Re: Boston Is The Only Team That Swept Their Opponent
posted at 4/27/2011 1:41 AM EDT
In Response to
Re: Boston Is The Only Team That Swept Their Opponent:
In Response to Re: Boston Is The Only Team That Swept Their Opponent : Whatever helps you show the best light on the situation is fine with me..... when you pull your head out of the sand are your teeth all gritty and have eyes and nose boogies, etc.? The Knicks were a much better team before the trade, and while they did have a nice run leading into the playoffs, they were like a 500 team since the trade. They then lost their point guard and their best player withing 48 hours between game 1 and game 2. The Cs really struggled to win the first two against that lost its point guard (with the same number of rings of the Cs players and 6 straight conference finals on his resume) and then of course once Amare went down the Knicks were demoralized and their only remaining good player is a stat-bag (or Paul Pierce of 5 years ago). You add all this up and it somehow portends a great victory against the Heat. The Cs victories against the Heat include the first game ever played by the Heat as a team (as currently constructed) and SHAQ. The last time they met the Cs were embarrassed off the floor. They had a chance to make a statement and the statement was "we are not as young or athletic as this team and cannot cope with them, so let's make sure we get home court advantage... ooops... no home court advantage"...... The Cs were a couple of shots here or there or a couple of cheap calls here or there from leaving Boston down 2 zip. I am not sure you could find many people that think the Knicks as currently constructed are better than Indy, the Hawks, or the 6ers. Last time the Cs played the Hawks and Pacers ummmm they lost. One could easily argue that if the Cs had any of their point guards, the Cs would not have struggled nearly as much against the Knicks - Collison, Hinrich, Holiday. The Hawks are playing tremendous defense against Orlando. What I see is two teams (the Knicks and Magic) made huge trades during the course of the season and those two teams have performed horribly in the playoffs but of course that is not lost on someone as astute as you (and all the other oblivious posters on BDC). Ok so back to how the Cs are playing. They limped into the playoffs (just like last year) and have beaten the Knicks in 5 straight games, 3 of which excluded 2 of their 3 best players.... so somehow the interpretation is that they are playing the way the Celtics play...... so playing a bad team missing a couple of its best players somehow is interpreted as perched and ready to pounce on the Heat because the Heat lost a game to the team that the Cs lost to last time they played them, the 6ers. The team with the best pf vs. pa differential in the league is certainly comparable to the team that views defense as an unconfirmed rumor.... I get it now.
Posted by TheDUDDER
the knicks were not a much better team before the trade. they had a little bit more cohesion which came from playing together longer, but after hot streak where they won 13 of 14, they faded badly. talent-wise, they definitely got the better of the trade, they just needed a little while to figure out how to play with one another.
this is the playoffs. you're not going to win every game by 20 points. there aren't going to be many blowouts. in fact, in some ways game 1 & 2 were more impressive for the way we won with superior execution down the stretch despite not playing at our best for most of the game.
in contrast, your favourite team at the moment, the heat, have struggled mightily in those situations, going 1 for 20 on game winning shots, and losing the one game where the shot did fall. a win is a win, whether it's by 1 or 20.
yes, billups and stoudemire got injured. bad luck. we swept a team that we otherwise would've beaten in 5 or 6. most people had them pushing us to 6 or 7 games or upsetting us. injuries happen. do you think I shall shed a single tear if wade or bosh get injured?
2 of our 3 victories did include shaq, but he was by no means the deciding factor. the key was the ray allen/dwyane wade matchup. allen torched wade twice, while stifling him on defense, forcing lebron to play the same sort of hero-ball he played in cleveland.
the 3rd game was probably the most telling. we were decimated by injuries, pierce played the worst game of his career, yet we won through team defense and superior execution in the clutch.
in the 4th game, our big 3 outscored their big 3, but their supporting cast, widely acknowledged as the worst in the league, dropped 50 on us. if that's what it takes to beat us, miami are in for a tough time. our supporting cast, despite the lackadaisical play from our bench, includes rondo and JO, who are both playing much better than they were at the time.
saying that indy, hawks and pacers are better than the knicks because they beat us and the knicks didn't is committing what I like to call "the scissors-paper-rock fallacy". it's like saying that cleveland are the best team in the league because they beat boston, miami and the lakers.
I know I'll never sway you on this point, but rondo is far better than holiday, collison and hinrich. the only thing they can do better is shoot, and shooting is but one facet of a game involving multiple skills, and rondo is far better at everything else.
hawks-magic is a classic example of matchups triumphing over talent. no-one would argue that atlanta are the better team, but they are winning the series because they are playing howard well. the Cs trade is not comparable to the knicks or magic trades. those teams blew up their entire roster except for one superstar. we exchanged one role player for another.
not sure why you'd bring up last year in support of your argument, but the similarities are everywhere. like last year, we limped into the playoffs, comfortably beat a team that most expected would give us trouble, and now will face the best team in the league.
no-one is saying "we beat the knicks, therefore we will beat the heat". they're saying "we saw encouraging signs in this series, we will have closely fought, hotly contested battle with the heat"
