Four Minutes Too Long

When Kendrick Perkins wrenched his knee under the boards early in Game Six, and crumbled to the floor – Perkins who is usually so durable, so strong, often immovable, now grimacing and pointing to his knee—how familiar was that to Orange fans? The Orange season fell short of expectation the moment that AO was injured in the Big East tournament. AO also came down awkwardly under the boards, banged around by Georgetown, our most hated rival. Three weeks later, when Butler took Duke to the wire in the championship game, the same Butler team that Cuse had led with under four minutes to play, but against whom, without AO in the paint, Cuse could not hold the lead, all Orange fans felt that, with AO we would have been as good as, perhaps better than, every other team in the tournament.

Now think about Game Seven in LA. The Cs were badly out rebounded by the Lakers; LA had 23 offensive boards. Would that have been possible with Perk in the paint that night? Would Boston’s defense have surrendered 30 points in the final period? Perk would not have helped Ray Allen or Paul Pierce sink any of those many open jumpers they missed (until the final two minutes, when they had staked LA to a six point lead, and suddenly found their range, but too late). But what Perk would have done was what he had done all year – anchor the defense- block a few shots- and push Pal Gasol out of position so that LA’s rebounding advantage would have been greatly diminished, perhaps even eliminated.

I know that other teams have risen to the occasion, and won big games without their big men. The 1970 Knicks won their Game Seven over the Lakers without Willis Reed, even though Willis made an emotional appearance, started, and even made the first two buckets of the game, but then disappeared. Clyde Frazier took over and single-handedly delivered New York a championship. Ten years later, when the Lakers were playing the Sixers for the title, Kareem went down, leaving LA with no real center to match up with Darryl Dawkins. But Magic stepped up, and not only played center for the Lakers, but played brilliantly, scoring 42, grabbing 15 rebounds, and bringing the Lakers another ring.

Although the Cs played well without Perk, and led for much of the game, and held the Lakers to only 83 points, all of which should have allowed them to bring home an eighteenth banner, it never happened. Allen and Pierce missed a ton of open jumpers; everyone seemed to go cold for the first ten minutes of the fourth quarter; and no one came off then bench to ignite the offense, as Nate Robinson had done in Game Six of the Eastern Finals, or as House and Posey had done in 2008.

And in the end, for the second time this spring, I was left feeling, what if? What if we’d only had a healthy Perk for those two games in LA? And what if we’d had AO in the paint against Butler, with no one guy able to stop him, and Butler’s D having to collapse into the lane, and Rautins and Johnson having a few open looks from the outside. Tell me the team in that tourney who looked like they could beat a healthy Cuse? What if Bill Russell had suited up for Game Seven? I’ll bet that white haired Russell, all 79 years of him or whatever, wouldn’t have let Gasol get all those easy boards.

Still, it was a great run, and one that was hardly expected. Who would have figured back in the dead of winter, when the Cs were regularly losing in the Garden, that they’d dispatch Bron and the Cavs, and then dominate Howard and the Magic, earning the right to play for another championship? Not many, and not even the author of this blog. I kept saying, wait until they’re all healthy, but did I really believe they could turn a mediocre season into a playoff run? It’s a bit like the 1987 NCAA tournament. The season, and Game Seven were just a bit too long. If they’d only play 44 minutes that night….Oh well.