Lakers vs. Celtics prediction thread

[King Glorious]

Originally Posted by pgardn

These are so much diff. than regular season games they are not comparable.
82 games... Guys have to take nights off. The regular season is way too long.
And the playoffs are played at such a diff. level of intensity.
Look at the Celtics playoff record and compare that to their regular season record if you want stats...

Having said this, the Celtics played better and won.
I think the Lakers will win more than one game in this series
without Kobe going off and getting high 30's or 40's.

Fiddling with the rim is ridiculous I agree.

I think that regular season and playoff games are comparable when certain trends can be seen. What the regular season showed is what matchups can and can't work. One that I think is in the Celtics favor is one I think they picked up on in the regular season and that's making Odom be more of a scorer than a playmaker. They back off of him and take away the passing lanes and make give him opportunities to shoot more. He's shot 28 times in the last two meetings, with two assists. I think that you learn how to play guys in the regular season so that if you meet in the playoffs, you have a blueprint of what you want to do. Some of the parts may change (ie Bynum was there earlier and now Gasol is and Tony Allen is not playing now and Rondo missed one of the games) but a basic idea is learned about how you want to attack certain matchups.