Let Me Guard Kobe

It doesn't take wholesale roster changes to alter a team's defensive effort -- evidence of that is the Boston Celtics. They ranked 24th in the league in defensive field goal percentage the year before they won their championship. Roster improvement helped, but so did the fact that Doc Rivers, his job on the line, hired defensive specialist Tom Thibodeau and the result was an about-face. Asked what the difference in his team was, Rivers answered: "Defense. I said defense. We play defense, we're going to win the world championship. That's what they did." The Celtics so bought into it that in Game 4 of their series against the Lakers, Paul Pierce asked to guard Kobe Bryant. "I can guard him," he said. "Let me guard him." It's frankly hard to imagine any of the current Wizards, except for Caron Butler, saying such a thing.

--Today's Washington Post