KG's no Zaza

My colleague Dean Barnett is a big Boston sports guy; needless to say he’s pretty excited about the Celtics. Nervous too. And I can’t say I blame him…on paper, the Celtics are a tremendous team (the starting five is, anyway…I think their bench remains pretty suspect). And during the regular season, driven by the manical force that is Kevin Garnett for 82 games while other teams coasted along **coughSPURScough** they racked up a ton of wins. I don’t think KG’s the MVP (that honor goes to Kobe, then Chris Paul, and then Mr. Garnett), but he is, without a doubt, the reason the Celts finished first in the Eastern Conference.

That being said, Mr. Barnett has good reason to be nervous. The team is centered around a player who consistently shrinks in the playoffs. Though he shoots .494 from the floor during the regular season, he averages only .458 during the playoffs; he also shoots twenty points lower from the charity stripe. Watching KG play in Minnesota, he always struck me as a player who felt reluctant to take over a game in the clutch–for better or worse, you can count on Kobe to take over, or Duncan to take over. I’ve never really gotten that sense from KG. And that never seemed more evident than game 4 of the Atl-Bos series, when, after giving Zaza Pachulia (!!) a forearm shiver, KG backed off and subsequently disappeared from the game.

Now, if some no-name like Zaza had gotten in the grill of MJ, or Bird, or Kobe, it would have been a wake up call. They would have gone off: scored a ton of points, played lock-down defense, something–whatever it took to secure victory. KG, on the other hand, looks scary but tends not to back it up. Especially not in the playoffs.