After days of hype, C's ready to begin Finals

By Peter F. Stringer
Celtics.com
June 2, 2010

LOS ANGELES - On the last day of practice before the NBA Finals begin, both the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers met with the media to answer basically the same questions they've been hearing for the last three days.

The answers haven't changed much either.

In a series of this nature, with hype of this magnitude and history this rich, it's pretty easy to get lost in the storylines that don't have much to do with the actual basketball games themselves. While people wanted to know about the 2008 Finals, or Paul Pierce's random encounter with Phil Jackson over the summer and the celebrities who frequent Lakers games, there were very few direct inquiries about what will actually happen when Game 1 tips off tomorrow night.

Kendrick Perkins says he expects the Lakers to attempt to bait him into another technical foul, which would cost him an automatic one-game suspension, something he narrowly avoided in the Eastern Conference Finals.
Peter Stringer/Celtics.com

So it was a relief when someone actually asked Paul Pierce about his likely defensive assignment. You know, that guy Bryant No. 8, er, No. 24?

"It's one of the biggest responsibilities in basketball," Pierce said. "You're talking about a guy who can do it all on the court. I'm sure at some point throughout this series or throughout all these games I'll have to see myself matching up with him."

Pierce said he expects to share the burden with his teammates, as he did when the C's faced LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, two similar superstars who dominate the ball and control much of their respective teams' offense.

"You know, that's something that we're going to try to do, give them different looks," Pierce said. "e're going to give him different looks, keep him off balance. That's something we did with other great players such as LeBron, such as Dwyane Wade, and you don't want them to get too comfortable with just one defender taking them one on one. Trapping the ball in his hands, being a little more physical with them. I'm sure at some point in this series or even tomorrow I see myself guarding him."

As for the guy guarding Pierce, Ron Artest talked about the Celtics and compared them to the bullies from another neighborhood, saying that he didn't like to play against "nice guys" because it makes him drop his guard. Still, that description of Artest's comment really doesn't do it justice.

"They've got a lot of aggressive guys...guys who play how I played when I was growing up," Artest said. "I played against guys like the Celtics, when you got to other people's neighborhoods and play basketball. When you win you've got to somehow make it out. I look forward to that. I don't like playing against nice guys. I don't like playing against guys who are gonna touch me and tell me, 'good defense,' be nice to me. It's no fun. Then I get vulnerable. I get weak."

Given the posturing that Phil Jackson's been doing in questioning the physical play of the Celtics and specifically Kevin Garnett, it seems like Artest is just jumping on the Zen Master's bandwagon. If Artest, one of the feistiest defenders in recent league history, is calling the Celtics mean, then they must be doing something right.

Heck, if anyone on the Celtics has a reputation for physical or mean play, it would be Kendrick Perkins, a man whom Artest won't be guarding anytime soon. Perkins, of course, is perched on the precipice of a one-game suspension given his postseason technical foul total, and while he expects the Lakers to attempt to bait him early and often, he doesn't seem to concerned with the prospect of picking up a technical and sitting out a game, and he says his teammates do a great job of helping him keep his head.

"They might try it. I've got to be prepared," Perkins said. "I think the guys around me, Doc, my teammates, they do a great job of reminding me to calm down. If they see me kind of getting out of control, they do a great job of calming me down."

Perkins said that walking the tightrope between playing physical and not costing his team points, or his presence for that matter, is hard to do, but he seems to think he does a better job staying composed when he's not even thinking about the dreaded technical foul.

"When I don't worry about getting them they kind of let me play," Perkins said.

Doc Rivers isn't going to worry about it either, even though losing Perkins for a game could have a huge impact on the team.

"Yeah, it would hurt us just like if [Andrew] Bynum didn't play at all it would hurt them," Rivers said. "But again, there's nothing we can do about it. The number is where it's at. Unless we have a Board of Governors meeting over the next two days and change the rule, then we just have to deal with it."