Doc Rivers should know. His lads lost a home Game 7 to Orlando only a year ago, and in that game, they were unrec ognizable as Boston Celtics. His team was even worse as it lost at home in a Game 7 to Indiana in 2005 (97-70).
On the flip side, he has coached Game 7-winning teams in 2008 (Atlanta, Cleveland) and 2009 (Chicago), with the Atlanta game representing one of the worst wimp-outs in NBA history by the Hawks and the Cleveland game containing a memorable shoot-out between LeBron James (45) and Paul Pierce (41). Talk about a range of Game 7 coaching experience.
“I’ve always thought Game 7 is the ultimate player’s game,’’ Rivers says. “It’s the game that all the things you’ve worked on all year, you have to do it and execute it and trust and play.
“And Chuck Daly always said it’s the make-miss game. The league is a make-miss league. But especially Game 7. It comes down to makes and misses. And on the misses, on their misses, make sure they don’t get another opportunity to have it a make.
“And that’s what they come down to.’’
Translation: You must shoot well and you cannot allow the other guys to accumulate many second-chance points.
Neither team is 100 percent physically, but that’s the way it is. Andrew Bynum has been the primary personnel issue on the Lakers for the entire series. The 7-foot-1-inch 22-year old has labored gamely on an injured right knee, and let us hope the Laker medical staff knows what it’s doing by allowing him to play at all.
From the glimpses we’ve had of him in this series, he appears to be a center of enormous promise. With his long arms, he may take up as much space — vertically, horizontally, and diagonally — as anyone in the league, and that includes Yao Ming, who may be 7-6, but who has relatively short arms and negligible lift.
The Celtics will not have Kendrick Perkins, who tore ligaments in his right knee after getting caught in a rebounding sandwich between Bynum and Kobe Bryant in Game 6. Though his individual offense had shrunk to Greg Kite proportions, he was a valued part of the team as a post defender, lane patroller/shot blocker, and general all-around tough guy.
