That's the craziest Round 1 subplot: As recently as two weeks ago, I believed Bradley, Tony Allen and LeBron were the league's three best perimeter defenders. By Game 5 of the Knicks series, Raymond Felton had eviscerated Bradley to the degree that (a) Bradley's offensive game fell apart, too; (b) Bradley lost the ability to dribble and cut; (c) Bradley kept letting Felton go right even though Felton goes right E — V — E — R — Y — S — I — N — G — L — E — T — I — M — E; and (d) Doc had to ride Terrence Williams down the stretch because Bradley was starting to look like the proverbial ninth-grader who had been promoted to varsity and completely fell apart in that first Friday-night game.
Celtics Fan Bill hopes Felton was just too wide and too strong for Bradley; that it's just a lousy matchup for him, the same way Ali hated going against Ken Norton. Objective NBA Writer Bill wonders if Bradley was severely overrated, and whether his Round 1 meltdown might be a death blow for his NBA future.
When evaluating a player it is always a great idea to completely ignore a player's whole career and focus on one playoff series where they are playing out of position in a slowed down half court game. I am sure every GM in NBA said this series is the only tape I will ever look at when seeing how good Bradley's D really is. I mean, it is not like Celtics season was completely turned around when Bradley came back, or they went from 14th ranked D to 5th, or he regularly shut down players like Stephen Curry on nightly basis. The death blow has been dealt.
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