Kevin Garnett bumps, yells at, curses at, and tries to intimidate every opponent he plays against, no matter how big (or small) that opponent may be. For years, he’s done everything he can to make Pau Gasol’s life miserable whenever the Lakers play the Celtics, and was able to limit Gasol’s production throughout the 2008 Finals. On Thursday night, Gasol got some revenge on KG, recording 23 points and 14 rebounds while holding Garnett to 16 points (on 16 shots) and four rebounds.
According to Dave McMenamin and Chris Forsberg of ESPN.com, Gasol had some things to say about Garnett earlier today:
“On Kevin’s part, he’s also lost some explosiveness...He’s more of a jump shooter now you could say, comes off the lane. Before he had a really, really quick first step and was getting to the lane and he was more aggressive then. Time passes and we all suffer it one way or another, but he’s still a terrific player, a terrific competitor, and he’s going to bring everything he’s got. You can count on that.”
You have to love Pau Gasol; even when he’s (kind of) talking trash, he still sounds like a nice guy who respects his opponents. (By the way, statistics don’t support Gasol’s claim that Garnett is more of a jump shooter now than he was in 2008; 70% of Garnett’s shots were jumpers this season, as compared to 73% in the 2007-08 season. He’s certainly lost some explosiveness, but that loss of explosiveness hasn’t really manifested itself in his shot selection.) For his part, Garnett said that he didn’t take exception to Gasol’s comments about him, and that he has “no comments for [Gasol’s] comments.” Garnett, Doc Rivers, and the rest of the Celtics are all optimistic about how Garnett will perform throughout the rest of the series; when asked to explain Garnett’s poor play in game one, almost every Celtic said in one way or another that Garnett just had one of those games, and that they fully expect him to look like himself in game two. It all sounds good enough; now Garnett just has to go out there and try and keep Gasol from abusing him the way he did in game one.
