defense. If you ask me, the main reason for this was because Dirk played until the 5:48 mark of the second quarter before getting his first breather on the bench. Fortunately, Carlisle was able to hid Nowitzki for much of the game inside a zone defense that confounded the Trail Blazers and limited them almost exclusively to perimeter shots without any kind of ball movement. Still, Nowitzki stuck out like a sore thumb on defense at times, and more often than not he was at least partially responsible for giving up many of Portland's easy baskets out of their half court offense.
As if the lack of energy on defense weren't bad enough, these long stretches f playing time are affecting Nowitzki's offensive game as well. Granted, I didn't see this last night, in fact Dirk made the three of us watching at home groan repeatedly after unleashing some ridiculous offensive moves and splashing some sweet fade-away jumpers over the Blazer defense, but trust me, it's hurting his game. I've seen Nowitzki disappear for stretches in Dallas' offense, due partially to his teammates' inability to find him with the basketball, but also because Dirk does a lot of standing around and often doesn't fight to get into better scoring position. Sounds symptomatic of fatigue, doesn't it? During one game against New Orleans that the Fox and I watched together, Dallas failed to get the ball to Nowitzki for four solid minutes at the beginning of the second quarter, prompting us to wonder out loud "why is Dirk tiring himself out on the floor if they aren't going to give him the ball?" I'm not asking Dallas to reinvent the wheel, hell I'm not even asking them to cut his minutes, just to distribute them differently so that Dirk can play with more energy.
Now I suspect that Dirk has to carry so much of the load because Dallas is very thin right now and don't have a ton of reliable size to come off the bench (hell, they start Eric Dampier for cryin' out loud), but still, he needs a rest very badly. I feel that if Dirk got to rest at the end of the first and the beginning of the second (you know, like most NBA players do), then he'd have more energy to expend on defense or to run the floor. In order for Dallas to contend for a title again, Dirk has to be able to play a complete game. Dallas got to the Finals in 2006 because they played serious defense, and having Dirk play both sides of the ball was a huge part of their success as a team. Right now, he can't do that because he needs to create almost all of Dallas' offense as well as provide most of the team's size in the middle. The Mavericks need size in the middle worse than the Celtics do, and until they get some help or exorcise Dampier's contract, I fear they cannot improve.
Oh yeah, and if you want to get technical, allow me to successfully demonstrate how Dirk Nowitzki is soooooo related enough to the Celtics to merit some space on the C of Green... As I mentioned, Rick Carlisle, the coach responsible for beating Nowitzki like a rented mule this year, was drafted by Red Auerbach and played for the Celtics. And did you know that when Dirk became available for the 1998 NBA Draft Rick Pitino (a.k.a the Killer of All Hope), then GM of the Celtics, raved about Dirk, likening him to Larry Bird, and promised to take him with the tenth overall pick of the draft? Boston didn't get the chance to draft Nowitzki, who was taken ninth by the Bucks before being shipped to Dallas for Robert "Tractor" Traylor. and settled for a swing man from Kansas named Paul Pierce instead. And did I mention those ugly green road uniforms? 'Nuff said.
No comments:
Post a Comment