Despite starting out as favorites, except for the 1st half of game 4, the Lakers have been unable to play their game against the Celtics. More specifically the league’s 3rd best offense (when accounting for pace) found itself in trouble against the league’s best defense. The Lakers defense was good, holding the Celtics 3p below their regular season average, but the Lakers themselves only managed to score 90.5ppg compared to the 108.5 they scored during the regular season or the 99.2 scored during the playoffs.

The Lakers offense ineptitude is a little bit baffling considering they have the best scorer in the game, a center that can score and enough shooters to keep a defense honest, and they are coached by arguably the best coach ever. Of course a lot of credit should be given to the Celtics D, but how did they manage to basically shut down the Lakers when the Lakers have so many offensive weapons ? That’s even more staggering considering that the Spurs, the 3rd best defensive team in the league, were nowhere near as good as the Celtics in defending the Lakers. The Lakers-Spurs series was also a low scoring one, but this was mainly because the Spurs slowed down the pace as much as they could, while the Celtics like to push the ball on offense to generate easy points. So what are the Celtics doing different from the Spurs ?

From the Lakers role players, only Radmanovic and Farmar have lower FG% against the Lakers than against the Spurs - and as a result they got less minutes . The rest of Kobe’s supporting cast has noticeably better FG% compared to the Spurs series: Gasol .511 against the Celtics up from .446 against the Spurs, Odom .500 up from .404, Fisher .429 up from .375, Vujacic .406 up from .303. The Spurs defended the 3p line fiercely. The Celtics, perhaps not so much: the Lakers role players (other than Fisher) are also shooting better from the 3p line - including Radmanovic and Farmar: Vujacic .438 up from .316, Radmanovic .389 up from .273, Farmar .556 up from .417. One might think of pointing to Odom and/or Gasol and blame them for the Lakers ineptitude, but their numbers are very close to what they averaged against the Spurs.

So if the shooters are shooting better and the inside players are the same what’s killing the Lakers ? The short answer would be: Kobe Bryant. After all, he’s the superstar, the leader, and the responsibility is all his. And his numbers have dropped compared to the Spurs series: points per game down to 26.8 from 29.2 (despite getting more minutes per game), turnovers up to 3.25 from 2.4, FG% down to .432 from .533, 3p% down to .200 from .333 and even the FT% is down to .784 from .909.

This drop is caused because unlike the Spurs who let Bowen single cover Kobe a lot, the Celtics are doubling Kobe a lot. Kobe was a scorer and passer in the first 2 rounds (over 33 ppg, with 6.3 and 7.2 assists). Against the Spurs, he was more of a scorer than a passer (29.2 ppg, only 3.8 ast). The Celtics took away more of his scoring forcing him to be a passer (26.8 ppg, 6.3 ast).

But how can a defense afford to double him so much when the Lakers supposedly have a low post presence and shooters to spread the floor ? Well, perhaps Gasol is not really that much of a low post presence. He is in fact a very good offensive player - someone who scored over 20 ppg over the course of an entire season while shooting over 50% is no slouch. But the numbers might be a little misleading. He is a very opportunistic player (not a bad thing) so many of his points come as a result of him running the floor very well and off opportunities created by others. He is very good at filling the open spaces next to the basket and always has his hands ready to receive a pass and score.

But he is less able of creating scoring opportunities for himself, especially against good defenses.  And the Celtics are the best defense he has seen this season.  Garnett himself might be the worst match-up for Gasol. Garnett is perhaps the only guy in the league agile and quick enough to keep up with Gasol and not let him get his easy baskets by running the floor and also tall and athletic enough not to allow Gasol to score over him.  Garnett is also helped by the fact that Gasol doesn’t like to bang his body in the low post, pushing his opponents to create space for his shot. If anything, Gasol shies away from contact even more than Garnett himself (yeah, the Celtics could do without many of those long 2s shot over much shorter defenders).

So what the Celtics are doing is doubling Kobe making sure they don’t let the Lakers superstar beat them and are also rotating on Gasol to deny his opportunistic scores. This leaves the Lakers role players with the long 2 and the 3, but as the Celtics are younger and more athletic than the Spurs, they usually are able to get a hand in the shooter’s face just enough so they don’t get killed by the 3 ball.

Since they can’t dump the ball to Gasol and let him work the low post (like they did with Shaq - I suppose Kobe misses Shaq now, the in-his-prime Shaq, not the fat old one) and Kobe is swarmed by the Celtics, the Lakers depend on their role players’ shooting accuracy to open up the Celtics D. Only their role players are just not experienced or not good enough to rise up to the occasion.

The only time the shots started dropping for the Lakers - during the 1st half of game 4 - you could hear their offense roar while they took a 24p advantage. Suddenly the middle was open for layups and dunks, Odom was playing well for the first time in the series and the Lakers were dominating. But as soon as the shots stopped falling, the Lakers offense screeched to a halt, and the Celtics were able to pull off the greatesc come back in the history of the Finals.

All things considered, unless there are some serious injuries to the Celtics or Kobe and the Lakers role players get insanely hot and keep it up for 3 games in a row, the series should be over tonight or Tuesday the latest. But that doesn’t mean these Lakers won’t win a title. With the Spurs, Mavs and Suns aging faster than Mel Gibson in Forever Young, the West is wide open. The Hornets and Jazz might raise some claims, but the Lakers are more talented overall and their odds look to be much better for next year with Bynum back and an entire training camp and season to allow the team to gel. Especially Bynum might solve the issues that Gasol can’t: a physical low post presence on offense as well as on defense.

As the New Orleans Hornets are a couple of minutes away from eliminating the Mavs from the 2008 playoffs it looks like this group of players has run its course. They had a shot at becoming a one shot wonder in 2006, but their window of opportunity was slammed shut by Wade, who, in the process, seemed to have shuttered their collective self-confidence as well. And they never recovered.

Now there’s talk about Avery being fired and perhaps Josh Howard being traded. Which sounds OK with me, as long it is just the beginning of a  rebuilding process that must include trading Dirk. He is the Mavs leader, but he hasn’t been too good at it, especially in the playoffs. Like some other really talented players, he’s built for the regular season, where he will lead his team to a good record. But once the playoffs start, his softness and lack of defense get badly exposed. Here’s a list of players that the Mavs should explore trading and the reasons why:

* Josh Howard: he sucked during this series and his admission of smoking pot makes him look kinda dumb. But this is not the real reason why he should be traded. As I explained before, his offensive game is based way too much on 1-on-1 plays and he disrupts the offense.

I think Kidd has a couple more years when he can contribute, and if the Mavs move quick, they might benefit from them. At times, Howard also seemed lost or unfocused on defense. Right now he’s in his prime so the Mavs should be able to get some value back.

* Dirk Nowitzki: he’s a great offensive weapon, but he’s also very very soft. He doesn’t go inside nowhere as much as he needs to. Sometimes he doesn’t realize he has a mismatch and thus he doesn’t try to take advantage of it by requesting the ball. He seems unable to set a proper pick, too often he sets the pick standing sideways, and since he doesn’t have a big frame (or big belly), defenders get around him easily. And if the pick works, he pops for a jumper instead of rolling to the basket, even if the paint is open.

On defense he doesn’t put his hands up all the time, he doesn’t rotate to help when opponents are penetrating to the basket. His rebounding numbers are inflated too, as many times the others just box out for him to take the rebound. Defensive rebounds are more a result of team-work, while good rebounders also have good offensive rebounding numbers. Well, out of the top rebounders in the NBA, Dirk has the fewest offensive rebounds at 1.2 per game. The only other player on that list with as few offensive rebounds is Jason Kidd who happens to be a G and 6 inches shorter than Dirk. Most of the other players have 3 or more offensive rebounds per game.

For a team with Dirk to really be a contender, they need a real defensive presence, a shot blocker to play with him, cause Dampier’s lame washed-up overpaid ass is not enough. A Tyson Chandler or Marcus Camby type of player, someone who is not really a scorer and doesn’t need the ball much. Someone who can focus on playing D while being available for open dunks or alley oops when Dirk is doubled. Emeka Okafor or Jermaine O’Neal would also fit well with Dirk, and Jermaine might be available and cheap this summer.

By the way, I am surprised to see how many people fail to see the holes in Dirk’s game and claim he doesn’t have enough help from his teammates. While it’s true that his teammates didn’t handle their  business, Dirk was just as much a part of the problem. Including in game 5 where he shot 8-21 from the field, and took most of those shots while fading away from the basket instead of going strong. When you’re a superstar and you know calls are gonna go your way (like not even getting a foul after clearly shoving MoPete), you have to be aggressive and take it to the rim. Flopping on fade away jump shots is not the right way to get to the free throw line.

* Erick Dampier: yeah, like anyone’s gonna want his bloated contract. Too bad for the Mavs, cause he’d have no place on the roster if the Mavs got the defending/rebounding C to play with Dirk.  Guess signing players who only perform in their contract years is not a good idea (see: James, Jerome). But maybe the Mavs can pack him with Josh Howard or Dirk.

* Jerry Stackhouse: Biggest bonehead on the team. With the Mavs closing in on the Hornets at the end of  the 4th quarter of a “win or go home” game 5, he picks up his second technical and is ejected. That 1 extra point could have been the difference between Dallas losing or going to overtime. And that comes after his moronic comments about returning to play for the Mavs after a trade to the Nets cost Cuban a cool 11 million in salaries and luxury tax.

* Jason Terry: His play during the series was in fact decent, but with his contract, if the Mavs decide to try a quick rebuild, it might be a good idea to trade him while he has some value.

This season the Spurs look different. Not only do they look older, which was to be expected, but there was a shift in their game plan as well. The shift was most likely caused by the fact that most of their roster is over 30, with quite a few players closer to 40 than to 30. At the time of the Conference Finals/NBA Finals their role players will be: Brent Barry - 36, Bowen - 37, Finley - 35, Horry - 38, Oberto - 33, Stoudamire - 35, Kurt Thomas - 36, Udoka - 31, Jacque Vaughn - 33. And their stars are not that young anymore, except for Parker who will be 26. Duncan and Manu will be 32 and (almost) 31. This means that out of all the rotation players that got at least 10 minutes per game, everyone is over 30 except for Parker (26) and Matt Bonner (22). That roster is beyond old. It’s ancient. And cracks are starting to show in the Spurs’ once impenetrable armor.

Their defense is not what it used to be. Here’s how the Spurs defense this season compares to their previous seasons (data from basketball-reference.com):

2 weeks ago I started wondering what’s going on with the Spurs. They just lost on the weekend to the Rockets despite Duncan having 25 points and 17 rebounds. The other 2 Spurs stars weren’t bad either. Ginobili had 21 points (6-13 FG) , 5 reb, 4 ast. Tony Parker had 16 points (7-15 FG), 4 reb, 4 ast. On Houston’s side McGrady played only 25 minutes and scored just 9 points on 4-12 shooting. Yao was good but not spectacular with 21 points (7-10 FG), 14 reb and 2 blk. Other then Alston (16 points) nobody from Houston scored in double digits. Houston as a team shot 38.6% from the field. How did they lose that game ? Well, other then Duncan, Manu and Parker, everyone else on the Spurs pretty much sucked. Finley, Oberto and Bowen “contributed” a combined 6 points in 80 minutes on the court. That’s how much Ben Wallace scored the same night in 26 minutes. Whenever Ben Wallace scores 3 times more points per minute than you, you suck.

The Spurs sucking this bad is pretty uncharacteristic so I started asking myself: is this the beginning of the end for the Spurs ?
The numbers seemed to suggest so. They started the season hot and on the 10th of December they were 17-3. Since then, they were 8-10 till the 20th of January. But why were the Spurs playing so …. average ?

None of their 3 stars seems to have a down year. Duncan’s scoring is down 1.2 points compared to last season, slightly above his production in 2005-2006. His FG% is down to 50.6%, slightly above his career average. His other stats are more or less the same. If anything, these variations are just about what you’d expect from the robot also known as Tim Duncan in his attempt to fool you into believing he’s human.

Duncan’s slight drop in scoring isn’t a concern anyway, since Ginobili and Parker more then picked up the slack. Ginobili is having a career year with 19.6 points (up 3.1), 4.6 reb (up 0.2) and 4.1 ast (up 0.6) in under 30 minutes per game. He’s 5th in the league in PER, trailing only Lebron, CP3, Amare and Garnett. That means he’s above the likes of Dwight Howard, Kobe, Bosh, Dirk, Nash, Yao Ming and, of course, Tim Duncan himself. Tony Parker hasn’t been too bad himself with 20.1 points (up 1.5) on a 49.1 FG%, 3.1 reb (down 0.2) and 6.5 ast (up 1). So the 3 stars are doing their part. And the rest of the cast, despite having graduated from the same class as Tutankhamun, is not really bad enough to explain their play.

But just as I was thinking that the age of the Spurs might be starting to show, I remembered I’ve seen the exact same thing one season ago. The Spurs were looking old, and slow and tired and …. well … old. On February 11th they were 33-18 for a winning percentage of .647, below the .658 the Spurs had after the recent Rockets loss. But then they went on a 13 games winning streak, lost a couple of games they shouldn’t have lost against the lowly Bucks and Celtics, and then sandwiched another loss between 6 games winning streaks. And they went on to win their 4th title in 9 years.

Can they do it again this year ? They never got back to back titles, so history works against them. Speaking of history, they are 1 year older which can’t be good for such an old team. How old are they ? Their rotation players are: Duncan (32 soon), Ginobili (30), Parker (almost 26), Oberto (33 soon), Bowen (36), Elson (32 soon), Finley (35 soon), Barry (37), Horry (37), Booner (28), Udoka (30). And they just brought Damon Stoudamire (34) as a back-up PG. That’s a lot of players closer to 40 than they are to 30. Can they put up another run after the All Star Break ? Can they fight through what promises to be a grueling playoff ?

This season, the West is even tougher. For the past seasons, it’s been the Spurs, Mavs and Suns that were battling for the Western Conference crown. The other teams were good, but not really good enough. But now, things have changed. The Jazz showed last season that they belong. They couldn’t really put up a fight against the Spurs, but they are a young team and they keep improving through the growth of their players and small but smart trades. The Hornets seem to be the real deal with Chris Paul playing like an MVP. And the Lakers just got a whole lot better by trading half of glass of soured milk and a month old newspaper for Gasol.

So all things considered, I doubt the Spurs will be able to finally get a repeat. They are bound to make a run come March. But it may come a little too late for them to get a top seed. And without home court advantage it will be even harder to face off all the pretenders to the throne. They will be tough, they will be savvy, they will use all the tricks in their book, but at the end of the day, I don’t think they will come out on top from the West.

That’s not to say they won’t come back next year. Their front office proved itself to be way more capable than most front offices in the NBA, so through a number of well thought trades and free agents signings using their exceptions, the Spurs may bring in the fresh blood they need to keep them in the elite of the league and contending for a title.

Despite not being fully recovered from knee and shoulder surgeries, Wade has been playing out of his mind in an attempt to stop Riley from taking another in-season vacation the Heat from setting a new franchise record for consecutive losses. Of course, it didn’t hurt that the Heat were playing Indiana who was missing Jermaine O’Neal. Wade was all over the floor, shooting 3s, taking the ball to the hoop, making all kinds of shots against the Pacers defense. Truth be told, the same “defense” allowed Kirk Hinrich (who sucked so much this year he’s been getting offers to star in gay porn movies) to match his career high.

Wade finished with 35 points (12-20 FG, 2-5 from the 3p line), 8 reb, 4 ast, 1 stl, 1 blk and 3 TO. He was helped by Haslem (12 p on 6-11, 9 reb) and Dorell Wright (14 p on 7-11, 10 reb). Not helping much were Jason Williams (4 points on 2-9 in 36 minutes) and Ricky Davis (2 points on 1-7 in 27 minutes). At least Williams contributed 8 ast and 6 stl with just 1 TO. Ricky only contributed with some bad defense.

What is surprising is that Miami has been sucking so bad recently despite excellent play from Wade. He isn’t anywhere near 100% (and in fact Riley should sit him till he’s recovered and “fight” for a higher pick in the draft) and you can see that especially on D where he’s not as active. He’s also a step slow on offense too, but his talent enables him to still be able to score at a high rate. So if Wade is playing great even if injured, why is Miami so bad ?

Well, even if Wade has been spectacular on the offensive end, he had little help. Jason Williams is only making 38.3% of his FGA (and that isn’t even his worst season shooting percentage-wise). Williams manages to have a career worst in points scored at 9.1 per game. And that is despite playing over 31 minutes per game and Miami not having too many scorers on the team. And what would be a “who sucks” list without Ricky Davis ? It would be an incomplete list, that’s what it would be. Ricky is shooting only 43.4% from the floor, but that doesn’t seem to bother him or maybe make him pass the ball more often. He actually averages 2 assists LESS than he did last season. After all, he has a shooter’s mentality. Too bad he’s not really a shooter. With such contributors, no wonder the Heat are 3rd last in the league in point differential and last in points scored per game.

Unfortunately for them, is not only the offense that sucks. The defense is just as bad. There are very few teams that allow more points per 100 possessions than the Heat: Warriors (tied at 109), Grizzlies, Bucks, Wolves, Knicks and Kings (tied). The rebounding is also bad, as Miami is 5th worse in the league in rebounding differential and dead last in rebounds per game. The problems with defense and rebounding can be partially explained by the injury to Zo and Shaq taking his annual 30 games break. That left Mark Blount as the starting C, and he responded by not letting his height (7 feet) stand in his way to averaging 2.8 rebounds in almost 17 minutes per game. I think that statistically there are more chances of one person getting hit by lightning AND a meteor at the same time then Blount getting a rebound.

Looking at the bunch of misfits Riley has assembled you almost understand Shaq’s lack of interest in playing during the regular season. After all, he’s saving himself for the playoffs.