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Here's how it happened. The Celtics did have one defensive weakness, and it involved playing against athletic teams that could bound explosively to the rim. They lost regular season games to the Wizards (3 times), the Bobcats, the Nuggets, the Cavs twice, the Magic twice--all teams that had this ability. The most athletic teams the Celtics played in the playoffs were in order of the rounds they played (i.e, in reverse of what should have been the normal level of difficulty). The most athletic were the Hawks, then the Cavs, then the Pistons, and the least athletic were the Lakers. With only Bryant able to penetrate and beat a Celtic off the dribble (others could theoretically have done this but were not consistent), the Celtics were able to be comfortable locking down targets (principally Bryant, Odom and Gasol) whereas they were not able to lock down Joe Johnson or LeBron James or Delonte West as easily. The reason that Celtics fans who had watched the team all season were much more confident about these Finals than the national observer who watched the Lakers blast through the West was that we could see that the Celtics defense was much better geared toward a station to station team like LA than if we had faced an athletic team like New Orleans (or, for that matter, a grinding, tough team like Utah).
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