The Sports Bizzo

By Ted…

Leon Powe wrote the story for the Boston Celtics in game two against LA. I’m not going to go into the overwhelming adversity Powe has overcome in his life; you can get that on Lifetime. What I will say is that he had a career-defining game in what may have otherwise been an only passable Celtics victory. The man had 21 points for only 15 minutes of game play; he was a master of drawing the foul and an excellent performer offensively, simply by being where the Lakers weren’t. (It didn’t hurt that the officials hate Kobe)

Ultimately Powe’s performance was precisely the kind of awakening the bench required for this team to win; Pierce has started these games off right, but it’s the bench that kept things rolling and kept the Lakers stunted. Posey played a similar role, though less dramatically, in their game one win, and of course he played a nice part with a final stretch in their lead just before the end of game two. There is far too much promise and experience sitting on the Boston bench for them to play like they have been this off-season. Prior to this match-up anyone would have cited the bench as a Lakers bonus, or at best a wash. Now we can see how a big game from the Celtics’ bench can mean the difference between winning and losing.

Anyone watching the third quarter and most of the fourth thought this was headed toward an embarrassing conclusion. The city of Boston is not unaccustomed to seeing teams humiliated, but usually the team lives there. Once you saw that the Lakers had trimmed a twenty+ deficit down to two, the last 38 seconds of the game were as exciting as they were confusing. But it was the one-two punch of Pierce and the bench (represented by Posey) that finished off the game.

Bottom line, Kobe never gave up on this game, and he will not give up on this series (Who knew he could score 30 points and still lose? Well besides me?). Anything could happen when this series moves to LA. Will the Celtics on-going struggle on the road follow them out West, or have the Lakers just begun to collapse? All I know is I would feel like a real douche-bag right now if I had counted out Boston and called this series for LA in 4.