bruce@godot.UUCP (Bruce Nemnich) (06/04/84)
Sigh. The Lakers took a 2-1 lead in the Champoinship Series with a blowout of the Celtics at the Forum today. Magic set a Finals record with 21 assists, and the Lakers set a team record by scoring 47 (!) points in the 3rd quarter. The Lakers are playing great ball. I am very impressed. I am not convinced they are generally the better team, but they have definitely peaked at the right time. If they played this way during the regular season, they would have won 70 games. It's now pride time for the Celtics. LA went out to an early 14-point lead, but Boston came back to take a 5-point lead midway in the second quarter. Then, the Celtic collapsed, both on offense and defense. The Lakers ran off 16 straight, and the Celtics were never again competitive. This is a shame: the Celtics are in a bad slump, playing their worst ball since losing 4 straight early in the season. (After that, they won 27 of 31; let's hope they can similarly regroup). All series, they have shot poorly (45% in the first 2 games, 39% today). The the disasterous thing today was the total collapse of the defense. The only Celtics to look decent today were Bird (30 pts) and Wedman. Larry showed signs of breaking out of his shooting slump, though he was still subpar. Cooper is playing him well, but I think his play has been blown way out of proportion by the press. Larry has been able to get open all series, but he has simply not had his shot. Even shooting so poorly, he has managed to get 24, 27, and 30 points. I don't know what happened today. Things looked OK for Boston for the first 18 or so minutes. Even when they went down by 14 in the 1st, they were creating good shots, just not hitting them. The collapse was sudden and total, except for the two mentioned above. I hope they got it out of their system. I didn't get a chance to comment about Game 2, but I don't know what I would have said. A Classic. K.C. coached a helluva game. There has been much press about the Laker bench, but the Celtics have gotten more minutes out of theirs through the first 2 games (even counting Rambis as a starter, though he plays less than half the game). The Celtics scored 32 points on 20 offensive rebounds in game 2, as opposed to 8 on 9 for the Lakers. -- --Bruce Nemnich, Thinking Machines Corporation, Waltham, MA