By Rick Morris
May 27, 2008 12:24pm CDT

This week's column addresses the Eastern Conference Finals. All playoff statistics are through Game Three of the Conference Finals.
Boston: If you take the cliche literally that a series does not really begin until a home team loses a game, Boston got through the first two rounds without a series starting. Given Boston's regular-season success on the road, this reality is surprising, but not as much so as the fact that they have advanced to the Conference Finals with the only homegrown member of the "Big Three," Paul Pierce, averaging only 13.3 PPG in this postseason after tallying 19.6 PPG in the regular season. Anyone who thought that veteran presence Sam Cassell might be able to help pick up any needed offensive slack has to be pretty disappointed, as his 5.6 PPG have rendered him a complete non-factor in these playoffs. For all the complaints from Boston fans about the timeliness (or lack thereof) of Kevin Garnett's scoring since the regular season ended, his overall production has been up decently (20.9 PPG as opposed to 18.8 PPG during 2007-08). Also, his 10.2 RPG put him up exactly one 1 RPG over his regular-season rebounding numbers. For a team whose key parts have never before interacted in the months of April, May and June, the Celtics are receiving a rude awakening about the difficulties of scoring at this time of year, as opposed to the 82-game slate, with a team playoff scoring average of 91.8 PPG and a regular-season total of 100.5 PPG. James Posey's 12 points off the bench in Game 3 were a huge bonus to his owners, but were an equally large outlier in terms of evaluating the fairly meager team bench contributions vs. Detroit thus far – and speaking of outliers, Rajon Rando's nine rebounds in Game 2 likely won't be repeated. Kendrick Perkins' 10 rebounds in both Game 1 and Game 3 were significant, though, and were very helpful to Boston in terms of establishing defensive dominion over Detroit.

Detroit: As expected, Chauncey Billups has returned from injury to suit up in these critical games, and his contributions have been vital for a team whose stars don't shine as brightly as the most celebrated Celtics, at least on paper. Those who call him the pulse of the team could certainly cite this series as a prime example. As he goes, so go the Pistons. Billups really struggled in the Pistons' Game 1 loss to the tune of nine points and two assists (in 31:03 of playing time, so he wasn't putting in token appearances to "earn" those numbers), but he came up huge when Detroit dealt Boston their first home loss of the playoffs in Game 2 with 19 points and seven assists. When the Celts picked up their first road win of the playoffs in Game 3, he was stifled yet again with six points and four assists. If you have hope for any of the Pistons on your roto team to reach the NBA Finals, Billups' box score line for each game of the Conference Finals will tell the story of Detroit's rise or fall more clearly than anything else absent the final score. Rip Hamilton has continued to pick up his scoring game in these playoffs, averaging 21.6 PPG, up 4.3 PPG from his regular season totals. Bench scoring has been problematic for a team that could conceivably have hoped to best Boston in terms of production from non-starters. With 14 points from bench players in Game 1 and 17 points from them in Game 2, Rodney Stuckey's 17-point outburst in Game3 (paced by 9-for-10 shooting from the line) was hugely surprising – but even then, Jason Maxiell's seven points were the only other points from non-starters, so the onus is falling almost completely on the regular five in this series.