MVN - Most Valuable Network

Back To The Rack: Five-on-Five With CelticsBlog’s Steve Weinman

Although it’s been five months, I just found out a few weeks ago that Steve Weinman left MVN for CelticsBlog.com.

You remember Steve: he was the author of “Taking it to the Rack” here at MVN, a site that caught on very, very quickly. Weinman quickly etched a name for himself in his brief 10-month tenure here at the Network, and now he has taken his act over to CelticsBlog, where he has been since December.

We all remember Steve for his harsh comments on Cavs GM Danny Ferry - which I echoed - back when the season tipped. Who would have thought that a little over six months later, LeBron and his band of castoff role players would be the ones standing between Weinman’s Celtics and the Eastern Conference Finals?

So I had to catch up with Steve on his thoughts before Game 2 of what just might be the headline series in the second round of these NBA playoffs. You can catch my answers to Steve’s Q&A over at Thursday morning’s edition of CelticsBlog.

In the meantime, here are Weinman’s thoughts on five questions I had about this series:

Amar Panchmatia: The Cavs have been a good defensive team for three years now under Mike Brown. This is Boston’s first year as an elite defensive team under Doc Rivers. With so much emphasis being put on defense in this series, which team defense and defensive coach would you rather have and why? Which defense will help its team prevail in this series?

Steve Weinman: I’ll take my chances with the defense that topped the league in efficiency this season, had the top defender in the league overall and has the best individual perimeter defender in this series. In fairness to the Cavs, not having Anderson Varejao for the first 20-plus games this season distorted their overall defensive rankings, but the Celtics got to where they are right now by playing defense more than anything else. This team dominated from start to finish on the defensive end this season.

We talk a lot about offensive players – point guards in particular – who ‘make their teammates better.’ The amazing thing about Kevin Garnett is that he does that on the defensive end. As important as his personal presence in the paint and in help defense is, just the fact that he came to town led to major changes for everyone on this team. Paul Pierce spent four years loafing on defense – now he busts his gut every time out. Ray Allen hasn’t been exposed as much as he could have been all year for the liability that he is on the defensive end. Big Baby and Perk have already shown improvements from the beginning of the year. KG is a force in the paint, a tough individual defender and the guy who makes this team go.

I simply can’t think of anyone I would rather have as an individual perimeter defender in this series than the rugged James Posey. Love this guy.

On the coaching side, yep, I’ll keep being a homer – Doc, because he comes with Tom Thibodeau. Doc does a great job getting his players to go hard for him every night, and Thibodeau is next in line after KG for credit for this team’s defensive success because of his tactical mastery.

AP: Game 1 saw bad performances from Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, and most notably, LeBron James. Assuming all three hit their stride and go all out from Game 2 and onward, which team is going to benefit the most? What changes will we see in this series compared to what we saw in Game 1’s eyesore?

SW: I realize that conventional thinking should tell us that two very good players should be able to out-produce one great player, but there’s too much about LeBron that makes me nervous. Maybe I’m falling victim to the outside-of-Cleveland perception here, but this guy is it for the Cavs. Yes, Z can certainly perform, and he had a great night in Game 1. But more often than not, stopping LeBron is what matters most in stopping the Cavs. Of course, the common perception is simply that ‘stopping’ him means less scoring, which isn’t the case. He’s such a great passer that if he commands enough attention that shooters like West, Gibson and Wally are going to be getting to open spaces, he’ll hit them and cause all sorts of trouble for opponents without carrying as much of the scoring load. If it’s possible to have a quiet 9 boards and 9 dimes, LeBron did that in Game 1. I know for sure that I’ll trade a poor offensive game from Pierce in exchange for another lockdown job on LeBron any day of the week. But as good as PP and Ray are – and as much as I love them as a Celts fan – there’s plenty of fear on my end as to what could happen once the Cavs get LeBron on track.

We’re going to see better shooting and less sloppiness on both ends. Hard to imagine either coach was too happy about the 38-turnover slopfest, and both teams will come into Game 2 more prepared on the offensive end. Both teams deserve credit for their defensive efforts in Game 1, but the cold stars on each side all did their share of simply missing. Bron made a good enough move on the last drive of the game, and the ball simply bounced out. That won’t happen too often. And he’ll hit a couple of the deep jumpers he missed in Game 1. Not all of them, but some. Just like he isn’t as great a shooter as he appeared in Game 5 against Detroit a year ago, he isn’t as putrid a shooter as he looked last night, regardless of the defense.

AP: The Celtics lost all three games at Atlanta in the last round. How crucial is it for the Celtics to keep home court in this series?

SW: The trouble this team had on the road last round was truly stunning, especially when one considers that they posted a 31-10 mark on the road during the season, which included wins at Utah (37-4 at home), San Antonio (34-7), Dallas (34-7), Detroit (34-7) and Houston (31-10), just to name a few. My hope is that this team will gain something from the unexpected toughness of the Atlanta series and will be ready to play with more composure on the road this time around. At the same time, the Q is a tough place to play, and one never wants to concede homecourt advantage. It’s certainly nice to know that in theory, the C’s don’t have to win a road game in this postseason to be successful…but it would be nice not to have to reach that small a margin for error on the home floor.

AP: Kevin Garnett finished third in MVP voting while LeBron James finished fourth. In your opinion, who is more valuable to their team, and why?

SW: Call me a straddler if you must, but I’m sitting right on the middle of the fence here. If you asked me who was more valuable over the course of this season, I would have said KG, simply because of the way he overhauled basketball culture in Boston this season and what he meant to this team on the defensive side of the ball – and for as good as Bron was, there is a point where team success has to come into play in the regular season voting.

But since you didn’t ask it that way, I’m much happier to tell you that these two guys both carry exorbitantly high meanings to their teams. In LeBron, we’re talking about a guy who averaged a 30-7-8 this season, has incredible size, strength and poise and proved in last year’s playoffs that he can be a one-man wrecking crew when necessary.

KG is the semi-psychotic leader who forces everyone around him to raise their level of play, serves as the nucleus as a dominant defensive team and has put up a 20-10 through most of his career to boot.

Both of these teams are privileged to have players as special as LeBron and KG.

AP: Will the winner of this series win the NBA Finals? Why or why not?

Hey Amar, if you want to mess with the sports karma lords, that’s just fine, but please, please, please don’t try to drag me into that sort of sordid behavior (actually, I must confess, I’ve already taken my one big karma risk for the series, to be elucidated at CB tomorrow morning). I’ve promised myself down the stretch run all year that I was going to be good about this, and I refuse to let you break my will. With my boys in green, I think of nothing but the next game in these here playoffs. All I know right now is that the team has a big Game 2 that it needs to win against Cleveland on Thursday night. After that…well, that will be Game 3. But even that’s a long ways away. So best forget about any Finals predictions from me.

You can read more of Steve Weinman over at CelticsBlog.com.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 11:05 pm and is filed under Ray Allen, Steve Weinman, Doc Rivers, Paul Pierce, Ben Wallace, Delonte West, Damon Jones, James Posey, CelticsBlog, Wally Szczerbiak, Danny Ferry, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Eric Snow, Houston Rockets, Dallas Mavericks, Detroit Pistons, Cleveland Cavaliers, San Antonio Spurs, Utah Jazz, Daniel Gibson, Mike Brown, Kevin Garnett, LeBron James, Boston Celtics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.