Who will win the NBA Finals? It's down to the Celtics, Pistons, Lakers and Spurs. (Getty)

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May 22, 2008

Milwaukee assistant coach Bill Peterson sat down with Bucks.com to talk about the Eastern Conference Finals and what his impressions of the Pistons and Celtics are. We’ve put together a few notes about Detroit and Boston as they battle it out for a trip to the 2008 NBA Finals…

Bill Peterson on the Detroit / Boston series:

There has been plenty of talk leading up to the series about how the Celtics have been so good at home coming into this series (8-0), yet they’ve gone winless on the road (0-6). It’s a stunning development because they were 31-10 on the road during the regular season – which was four more road wins than the next closest team in the league. Many NBA experts expected LeBron James and the Cavaliers to give the Celtics a challenge in the first round, but very few saw the Atlanta Hawks (37-45 in the regular season) taking Boston to seven games in the first round (courtesy of three Hawks wins in Atlanta).

Coach Peterson isn’t sure how to explain Boston’s postseason road struggles. “I think Boston can win on the road, they certainly did it during the regular season,” Peterson said. “I don’t know if there’s an explanation. They haven’t been playing the same on the road, maybe because they don’t have the crowd behind them. I would think with the veterans they have and the professionals they have like Garnett, Pierce and Allen that it wouldn’t be an issue, but I don’t have an explanation.”

Because the Celtics have struggled on the road in the playoffs, it placed a lot of emphasis on game one in Boston on Tuesday night. Peterson said that game one was much more important for the Celtics than the Pistons.

“It would’ve been a huge setback for Boston to lose that first game at home,” Peterson said. “It was big to get that first win against the Pistons with Detroit being one of the best road teams in the NBA. If they lose that game, it becomes a much tougher series for the Celtics.”

The series for Boston could be difficult any way you look at it since they’ve struggled on the road and because they were pushed to the limit in their first two series. The Celtics came into this series with 14 games played in the postseason compared to 11 for the Pistons. Three games isn’t a huge amount, but with travel and everything else that goes into playoff contests, it could be a factor down the road.

Fatigue is an issue that could be brought up as the series continues, but Peterson doesn’t think it will be a big factor. He commented: “I don’t think those extra games will hurt them. This is a playoff series and they know what’s at stake – they want to win the championship. You can talk about rest and all that, but they’re going to play a lot of guys and if it goes to a seventh game, they’ll be playing at home. I generally think it’s better to be in a rhythm from playing unless you have injuries like Detroit did with Chauncey Billups.”

On the other side of the coin from Boston’s issues of fatigue/staying in rhythm, you have the question of whether Detroit benefited from some extra rest or if they came out rusty in their game one performance because they’ve been off. Obviously, getting time for Chauncey Billups to heal is big, but perhaps the team wasn’t as sharp as it could’ve been going into the first game of the Eastern Conference Finals.

Peterson commented that game one showed some of the characteristics of the aforementioned issues. “I think there was a little bit of rustiness to it on the Pistons side, but the Celtics are in a groove right now,” Peterson said. “Boston was playing at home and they had just beat Cleveland so they had a lot of emotion. Some may have thought that they’d be tired, but they took a day off and came back ready to go.”

He went on to say that the home court was crucial: “Obviously, the thing I think the playoffs have proved is that the home team has a great advantage. You’ve seen it in almost every series except for San Antonio beating New Orleans in the seventh game. The home team seems to be able to rally with the crowd behind them late in the game.”

With all of that being said, we asked what would help the Celtics and the Pistons be successful in this series. Here is what Peterson had to say if the Celtics are going to win:

“They’ve got to continue to play good man-to-man defense in the half court and they have to make sure that two of their big three are making shots. Ray Allen is in a slump, but if they’ve got Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce firing on all cylinders, I think they can win.”

And here’s Peterson’s key for the Pistons’ success:

“The Pistons have to shut down Pierce or Garnett. And when I say shut down, I don’t mean totally shut down, but not allowing them too many easy baskets and scoring opportunities.”

Joe Wolf on the LA Lakers / San Antonio series:

After picking Bill Peterson’s brain about the Eastern Conference Finals, Bucks.com checked in with new Milwaukee assistant coach Joe Wolf to chat about the Western Conference Finals. The Wisconsinite helped us to put together the following thoughts on the showdown out west…

The Spurs couldn’t close out the Lakers down the stretch of game one and that can haunt teams during the postseason – especially when it was the opportunity to jump out to 1-0 series lead while playing on the other team’s floor.

But if there’s one team that can bounce back from losing after holding a huge second half lead, it’s the Spurs, who have won four of the NBA’s last nine titles. In their quest for their first ever repeat (and the NBA’s first repeat championship since the Lakers three in a row from 2000-02), we asked Wolf if he thought this would be an issue for San Antonio.

“I don’t think they’ve won all of those championships by being worried about their last game,” Wolf commented. “I think that they’ve shown that they’ll make adjustments and understand why they lost game one going forward into game two. Their mentality won’t be impacted by what happened in the first game. The issue for game one could’ve been that they came off a seven game series and had to sleep on a plane due to some travel issues.”

Despite coming off a seven game series and the travel issues mentioned above, Tim Duncan was huge for the Spurs, scoring 30 points, grabbing 18 rebounds and blocking four shots. Not to be outdone, Lakers star Kobe Bryant pitched in with 27 points, nine assists and five rebounds for L.A. It’s business as usual for the studs of the Spurs and Lakers.

NBA followers expect those types of numbers from Bryant and Duncan, but their numbers may cancel out in certain regards, so it could be the secondary stars and the role players who have a big impact in this series. We asked Wolf if there was a way to contain Bryant and Duncan of if this series could be determined by which supporting cast stepped up the most. Wolf said “you can’t slow those guys (Bryant and Duncan) down. History shows that they’ve been dominant at every level they’ve played on and they come up big. It’s going to be the other guys that will probably win the series for one of them – you know you’re going to get consistency out of Tim and Kobe.”

The exciting thing about this series is that you have the star power in Bryant and Duncan, but often times one squad will have a glaring weakness that tips the scales in favor of the other. For instance, in round two it was interesting to see LeBron James trying to lead the Cavaliers past Boston’s big three of Ray Allen, Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett. While fans loved the star power, one had to wonder if the supporting cast LeBron had was going to be enough to match up with three All-Star caliber players and the likes of Rondo, Posey, Perkins and House. Ben Wallace, Wally Szczerbiak and Joe Smith all have NBA name recognition, but no one knew if they’d be able to help LeBron enough.

With the Lakers and the Spurs you can almost go right down the line to see how everything matches up – star players for both teams (Bryant and Duncan), check. Quality secondary stars for each team (Gasol and Odom vs. Parker and Ginobili), check. Role players who fill in when necessary (Fisher, Walton and Vujacic vs. Bowen, Thomas and Finley), check. This series even gives us Hall of Fame caliber coaches with Phil Jackson (nine titles) matching wits with Gregg Popovich (four titles). We tend to agree with Wolf when he said “I hope it goes this distance. This is one of those series that if you’re a basketball geek, you’d really enjoy watching these two teams battling it out for seven games. I definitely hope it does.”

With all of that gushing about this series out of the way, it’s time to find out what Joe Wolf thinks will be the key to success for each team. Starting with San Antonio, Wolf thought:

“I think the Spurs have to stay away from offensive lulls. At times they’ll have a lull where they’ll have six, seven or eight possessions that they don’t get any scoring opportunities. They have to make sure they don’t have those long runs of no one putting the ball in the basket.”

And for Los Angeles…

“It has to be a consistent effort every nine from nine guys. You know what you’re going to get from Kobe, but the other eight guys, or however many they’ll have in the rotation, have to figure out how to score the basketball.”