Eh... If we struggle to beat Carmelo and the Pips just because they played with playoff intensity (despite shooting 36%), then I shudder to think what we would look like against the Heat.
This team needs to play much better if they want to get past the second round.
Apparently I'm in the vastcminority on this one, but I still don't think the Knicks are anything special. No, they're not the Twolves, but they're not good, either. There can be no complaining about being up 2-0, but this team needs to find another gear against the good / very good teams that stand in their way.
I don't know. I was disappointed with their play in the first game. However, last game really reminded me of '10 Miami's one win against us last year when Wade was throwing up long distance, well-guarded, quite frankly, terrible, shots and hitting them. Pierce guarded Melo well; Melo just hit a ton of tough shots that he won't hit every game.
In fact, I think if we were to replay that game 25 times with the exact same shot selection by both teams, I think that the Celtics would win the majority of those games in blow out fashion.
The real test will be next game. Can they step it up and take NY by the throat on the road.
Also, if Shaq can return before the end of the series, it will make an enormous impact on this team. Right now it's night and day out there when Jermaine's in and when Jermaine's out. When he's in there, NY has trouble getting to the hoop and has to settle for outside shots. When he's not, they get to the basket practically at will. If Shaq had been starting these games and JO had been coming in to anchor the defense of the 2nd unit (and thus avoiding the midget lineup of Green and Baby upfront), I think the C's would've never been down in Game 1 and that they would've won in blowout form Game 2.
People make this comparison a lot. Here's the difference:
Game 2 vs. NY (home): Knicks shot 35.6% from the field, 32.0% from 3PT, and Carmelo was 14-for-30 with 42 points
Game 4 against MIA (road): Heat shot 50.0% from the field, 55.6% from 3PT, and Wade shot 16-for-24 with 46 points
To me, those performances aren't equivalent at all. In the Heat game, Wade went off (shooting 66.7% from the field), and the entire team shot well, especially from three. Basically, that's one of those fluke games, where the other team is just hitting shots and you can't really stop them.
That's not what happened in the Knicks game at all. Carmelo shot sub-50%, and the Knicks as a whole were terrible from the field and from deep.
When a team and a superstar play as well as Wade and the Heat did last year, they're not going to lose very often. However, in the Knicks game, neither the Knicks nor Carmelo were all that special. It's a game we should have won easily, but we didn't not because of some fluke, but because we couldn't rebound the ball.
We won, which is all that really matters. However, Game 2 wasn't an example of "well, we played well, but the Knicks just played better". Rather, the Knicks played like crap outside of Carmelo (who was good, but not as great as Wade), and we barely squeaked by.
Statistically you're certainly correct; however, it doesn't change the fact that Melo was shooting terrible shot, after terrible shot. I don't think I'm exaggerating at all when I say that if he shot those exact same 30 shots most games, he'd have shot somewhere around 25%, which would've been equivalent to 7-8 makes out of 30 and a 15-20 point swing. And if that had happened, nobody would be complaining.
I just don't know exactly what people would've wanted the C's to have done differently. They contested practically every shot in the second half. NY was just hitting a disproportionate amount of bad shots. I suppose we could say that Pierce should've hit more of the wide open shots he took, but that's hardly a major problem. Most nights he has and will hit those.
Again, I'm not saying there's not major concerns about this team in terms of size, getting Jeff Green going, and keeping the pedal to the metal the whole game. I just don't think last game's close score was really a product of any of those problems. On most other nights, despite those problems, they would've won in blow out form.
Topic: I don't think we're giving the Knicks enough credit/respect (Read 16391 times)