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1. Free throw shooting matters. The Celts scored 3 more points on one fewer FT attempt than the Cavs. They won by 5 overall.

2. Professional attitude matters. Ray Allen and Eddie House are known mainly for their shooting. They combined for 2-11. They still each can rightly feel they contributed to the win.

3. Mano-a-mano isn't ALWAYS a bad idea. Pierce started trying to make this man-on-man vs. James a couple of games ago. (Who else caught the "C'mon" hand gesture while Pierce was defending him? I think it was in Game 5. And they were chatting away like Russell/Chamberlain best buddies.) James slightly outplayed Pierce. But given each guy's set of teammates, James needed a bigger margin than that.

4. Good decisions are situational. House and Allen both passed up the occasional shot they otherwise might have taken. They way they were shooting, this was probably a good thing.

5. Continued self-improvement matters. Given the final score, even the one baseline jumper Perkins was able to make was a big deal. In the past -- and indeed half the time in the present -- that hasn't been his shot.

6. Doc Rivers is NOT a total idiot. Most of his substitutions worked, and the ones that didn't he fixed quickly.

To point 3. The last time Paul and Lebron dueled like this, Pierce had 50 and Lebron had 45, but the Cavs won. So you have to ask, do you 'outplay' someone by scoring more, or by winning the game in the end. Paul iced his free throws at the end (while LeBron missed 1 of his), and came through big with the steal on the Z/Posey jumpball.

Rocky5000 wrote:To point 3. The last time Paul and Lebron dueled like this, Pierce had 50 and Lebron had 45, but the Cavs won. So you have to ask, do you 'outplay' someone by scoring more, or by winning the game in the end. Paul iced his free throws at the end (while LeBron missed 1 of his), and came through big with the steal on the Z/Posey jumpball.

You're right that Pierce outplayed James in crunch time, a bad TO notwithstanding. He used to do that regularly; good to see him recapture it.

But while Pierce had better numbers than James, I felt looking at the game James was the slightly better player, overcoming more defensive focus than Pierce did. Maybe FT shooting is enough reason for me to be wrong about that, however ...

Fencer, no doubt that James is the better overall player, but I think Pierce's experience can't be overlooked. Once LeBron gets a better jumpshot and improves his free-throw shooting a bit...watch out the rest of the NBA *gulp*

Speaking of the jumpball, did anyone else think Z really mauled Posey on the way down??

Posey's preemptive jump was funny.

and Pierce would have easily got the ball except the damn ref just happened to be in the way. luckily he got to it anyway.