Boston ready for the sweep of Orlando?
Magic vs Celtics
If “The Ball Don’t Lie”, a quote that rings in my head thanks to the great Celtics Late Night Show podcast, tonight Rasheed Wallace and his Celtics will be sweeping the Orlando Magic, who have another ex Tar Heel, Vince Carter, on their roster. Say what you will but I doubt that anyone (including all those so-called experts) that thought this could be true. Heck, how many people would think that the Celtics would be still playing while the Cavaliers would be home and trying to figure out what next year will bring. But that is what the National Basketball Association is giving us this season, a Celtics team that seems to have turned on the switch at the right time while a lot of the teams on fire in the regular season have not looked so good in the playoffs. Tonight’s line has Boston as a seven points favorite, and after having watched the series, you have to think that the Celtics will easily cover that. But what about the two Tar Heels, how have they done in this series?
For the shooting guard for the sunshine state it has been a 34 minutes per game in the series, while scoring 18.0 PPG to go with 3.7 RPG, 2.33 SPG and 1.7 APG. Not bad overall, as the points went up compared to the regular season, the assists went down, the rebounds remained about the same and the steals were excellent compared to the first 82 games. On the other side, Rasheed Wallace has dropped four minutes from the regular season to the series against Orlando (22.5 to 18.3), so has his rebounds (4.1 to 2.3) but his points have gone up somewhat (9.0 to 9.7). Reading those numbers you could make the case that Carter is a lot more important to the Magic than Wallace is to the Celtics, and in a way you would be right, but in another, for the minutes that are needed to give the starters a break, you would be wrong. The Celtics are going well right now because they don’t have to put 100% with the starting five and can rely on the bench for plenty of help.
If the Celtics do sweep, with the Western Conference final being 2-1 does the team from Bean Town want to have the other series finish as quickly as possible or would they rather have the rest? I will be asking that to several Boston bloggers in the next couple of days on my podcast!
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