By DRJ
The Lakers and Celtics are similar in some ways. Each is made of a mix of older vets and younger players. The Lakers chose to go all-out for most of this regular season. Kobe injured various parts of his body – broken finger, strained ligaments, twisted ankle, wrenched back, and god-knows-what-else – but played through it all. They dialed it back a little toward the end, but the Lakers still earned a pretty good regular-season record: best in the West, 3rd best in the league.
The Celtics went in the opposite direction. They started hot, got themselves a great record in the first third of the season, then... injuries happened, and they dialed it back. Way back, as it turned out. For the rest of the season, the Celtics mostly brought their B game (at best). It drove their fans nuts. It drove some fans to lose faith, and some to actually boo them at home. The boos happened twice: first vs. Memphis – when everybody on the team said it was helpful – and then again vs. the Wizards, 4 games from season's end, when KG responded by muttering that the booing fans should stay home. They just didn't get it, he felt. Was he right?
Were the Lakers right to work so hard to build an excellent regular season record, and thus have HCA in every Western Conference series? Or were the Celtics right to ignore HCA and focus on getting to the playoffs fully healthy?
Here's what we know so far..... Not only is Kobe a walking wreck now, his whole team looks intermittently beat up and exhausted. Even when they have a good game, like Game 5 of the 1st round, Kobe is under par. So one issue is the physical one – when you work that hard in the regular season – ESPECIALLY when you're an older team – you get beat up in a hundred ways, which inevitably takes its toll in the playoffs.
And there's the psychological factor. When you've brought your A game so often in the regular season, it's hard to keep bringing that top level of urgency and focus night after night. It becomes easier to bring it SOME of the time. This is, again, especially true when you're not a young, excited team, but a veteran group that's been-there-done-that for all of it.
On the other hand, when you haven't brought your A game for about 3 months, it's not only easier to bring it in the playoffs – you feel like you HAVE TO bring it, because the fans have earned it... your PRIDE has earned it. And, once again, this is especially true when you're a veteran team.
And this what we've seen unfold.
The Lakers are now locked in mortal combat with OKC, the 8th seed. The best they can hope for is 6 games. And Kobe continues to struggle. The Celtics, meanwhile, are done with first round fairly easily, 4-1, and are coasting to the next one.
The concept of “flipping a switch”, which started out as some nutty blog theory, or something Sheed would spout from time to time (in between his tirades about the refs), is now in every news story about the Celtics. Now it's reality.
The Celtics are not alone in having adopted this approach to the regular season vs. the second season. The Spurs did it too, and they too are succeeding – from the 7th seed. Seeding diminishes to almost zero importance when compared with health, and Pop-&-Doc were canny enough to have realized that AND acted upon it.
So the verdict seems to be in. Celtics got it right. Lakers got it wrong. More than that: I believe the Lakers were NUTS to let Kobe play injured, as they did. Why do that? He should CERTAINLY have taken 4-6 weeks off, gotten that finger fixed, gotten his whole body fixed and rested, so he could be whole for the playoffs. But something was missing in L.A.'s collective head. Confidence, probably. Vision. Discipline. Faith. Or maybe it was just that the Lakers didn't go through what the Celtics went through in 2009 – when the Cs learned firsthand how absolutely vital it is to bring a HEALTHY team into the playoffs. Nothing is more important. (You could argue that that should be obvious to everyone – but it's not. Don't ask me why.)
What does this mean to the NBA? They can't have ALL teams soft-pedaling the regular season – who would watch them? It's a real, structural problem for the league... and too big to fully address here. In short: the problem is that the reward for doing well in the regular season (HCA) is insufficient to properly motivate teams. The problem exists because the NBA greedily created two clashing elements: an 82-game regular season AND an expanded 8-team playoff structure. Can't have both. So one solution (and I'm sure there are others) is to give the top 2 teams in each conference a bye in the first round. There would be two fewer playoff series, but in return, the regular season would really MEAN something.
And what about us fans? What about the ones who booed our guys in the Wizards game? And those that thought it was a good idea? And all those who lost faith and believed the Cs were dead in the water? What do we learn from all this?
We learn that when there is a reasonable explanation for something our team is doing – even if you don't like it, even if you HATE it – we should still accept that explanation, and continue to support and believe in our team – until we're proven wrong, if that ever happens.
We don't know if the Celtics will win it all this year. They certainly can. But it's a hard thing to do... there are a LOT of great teams out there, and any one of them could beat us. But we know now that the Cs are HERE. They're READY. Their switch is FLIPPED. And they are not going to stop until they climb the mountain and claim the ring... or fall down trying.
From now on, and in all the years to come... we need to support them. Let's not forget the lesson of 2010. Never lose faith, while faith is still possible.