Little 3

Boston's Big 3 seem to have a habit of coming up little way too often. They shot 11/38 today as the Celtics lost today to tie up the Eastern series at 2-2. Ray Allen has basically been reduced to a flaky role player. He did not have a great season, but his playoffs have been horrible. He has had like one good game and has been unreliable for the most part. Paul Pierce had a great game 7 against the Cavs - one for the ages, but other than that, he has been up and down. Same with KG. Inconsistent to say the least. Some huge games, but inconsistent overall. Some of it is defense. Detroit we all know is a monster defensively. Cleveland is no joke defensively either and Boston themselves play a defensive style that doesn't promote good offensive flow. That explains most of the problems for the Celtics.

But how good really are the big 3? I can tell you that they are not as good as the Big 3 in the Alamo - Timmy, Tony and Manu. Allen has not settled into his role in Boston yet. He may be over-the-hill before he settles down. Pierce is very good, but not always great. As for Garnett, great player, but not an offensive monster like some people think he is. You rarely see him dominate offensively. Thats the difference between him and Tim Duncan. Timmy is a dominant offensive player who also defends and rebounds exceptionally well. Garnett can't do what Timmy can on offense though he is a better athlete and can do the other things. KG relies way too much on turnaround fade-aways in the low-post. He is great and is headed to the hall-of-fame, but if you put the right guy to defend him, you can cause him all kinds of problems.

We all know offense puts butts on the seats, but defense puts rings in the fingers. There are way to many stars in this league who get all the glory based on their offensive prowess and we always say " he is not a complete player. He doesn't rebound well or he doesn't defend well". Guys like Carmelo and even Ray Allen fall in that category as they are pretty one-dimensional. KG is probably the only guy who is the opposite of these typical stars. He plays hard, defends like a mother and rebounds extremely well. But he just doesn't have the offensive fire-power. So I don't think this Celtics team can cash it in this year. They may get lucky and beat the Pistons, but I don't think they have the weapons to beat either the Lakers or the Spurs. I am sure the league office would love another Spurs-Pistons finals instead of Lakers-Celtics :-) Lets see what happens. Game 4 in san Antonio should be fun tomorrow in the West. Speaking of KG, that Jason Maxiell's block on his break-away dunk in today's game 4 was awesome. Maxiell added to the Detroit legend of all those Tayshaun Prince blocks during the playoffs the last few years.