National Basketball Association

Hard to imagine what's next in bizarre Finals

Published Jun. 11, 2010 1:00 a.m. ET

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We've passed the midway point in the 2010 NBA Finals and the forecast for Sunday's Game 5 could be cloudy with a 20 percent chance of Ray Allen-related precipitation.

Or perhaps we should expect Ray to have an even more difficult time in making it rain and submit, oh, a high-wind advisory for Phil Jackson. Could it be excessive heat from Kobe Bryant? Maybe the forecast will be nothing more than grim. With predictions only slightly less worthless than choreographed chirps of your local meteorologist, the Finals have become enormously compelling ... in spite of themselves.

Make no mistake about it, this showdown co-starring the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics has been far from an artistic demonstration of basketball. And credit for the tractor-pull quality of this series should not be the exclusive province of stellar defense. Sure, both teams are committed on the defensive end, but a grotesque lack of player and ball movement has -- at times -- made this series a real fright for the eyes.

It's almost a shame one of these teams has to win.

But beyond the inability of Jackson and Celtics coach Doc Rivers to inspire even reasonable fits of offense, we simply find ourselves in the middle of a Bizarro Finals.

There's evidence all over the place. For starters, we offer Boston's 96-89, series-evening triumph in Thursday's Game 4, a weird affair that was coaxed toward the Celtics' favor by the fourth-quarter heroics of Glen "Big Baby" Davis and reserve guard Nate Robinson. Yeah, Davis has been pretty decent with the ball in his hands before, but -- aside from a really nice quarter against the Orlando Magic -- Robinson had been doing little more in Boston than attempting to become the second coming of Celtics cheerleader M.L. Carr.

The Lakers' contribution to the Bizarro Finals includes Derek Fisher's interpretation of go-to-guy maneuvers in the fourth quarter of a Game 3 triumph. Fish, who typically guns in jump shots when defenses collapse on Kobe Bryant, actually scored on drives and mid-range shots off the bounce. L.A. also has given us a fourth-quarter anti-hero performance from Bryant, who did throw in some desperation buckets late in Game 4, but contributed a nail-in-the-coffin turnover (kiddies, don't leave your feet to pass!) with 31 seconds to play.

Anyway, let's begin our review of the Bizarro Finals with a look at Game 1. OK, a few days after taking down Orlando, the Cs came out and played like patsies during a rout in L.A. Allen, assisted by a couple of questionable calls, was in foul trouble and squeezed off a measly eight field-goal attempts.

The Celtics, who were ranked below 22 NBA teams in terms of pace during the regular season, were ripped for not pushing the game's tempo.

Kevin Garnett, who helped woof Boston past the Lakers in the 2008 Finals, was destroyed by former softy Pau Gasol (23 points, 14 rebounds). In case we'd somehow forgotten, many Finals observers quickly reminded us that Jackson-coached teams are 47-0 when winning Game 1 of a playoff series.

We now move to Game 2, which featured Allen making a Finals-record eight threes (seven in a row at one point) while Fisher and Bryant behaved like defenders who hadn't worked against a shooter running around a series of staggered screens before. This began the Finals version of Kobe's ironic posing as post-game judge and jury of the Lakers' defense even though he probably blows more rotations and is beaten on more basket cuts than anybody in an L.A. uniform.

While Game 2 was winding down, we were informed that the winner of Game 2 in every NBA series this year had advanced to the next round.

Game 3 began with the Celtics seemingly geeked for a rout that was interrupted by a rare Jackson first-quarter time out leading to a brief period of Laker normalcy.

For the record, the Lakers didn't exactly wise up their defense against Allen in what became a Game 3 triumph over Boston; Ray just missed open looks, then refused to either shot fake and get an easier opportunity or take the ball to the basket. He went 0-for-13 from the field, and the L.A. bench -- which doesn't always click on the road -- did enough work to offset the Lakers' puzzling reluctance to keep throwing the ball inside to Gasol.

With Fisher using ball screens from Bryant -- and Allen cuddling up to Kobe while teammate Rajon Rondo was obliged to fight through the pick on his own -- the veteran Lakers lefty bagged 11 points in the final quarter.

Game 4 was just certifiably wacky.

Rondo, the Boston point guard responsible for inspiring more than a few TV and radio sharpies to declare him one of the league's greatest players, was mediocre. He even missed five marginally contested lay-ups in the first half. Bryant, who didn't work his way to the free-throw line until the fourth quarter, was making threes and not much else.

Fisher was quiet. Gasol made less than half of his shots from the floor. Odom made some fourth-quarter hay on offense, but failed to realize that defending a dumpster-sized player like Davis requires bending the knees for leverage to prevent getting moved around like a rag doll on the post.

Davis, who really can't guard any of the Laker post players, was so good on offense that Rivers was obliged to use KG in a cheerleading role for most of the fourth quarter.

Rivers needed a cheerleader, because Robinson was on the floor and Rondo was on the bench. Despite crooked shooting, the Celtics -- a lousy rebounding team during the regular season -- claimed 16 offensive rebounds and finished the game plus-seven on the boards.

By the way, each game has been won by the team that snagged the most rebounds. That's about as predictable as it gets in the 2010 Finals.

With everything else seemingly up for grabs, we can suppose that Game 5 will come down to who wins a battle in the paint between Shelden Williams and Josh Powell.

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