It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Dr. Jon Niednagel-better known as Danny Ainge’s brain doctor. But with the second round of the playoffs in full swing I decided to reach out to Niednagel to see if he could help me get into the psyche of various Celtics and Cavs. He obliged and what follows are the inner monologues of various players in the hours after Saturday’s Game 3.

Underneath my own findings, our old friend Adam Cole-Kelly chimes in with some discoveries of his own. Turns out Ben Wallace’s dizzy spell and “inner ear infection” was actually caused by a chip ACK had placed in Wallace’s ear to relay his inner thoughts. Luckily said chip was contagious and it spread to all the other players granting him unprecedented access to their thoughts through the first three games of the series.

Rich Levine (Celtics fan):

Cleveland Cavaliers

Wally Szczerbiak: I have been shooting the lights out baby! I can’t wait to get home and watch how great I looked doing it on SportsCenter. You know, sometimes the shots just… ooh, look! I can kind of see my own reflection in that window. I look sharp.

There are lots of theories floating around out there as to why the Celtics are not winning on the road. From where I sit it comes down to one thing : aggression. When the Celtics play with passion and abandon on the defensive end it translates to their offense. When they shoot threes and settle for jump shots they become passive on the defensive end. In game three they still did a nice job of making Lebron’s life miserable, but forgot about everybody else. And the reason Boston didn’t have any free throw attempts with half of the second qtr gone was simply that they hadn’t done anything to make the officials blow the whistle. Refs in the playoffs tend to let teams play. You have to be extra aggressive to get a call, any call. The C’s have been that way at home not on the road. If they don’t get their defensive passion/aggression back tonite, we are in for another long series.

Rosalie
Waltham

Mike - I know it took a while to knock off Atlanta, but, why is it so easy for the press and broadcasters (not you or Tommy!), to
jump off the bandwagon of a team that has been so successful all year. Kevin Garnett is taking it on the chin from alot of these guys, and it just doesn’t seem fair. Nor does it seem right that PP has had such bad press also. I guess I take it personally when someone attacks the team they way they have this last week. Written by a die hard, long time
Celtic fan who watched Tommy play!!

Mike: Positive news unfortunately doesn’t sell newspapers or increase talk show ratings. Hopefully fans like yourself will have the last laugh.

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Scott Tomassetti
Rajon vs. Delonte

Back in seattle I can remember that Delonte kind of got the better of Rajon. How do you think that match up will go this series?
Personally, I think Rajon has grown so much since then that he might overwhelm delonte with his D. Delonte still needs to stay close to Delonte to keep him honest at the 3 pt line.

I trust Celtics general manager Danny Ainge, and I trust Celtics coach Doc Rivers. Still to this day, it amazes me how people were jumping down Ainge’s throat while he was in the midst of constructing a foundation for this team to be built on. You have to admit, when he came here, he was given a 100-year-old foundation that was destroyed by a one-man wrecking crew (Rick Pitino).

I know that Danny has made some unpopular moves in the past, especially when he traded forward Antoine Walker and guard Tony Delk to the Dallas Mavericks for center Raef LaFrentz, guard Jiri Welsch and forward Chris Mills during his inaugural 2003 campaign. But if you look back at it, he did what he needed to do; the combo of Walker and forward Paul Pierce was done, extinguished and downright tiresome. He also made a draft day trade in 2003 to get center Kendrick Perkins and point guard Marcus Banks from the Memphis Grizzlies.

In 2003, the trade of forwards Eric Williams and Kedrick Brown and center Tony Battie to the Cleveland Cavaliers for center Chris Mihm, guard Ricky Davis and salary dump Michael Stewart was deemed a fairly brilliant move. Davis at the time was a true scorer and still is, just not for us.

The following is a break down of the matchups between starters for Cleveland and Boston based on what we have seen during the regular season and the first two games of round 2.

Rondo/ West

Cleveland has left Rondo open on the perimeter to take jump shots, but Rondo has not taken the bait. West does a better job staying front of Rondo, but when West has to work around a pick he can get swallowed up by a bigger defender. At times Rondo will get in the air without a plan and it can lead to a turnover, but it is important that Doc let him be aggressive, because when the offense breaks down Rondo can create an opportunity about as well as anyone not named Kevin Garnett. It also makes an opponents defense pay more attention to him. West can be a good player, but he excels at secondary skills and is inconsistent with primary skills. West has done nothing against Boston in first two games, hitting a shot would be nice but there are too many possessions where West is just handing the ball off to Lebron and watching.

Advantage Heading into the Series - Rondo
Playoffs - Rondo

I got back in touch with Cavs-loving, Luke Ridnour look-a-liking Adam Cole-Kelly to get his thoughts on Game 2. Below, we each give a quick synopsis of Game 1, followed by two possible scenarios for tonight’s showdown. Also, like the cheap-shot taking Clevelander he is, Cole-Kelly used this arena to rip apart the moniker of Boston’s bloated prince: Glen “Big Baby” Davis.

Enjoy, and go C’s!

Rich Levine:

I suck at pool. But luckily for me, most of friends suck as well. Most of our games consist of drunken miscues, table scratches, the random behind the back attempt and someone, at some point, spilling their beverage onto the felt. It goes on forever until one of us accidentally knocks in the eight ball, putting myself, my opponent, the game, and anyone unlucky enough to be waiting for a table and watching the game out of their collective misery. Ladies and Gentleman, Game 1 of the Celtics-Cavs series.

WickedGoodSports.com & The Improper Bostonian’s Rich Levine brings you another installment of “The Dino Radja Experience.” On this week’s podcast, Rich is joined by Nick Altschuller, also of The Improper, and by special guest Adam Cole-Kelly, a writer for VH-1’s “The Best Week Ever”…and a delusional Cavs fan (sorry Adam, this is a Boston sports blog.) You can also check out Rich and Adam’s series preview.

Just want to say it before all this gets underway. If Magic, Michael, Larry and Lebron are all 23 and sitting in the green room waiting for David Stern to call their name, if I have the number 1 pick I’m taking Lebron. That said - Celtics in 6.

As part of our coverage of the Celtics second round series against the Cleveland Cavaliers, I’ve enlisted the help of my buddy, Adam Cole-Kelly.

Adam is a writer at VH1’s Best Week Ever, and despite his current residence in New York City is a Cavs fan of mammoth proportions (Not as mammoth as this Clevelander, but still mammoth in his own right).

We’ve found success as a team before—our turn of the millennium dominance of the public basketball courts in Seville, Spain has become somewhat of a legend along the banks of the Mediterranean—and I feel confident that over the course of the next six or seven games (which in the NBA Playoffs amounts to three or four months) we’ll be able to provide you with a fresh and unique perspective of the series and all the awesomeness that comes with it.

For our inaugural installment, we threw out 10 pertinent questions and answered them from our respective soap boxes atop Celtics/Cavs Nation. Call it a series preview. Just don’t call it unstupendous (because that’s not a real word)

But first, a quick word from Adam.

This isn’t the regular season, this isn’t Rome and this isn’t a mid-afternoon shootaround. This is the National Basketball Association playoffs, a time for dedication, relentless vigor and overall outstanding play.

As I sit here in my dimly lit office on a dark and damp Friday night, I can’t help but think that the Boston Celtics must grow up. They have to do it quick and at the same time learn that the playoffs are a different beast. This isn’t some run of the mill mid-term exam; this is the SATs of basketball, a time of the year where everything but your heart and inner self is put aside. What I see before me now is gutwrenching and totally contrary to what was on that floor during 82 regular season games. There is no sense of urgency at all!