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With two of the best games of the NBA Playoffs so far (obviously both in the Finals) and a great US Open, this was one of the best sports weekends of the year so far. It was just a great weekend to be a sports fan. Let’s start with the Finals.

I turned on Game 4 a few minutes into the 1st quarter and was completely blown away that the Celtics were getting worked as badly as they were. I was losing interest in the game fairly quickly so I went with some friends to watch the rest of the game at a bar. I kept my eye on the game the rest of the first half and when the Lakers held off a run towards the end of the 2nd (aided by Doc yanking around his rotation for the last minute) I was convinced it was over. Then the 3rd quarter happened.

As the 3rd quarter moved along and the Celtics slowly began to chip away, more and more people in the bar started to watch. I really couldn’t believe that the Celtics were making the kind of run they were. I was sure they would make a run to cut it to ten or so, but never expected this kind of run. This was a team that struggled playing from behind all season and especially in the playoffs. By the time the Celtics cut the lead to two at the end of the third, everyone in the bar was watching and cheering. They turned the music off and turned the volume on all the TVs up. No one saw it coming, but we had ourselves a basketball game.

The 4th quarter seemed to just fly by with the teams eseentially trading baskets. Kobe slammed one home to give the Lakers a 4 point lead about halfway through and that’s when I thought the Lakers had finally began to close the door, but after a Boston timeout, Posey nailed a three and the Celtics were back within one. Everyone in the bar was watching the game, yelling at the TV. Posey had one more huge three to put the Celtics up 5 with around a minute to go and the place just went nuts. The Celtics hit their free throws from then on and sealed the game. It was a great game and a great finish and I watched it in a great atmosphere. The Tim Donaghy scandal was pretty far from people’s minds watching that game, which is exactly what the NBA needed.

If you had told me before the series that one team would blow a 20 point lead and the other would seal the win with big shots and free throws once they grabbed the lead, I never would have guessed that the Lakers were the team that gave up the lead and the Celtics held it. I thought, given Kobe’s presence, the Phil Jackson advantage and how the Celtics had played in the first three rounds, the Lakers would be the far more superior team in terms of mental toughness. So far, that certainly has not been the case. This was shown again in Game 5 on Sunday night.

The Lakers took another huge lead early and the Celtics made a game of it in the 2nd quarter. The Lakers took another sizable lead in the 3rd and beginning of the 4th, but the Celtics pushed them again and made a game of it again. Game 5 was another great game to watch, especially watching Paul Pierce play like a man possessed. He had a simply fantastic game. It is tough for the Celtics to lose a game in which Pierce played so well, but they still have some positives to take away from this game.

First, the Lakers don’t seem to have any idea of how to put the Celtics away. Even up 6 with under 20 seconds to play, the Lakers gave Eddie House an open look to cut it to 3 and then almost gave the ball right back to the Celtics before Derek Fisher came away with the ball and got fouled. There just seems to be no mental toughness coming from the Lakers right now. This is going to be an even bigger problem in Boston. If the game last night was played in Boston, the Celtics win no problem.

Another takeaway for the Celtics is that Kevin Garnett really didn’t play well last night. You wouldn’t really know it from his stats (13 points, 14 rebounds), but after he got his second foul in the first quarter Garnett looked really out of sync. He couldn’t play as aggressively on the defensive end and he just looks nervous on the offensive end. Those two free throws he missed late in the game really cost the Celtics and I don’t think he misses them in Boston. The Celtics cannot expect the same kind of game from Pierce in game 6, but Garnett will probably play better than he did.

The Celtics have also done just a fantastic job of defending Kobe Bryant. After the 1st quarter, his shot wasn’t falling and he seemed to be playing passively the rest of the game. The Celtics can’t expect that same stroke of luck, but some credit has to be given to their defense. They can’t keep holding Kobe to three below-average (for him, at least) games out of five just because he isn’t playing well. The guy hasn’t had that many bad games all season let alone in a five game span. Kobe probably isn’t playing his best, but the Celtics deserve some measure of credit for bothering him on the defensive end. They can play better defense than they did (the loss of Kendrick Perkins hurt more than anyone really thought it would), but holding Kobe to the kind of game he had was a pretty good place to start.

The Lakers defense, on the other hand, has been downright atrocious. Mark Jackson kept calling it “fake hustle.” They don’t stay in front of anyone, they don’t take charges and they have no prayer of stopping dribble penetration. This is why they’ve let the Celtics back into games. They need to find a way to fix their defense or they have no shot of winning in Boston.

There is good news for the Lakers though. Kobe Bryant has not played near his best basketball, they have shown (in the first quarters of the past two games) that when they are clicking on all cylinders they are a better basketball team than the Celtics and Paul Pierce probably isn’t going to play as well as he did in game 5. They still have time to fix their defense, but they had better do it quickly because Boston probably will not miss the same opportunities that they had in game 5 once they are back in Boston. The Lakers still have hope (mostly because of two guys named Kobe Bryant and Phil Jackson), but they have a lot of work to do if they are expecting to win two straight games in Boston.

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