Game 1 Twitters

I had intended to do a thorough finals preview, involving extensive sabermetric breakdowns of the individual matchups.  But the real world intervened, so instead, some random thoughts:

-  Paul Pierce...Willis Reed or Drama Queen?  Who cares, that four point play was brilliant.

-  Half Court violations the decider?  Gasol gets penalized by a bogus half court violation call.  Kevin Garnett dives for a jaw dropping half court ball save.

-  Crouching Brown, Hidden Powe...one makes fantastic hustle plays on defense, the other pounds the offensive glass.

-  Space Alien Sighting!  Cassell, hot in the first half, jacking up ill advised shots in the second. 

-  Do you think the marijuana addled brain of Bill Walton notices when his son brings teh suck?

-  Phil Jackson - the proclaimed "master of the strategic time out" by Jeff Van LegHug - can't get his team to foul when they are down by three possessions with under a minute to go? 

-  Celtics win!

In Flagrante

During last nights Celtics game, ESPN announcers Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy had a lengthy discussion of what constitutes a flagrant foul.  They then went on to debate how many angels dance on the head of a pin.

I am tempted to join in the bellyaching because the Celtics have been victims of a couple of dubious flagrant foul calls this post season.  Last night, it was P.J. Browns supposed push on Jason Maxiell as he was in mid-air.  In the Cleveland series, Sam Cassell was whistled for wrapping up LeBron James.   The call prompted our favorite Extra Terrestrial to complain to the Globe:  "It's just different right now...Back in the day, a flagrant-1 was bloodshed.  Now, you can just grab somebody."

This might be so.  Celtics fan all remember the  infamous Bill Laimbeer cheapshot on Larry Bird - now that was a flagrant foul!  But I did some checking and the number of flagrant fouls called his year does not seem to be out of the ordinary: 

                               2005-2006   2006-2007   2007-2008

First Round            14                  6                  12

Conference Semis   1                     6                  4

Conference Finals   3                     1                    1

NBA Finals             1                    1                   tbd

So while it is easy to moan about how flagrant fouls allow the refs to "take the game out of the hands of the players", there appears to be (on average) about 1.5 of these calls per series.  This is hardly enough to make a huge difference (unless, of course, you leave the bench during a brawl).