Defense Bottles Up LeBron Again in Game 2

Couper Moorhead
Celtics.com
May 9, 2008

Common sense said LeBron James would respond with a royal Game 2. It told us that his 2-of-18 in Game 1 was an aberration. As Doc Rivers said, great players don't stay down long, and nobody expected the player who finished fourth in the MVP voting to be made to look like a 23-year old.

We won't be fooled again.

After James' 6-of-24 outing in their 89-73 Game 2 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Boston Celtics have made it abundantly clear that LeBron's 8-of-42 'slump' is a consequence of suffocating defense and a perfectly executed gameplan that's neither shiny nor new.

"They are doing what every team is doing to him," Cavaliers Coach Mike Brown said. "Forcing his pick and rolls to baseline, double teaming him in the post. There are only so many types of defenses you can do, and he has faced them before."

Twenty-one points, five rebounds and six assists is a good line for most anybody else, but not for a player responsible for 45.9% of a team's offense (including assists). Not when his bread and butter have gone bad and he's committed 17 turnovers in two games, a total that has him more frustrated than his shooting.

"I'm frustrated with that, I know how to protect the ball," James said. "I'm just missing the shots that I normally make. The layups that usually go down for me are just jumping out of the rim. The jumpers that I usually make are not going down for me."

LeBron's struggles speak for the Celtics staff's understanding of what he wants to do. He wants to get to the bucket off pick-and-rolls -- 85% of their offense, James says -- so James' defenders are fighting over the top of screens while Kevin Garnett or Kendrick Perkins traps him on the other end.

"We still have our defensive principles that we have to stick by," Leon Powe said. "And that is not let him get into the paint, by any means necessary. If that means that if all the 'bigs' have to pull over, and keep all eyes on him, that's what we have to do."

Since he can get his jumper almost anywhere, Paul Pierce and James Posey, LeBron's 24-hour watchdogs, are playing close and tight, using the way of chest-and-feet defense to avoid sending him to the charity stripe.

"LeBron is what makes them go and if we can somehow control him then we can control their team," Pierce said.

And when LeBron wanted to pass out of those double teams to the open teammate, as he has learned to do so well, the weakside defenders are rotating and closing to the shooter as soon as the pass is in the air.

"That was the biggest adjustment we made. We were more alert on the weak sides," Rivers said.

James' forced slump was the only carryover from Game 1. Pierce and Ray Allen's 2-of-18 in Game 1 became an 11-of-23, with the four-point scoring differential growing into a 16-point laydown. Unlike the Celtics, who can rely on multiple players to shoulder the load, thus far, the Cavaliers have been one man and then everybody else -- a group that, minus Zydrunas Ilgauskas' sweet shooting touch, is collectively averaging 35.5 points this series.

By forcing the rest of Cleveland Cavaliers, not LeBron James, to beat them, the Celtics won. They just have to do the same things two more times. Going on the road, where the Celtics are winless in the playoffs, that might be easier said than done. The Cavaliers were down 2-0 to the Detroit Pistons in last year's Eastern Conference Finals, but they still came back to win behind James. The Celtics know, despite the sensational defense they are playing in Boston, LeBron can be that much better in Cleveland.

"You have to work extra hard on defense because it's the road," Posey said. "He's a great young player. Just as he's not playing well right now, he can turn it around at home."