In order to win this NBA series, the Celtics need good production from their top three players: Pierce, Garnett and Allen. Last night, they didn’t get it.
Allen scored 25 points with five 3–point shots, but Pierce and Garnett stunk up the court. They combined to score just 19 points on 8 for 35 shooting (22.9 percent). Pierce ended up with just 6 points in a dismal 2 of 14 shooting night. (He scored 50 points in the first two games.)
Even if Bryant is having an off night (and he wasn’t — scoring 36 points), the C’s can’t win without the big guys contributing. Garnett and Pierce couldn’t buy a basket last night and no one but Allen stepped up on offense.
They need to turn it around or this series will be tied on Thursday.
Just a word about the officials calling the game. How is it that in the previous game played in Boston the Lakers only went to the line 10 times, and in this game they got 34 chances at the line (with Bryant going 18 times himself)? You can talk all day about the agressiveness of the team being the difference in how often you get fouled, but I’m not buying it.
Clearly, the officials call the games differently depending on who is the home team. I’m not saying that the officials last night in LA were calling a bad game, or that the officials in Boston on Sunday were doing so. But there was a vast difference in how fouls were called in the two games.
Because the transition between defense and offense is so fast in basketball, how the officials call the game can make a tremendous difference. It did last night.
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