Post by FLCeltsFan on May 24, 2010 16:01:02 GMT -5
Celtics working on surprise ending
Hollinger By John Hollinger
ESPN.com
Archive
Pierce/AllenJim Rogash/Getty ImagesThe Boston Celtics are sitting pretty in the playoffs after struggling at the end of the regular season.
WALTHAM, Mass. -- With the Boston Celtics on the verge of a stunning sweep of the Orlando Magic on Monday night, let's address a question I've received in one form or another for the past few days: Does the Celtics' playoff success invalidate the regular season? Can veteran teams just blow off the regular season and turn it on come April?
The Celtics of this season have drawn comparisons to two other teams. The most common is the veteran-laden 1994-95 Houston Rockets, who won a second consecutive title after limping home to a 47-35 regular-season finish. In a stirring coincidence, they swept Orlando in four games in the Finals.
"I remember them very well. Way too well," said Celtics coach Doc Rivers, who was on the San Antonio Spurs team that those Rockets upset in six games in the Western Conference finals that season. "But as far as history, we stay in-house."
When you have 17 NBA championships, you can do that. Internally, just two years removed from the Celtics' most recent title run, their barometer has been the veteran-laden 1968-69 Boston team. That club won 48 games, was a defending champion and, like this year's squad, was the East's No. 4 seed entering the playoffs. Nonetheless, it gritted out the final title of the Bill Russell era by beating a top-seeded Philadelphia team in a surprisingly easy five games in the first round before meeting the Lakers in the Finals and prevailing in seven games. Is this sounding familiar yet?
Rivers said he had talked about that team with the Celtics a bit during the regular season just to let them know the history, but some players -- such as Kevin Garnett -- had locked on to it more than others.
Nonetheless, only two teams are reference points, and it takes us back to the question of whether teams can rely on ditching their regular-season persona in the playoffs.
Let's look at history to help us. In the past half century, do you know how many teams that had the fourth-best record or worse in the conference made the Finals?
Six.
Of 100 conference champions, only six of them could blow off the regular season (landing outside the top three in the conference) and still ramp it up come playoff time. Of those, only two won the title.
[+] EnlargeRajon Rondo
Elsa/Getty ImagesRajon Rondo's rise could help the Celtics pull of an impressive feat.
In reverse chronological order:
The 1998-99 New York Knicks are the only eighth-seeded team to make the Finals. They went 27-23 in the lockout-shortened season and escaped an uninspired Eastern Conference before losing to San Antonio.
The 1994-95 Rockets won 47 games and finished sixth in the West during the regular season -- then, without home-court advantage, beat the league's four best teams in succession to claim the title.
The 1980-81 Rockets, a fifth-seeded team that went 40-42, prevailed over a 40-win Kansas City squad in the worst conference finals in NBA history.
The 1977-78 Seattle SuperSonics, a fourth-seeded team that went 47-35 but won the West, lost to a 44-win Washington team in seven games in the Finals.
The 1970-71 Washington Bullets, who went 42-40 as the second seed (but with the fourth-best record), were crushed by Milwaukee in the Finals.
And the 1968-69 Celtics remain one of only two teams (along with the 1994-95 Rockets) to finish fourth or lower and then win the championship.
Although we can find six precedents for this season's Celtics, many of the comparisons are not apt. The 1977-78 Sonics, for instance, like several recent champions, muddled through the first half of the season before getting scorching-hot late in the season. That Seattle team began the season 5-17, then changed coaches, swapped out a few starters and finished 42-18. In other words, it was the exact opposite of the 2010 Celtics.
We also can eliminate the 1968-69 Celtics, who fell to the No. 4 seed in the East almost entirely because they were phenomenally unlucky during the regular season. Boston had the league's second-best point differential and normally would have won 55 games with that scoring margin but went only 7-15 in games decided by five points or fewer.
(The 1968-69 Celtics are also the pièce de résistance in the case that, as I have pointed out for years, a team's record in close games essentially comes down to luck. Given that the Celtics were 11-time champions, I don't think "knowing how to win" was the problem that season.)
Really, only two champions offer a valid precedent for the Celtics thanks to a low regular-season win total, an unimpressive scoring margin and an uninspiring close to the regular season.
The first precedent is the '77-78 Bullets, who provided no rational reason for anyone to believe in them. Washington won only 44 games that season, and its finishing kick of 15-10 didn't exactly get anyone started on planning victory parades. As with this season's Celtics, the Bullets were a veteran team considered something of a spent force, after their 60-win team in 1975 had been shocked in four games by Golden State.
Their nucleus of Elvin Hayes, Bobby Dandridge and Wes Unseld was long in the tooth, and high-scoring guard Phil Chenier played only 36 games and missed the postseason. But third-year guard Kevin Grevey blew up in the playoffs, journeyman Charles Johnson played out of his mind, and the door was opened when the defending champion Blazers were ravaged by injuries. The rest is history.
The second precedent is the 1994-95 Rockets, who went 12-16 in their final 28 games and were given virtually no chance of defending their title. That team traded for Clyde Drexler late in the season, kicked Vernon Maxwell off the team even later and, like the Bullets and this season's Celtics, had a young guard blast off in the playoffs (Sam Cassell).
In addition, three other teams -- the 1980-81 Rockets, the 1975-76 Phoenix Suns and the 1970-71 Bullets -- reached the Finals (but then lost) despite records in the .500 region. Those three cases show that a team can post a regular-season record significantly worse than that of this season's Celtics yet still make a deep playoff run if all the stars align.
Nonetheless, what we're seeing from the Celtics this year is, to say the least, uncommon, especially if it results in a championship. If Boston pulls it off, it will be only the third time in a half century that a team with such a weak regular-season résumé wins the crown.
The parallels warrant mentioning: three veteran teams that have been through the battles before (although Washington hadn't won the title before 1977, it had lost in the Finals two years earlier), which might be a coincidence but is probably somewhat indicative. Perhaps we can say that veteran teams have a slight, though improbable, chance of pulling off this feat, especially if they're helped by a young guard on the rise, whereas young teams have no chance of doing so.
Nonetheless, our takeaway is the same. The Celtics' ability to suddenly dial it up for the playoffs has been remarkable, but we shouldn't start expecting this as a normal occurrence. Out-of-the-blue conference champions come along about once per decade, and out-of-the-blue title teams appear with even less frequency. It would be a mistake to glean from this one example that those will now become annual events.
Hollinger By John Hollinger
ESPN.com
Archive
Pierce/AllenJim Rogash/Getty ImagesThe Boston Celtics are sitting pretty in the playoffs after struggling at the end of the regular season.
WALTHAM, Mass. -- With the Boston Celtics on the verge of a stunning sweep of the Orlando Magic on Monday night, let's address a question I've received in one form or another for the past few days: Does the Celtics' playoff success invalidate the regular season? Can veteran teams just blow off the regular season and turn it on come April?
The Celtics of this season have drawn comparisons to two other teams. The most common is the veteran-laden 1994-95 Houston Rockets, who won a second consecutive title after limping home to a 47-35 regular-season finish. In a stirring coincidence, they swept Orlando in four games in the Finals.
"I remember them very well. Way too well," said Celtics coach Doc Rivers, who was on the San Antonio Spurs team that those Rockets upset in six games in the Western Conference finals that season. "But as far as history, we stay in-house."
When you have 17 NBA championships, you can do that. Internally, just two years removed from the Celtics' most recent title run, their barometer has been the veteran-laden 1968-69 Boston team. That club won 48 games, was a defending champion and, like this year's squad, was the East's No. 4 seed entering the playoffs. Nonetheless, it gritted out the final title of the Bill Russell era by beating a top-seeded Philadelphia team in a surprisingly easy five games in the first round before meeting the Lakers in the Finals and prevailing in seven games. Is this sounding familiar yet?
Rivers said he had talked about that team with the Celtics a bit during the regular season just to let them know the history, but some players -- such as Kevin Garnett -- had locked on to it more than others.
Nonetheless, only two teams are reference points, and it takes us back to the question of whether teams can rely on ditching their regular-season persona in the playoffs.
Let's look at history to help us. In the past half century, do you know how many teams that had the fourth-best record or worse in the conference made the Finals?
Six.
Of 100 conference champions, only six of them could blow off the regular season (landing outside the top three in the conference) and still ramp it up come playoff time. Of those, only two won the title.
[+] EnlargeRajon Rondo
Elsa/Getty ImagesRajon Rondo's rise could help the Celtics pull of an impressive feat.
In reverse chronological order:
The 1998-99 New York Knicks are the only eighth-seeded team to make the Finals. They went 27-23 in the lockout-shortened season and escaped an uninspired Eastern Conference before losing to San Antonio.
The 1994-95 Rockets won 47 games and finished sixth in the West during the regular season -- then, without home-court advantage, beat the league's four best teams in succession to claim the title.
The 1980-81 Rockets, a fifth-seeded team that went 40-42, prevailed over a 40-win Kansas City squad in the worst conference finals in NBA history.
The 1977-78 Seattle SuperSonics, a fourth-seeded team that went 47-35 but won the West, lost to a 44-win Washington team in seven games in the Finals.
The 1970-71 Washington Bullets, who went 42-40 as the second seed (but with the fourth-best record), were crushed by Milwaukee in the Finals.
And the 1968-69 Celtics remain one of only two teams (along with the 1994-95 Rockets) to finish fourth or lower and then win the championship.
Although we can find six precedents for this season's Celtics, many of the comparisons are not apt. The 1977-78 Sonics, for instance, like several recent champions, muddled through the first half of the season before getting scorching-hot late in the season. That Seattle team began the season 5-17, then changed coaches, swapped out a few starters and finished 42-18. In other words, it was the exact opposite of the 2010 Celtics.
We also can eliminate the 1968-69 Celtics, who fell to the No. 4 seed in the East almost entirely because they were phenomenally unlucky during the regular season. Boston had the league's second-best point differential and normally would have won 55 games with that scoring margin but went only 7-15 in games decided by five points or fewer.
(The 1968-69 Celtics are also the pièce de résistance in the case that, as I have pointed out for years, a team's record in close games essentially comes down to luck. Given that the Celtics were 11-time champions, I don't think "knowing how to win" was the problem that season.)
Really, only two champions offer a valid precedent for the Celtics thanks to a low regular-season win total, an unimpressive scoring margin and an uninspiring close to the regular season.
The first precedent is the '77-78 Bullets, who provided no rational reason for anyone to believe in them. Washington won only 44 games that season, and its finishing kick of 15-10 didn't exactly get anyone started on planning victory parades. As with this season's Celtics, the Bullets were a veteran team considered something of a spent force, after their 60-win team in 1975 had been shocked in four games by Golden State.
Their nucleus of Elvin Hayes, Bobby Dandridge and Wes Unseld was long in the tooth, and high-scoring guard Phil Chenier played only 36 games and missed the postseason. But third-year guard Kevin Grevey blew up in the playoffs, journeyman Charles Johnson played out of his mind, and the door was opened when the defending champion Blazers were ravaged by injuries. The rest is history.
The second precedent is the 1994-95 Rockets, who went 12-16 in their final 28 games and were given virtually no chance of defending their title. That team traded for Clyde Drexler late in the season, kicked Vernon Maxwell off the team even later and, like the Bullets and this season's Celtics, had a young guard blast off in the playoffs (Sam Cassell).
In addition, three other teams -- the 1980-81 Rockets, the 1975-76 Phoenix Suns and the 1970-71 Bullets -- reached the Finals (but then lost) despite records in the .500 region. Those three cases show that a team can post a regular-season record significantly worse than that of this season's Celtics yet still make a deep playoff run if all the stars align.
Nonetheless, what we're seeing from the Celtics this year is, to say the least, uncommon, especially if it results in a championship. If Boston pulls it off, it will be only the third time in a half century that a team with such a weak regular-season résumé wins the crown.
The parallels warrant mentioning: three veteran teams that have been through the battles before (although Washington hadn't won the title before 1977, it had lost in the Finals two years earlier), which might be a coincidence but is probably somewhat indicative. Perhaps we can say that veteran teams have a slight, though improbable, chance of pulling off this feat, especially if they're helped by a young guard on the rise, whereas young teams have no chance of doing so.
Nonetheless, our takeaway is the same. The Celtics' ability to suddenly dial it up for the playoffs has been remarkable, but we shouldn't start expecting this as a normal occurrence. Out-of-the-blue conference champions come along about once per decade, and out-of-the-blue title teams appear with even less frequency. It would be a mistake to glean from this one example that those will now become annual events.
