Trailing in Game 4, Rivers Goes To Small Ball

Couper Moorhead
Celtics.com Correspondent
June 12, 2008

Small ball never fit in with the Eastern Conference, always the outcast in favor of complex, hard-nosed defensive schemes that kept scoring totals below the century mark.

But with the Boston Celtics down by 20 with 18:04 left in the game that could give them the never-overcome 3-1 lead in the NBA Finals, Doc Rivers decided it was time to make new friends.

Going with a small lineup of shooters, slashers, scorers and Kevin Garnett, the Celtics outscored the Lakers 57-33 in the second half on their way to a 97-91 Game 4 victory. Even in such a big hole, it wasn't Plan A, or even B.

Rivers rolled out his starters to begin the third, but when Kendrick Perkins injured his shoulder early in the third, Rivers initially opted to replace him with P.J. Brown. A little over a minute later, Brown came out for Posey, quickly followed by Eddie House replacing an ineffective (and banged up) Rajon Rondo. This left the Celtics with a line of Posey, House, Garnett, Ray Allen and Paul Pierce, and no lineup has been as big as this one over the final quarter and a half.

"They were just trapping all over the floor," Rivers said. "They were trapping off Rajon, they were trapping off Perk early. I brought it up to our staff [Wednesday], and I just did it, honestly, because I thought we had to have floor spacing."

Rivers' playing partner acknowledged the substitutions as the moves that began the steady erosion of LA's lead.

"That changed the course of the game, obviously," Lakers Coach Phil Jackson said. "They spread the lineup and run screen rolls, put some pressure on us to have to match up."

The extra space paid immediate dividends. With House, Allen and Posey stretching the defense from all its corners, Pierce got a jumper and then drove in for a layup. Once the Lakers reacted to Pierce going inside, House was left open for a trey. Then a Posey layup followed by another Pierce bunny which opened up House for another three – a threat whether he drained it or not.

"You don't take the next one when you can't make the next one," House said. "That's what I do, I shoot the basketball. I'm not going to let them take me out of the game. They were open shots. They were good looks. They were my shots, so I just continued to take them."

The inside-out, outside-in game of tag continued through the fourth quarter and the Celtics' epic comeback. Posey made a pair of clutch threes in the final six minutes that essentially broke down the Lakers' defense for good, forcing them into single-man coverage. And that was all she wrote.

"When Pose made those shots, I knew that from that point on, we were going to have one-on-one coverage," Rivers said. "Whether we made shots from that point on was up to us. But the trap stopped, the floor was spaced, and once the floor was spaced our scorers could score."

Maybe the Celtics could have still come back from the dead with their traditional lineup. Maybe, had Perkins not been hurt, they would have still lead by three with forty seconds left in Game 4. But one thing is assured, without the small lineup, those final forty seconds would have been drastically different.

With possession and forty seconds left, Allen was left by himself to wear down the shot clock below 24 (putting LA into intentional-foul territory). With his teammates sitting on the perimeter ready for the kick out, Allen waltzed his way past Sasha Vujacic into the empty paint and guided in a reverse layup as Pau Gasol's arm flailed trying to provide help. Five-point game.

"I just made my move, and I looked up and [Vujacic] was behind me and I had the whole basket free and clear. It worked out for me that time," Allen said.

It also worked out for Rivers, who's decision to make new friends and go small passed with history-writing colors. Only Game 5 on Sunday will tell if he keeps a tight grasp on the old lineup, but this legendary victory made very clear which one was gold.