Celtics vs. Lakers: Five things to watch

The Celtics face Kobe & Co. for the first time since last year's Finals. (Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images)

Here we are again, the green and the yellow (or gold, I guess) facing off at Staples Center in a regular-season game that doesn’t mean much but always means something. And while the Lakers are pretty far behind the Spurs, they only trail Boston by three games in the loss column through Friday. They could still catch the Celtics — despite a brutal schedule — and that could come in very handy should the two teams meet in the NBA Finals again.

Here are five things I’ll be watching for on Sunday (3:30 p.m. ET on ABC):

1. Kobe vs. Rondo

This has been Kobe Bryant’s domain for much of the past two seasons, as Rondo has emerged as much more than a simple facilitator. And you know how Bryant likes to guard him: by laying off Rondo, daring him to hit jumpers and roving into passing lanes. Lots of teams try this against Boston, but few do it as consistently as the Lakers — and few have a defender of Bryant’s quality to use in this role.

The Celtics have a variety of ways to respond to this strategy, but the results have been spotty. Sometimes they run their offense as normal, with Rondo using the extra space to survey the scene and make the same passes he usually does. Sometimes they have Rondo hang around the baseline, waiting for Bryant to leave him so that he can take a pass and shoot. This path is more perilous against the Lakers, since the length of Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum can really bother Rondo inside; he shot only 45 percent in the Finals last season.

And sometimes Rondo just takes those open mid-range shots. He’s taking them and making them more than ever before. So far this season, Rondo has jacked 2.9 long two-pointers per game and nailed 46 percent of them. Both are career highs, and the latter is an elite mark.

This will be Rondo’s most interesting test yet.

And with it comes a test for Derek Fisher, who gets the de facto assignment on Ray Allen. This is the matchup that excites Boston fans. Allen can shoot over the shorter Fisher and post him up — a dangerous weapon for the Celtics, if one they rarely get a chance to use. But Fisher stuck with Allen for more of those seven Finals games than most folks anticipated.

2. Boston’s offense vs. L.A.’s defense: The battle for space

The Lakers won the Finals last season by shutting down the Celtics from three. The Celtics shot just 33-of-107 (30.8 percent) from deep in the seven games combined, but take away their red-hot Game 2 shooting (fueled by Ray Allen’s record-setting eight triples), and Boston shot just 24 percent in the rest of the series. It is hard to win that way.

That was typical of Los Angeles last season; no one held opponents to a lower three-point percentage, and that Boston team — with Allen and Rasheed Wallace as core rotation players — depended heavily on threes.

This version of the Celtics is much less reliant on the three-point shot; only the Grizzlies take fewer threes per game. The Celtics have shifted those missed three-point attempts from last season to two places: near the rim, and the area between the foul line and the three-point arc. Only four teams have taken more shots per game at the rim this season than Boston; a total of 19 teams outranked them in close shot attempts last season.

Guess what? The Lakers protect the rim beautifully. Only two teams have held opponents to a lower shooting percentage on close shots. It’s no coincidence that Laker opponents have collectively attempted more three-pointers this season than the combined opponents of any other team. And this is despite the fact that the Lakers are, once again, proving to be very stingy defending the three.

In the 2011 NBA, three-pointers are generally seen as a good thing while allowing teams to shoot a ton of them is not ideal. But the Lakers might be an exception to that rule. Watch to see if Boston’s offense migrates outward on Sunday.

3. Who’s got Kobe?

Duh. This has primarily been Ray Allen’s assignment, and that will be the case again Sunday. But it will be interesting to watch what happens when the Lakers shift Kobe to small forward, where he’ll, typically, be beside a backcourt of Shannon Brown and Steve Blake. Will Paul Pierce, nursing a knee bruise, take the job? Or will it be Marquis Daniels, who will likely be on the court anyway when both teams bring in their bench guys? The wildest possibility: Doc Rivers may throw Von Wafer on Kobe for a couple of possessions, if only to see if Wafer — who’s showing flashes lately — might really belong in his postseason rotation.

4. Can Boston survive on the boards?

Without Bynum, the Lakers were a so-so offensive rebounding team and a poor defensive rebounding team. With Bynum, they are one of the league’s finest rebounding clubs on both ends.

The test for Boston will be protecting the defensive glass, something it failed to do with the title on the line last season. And though this hasn’t gotten much attention yet, Boston has slowly slid down the rankings in defensive rebounding rate after a hot start.

But Kevin Garnett is healthy now, and you know he’s frothing at the mouth to get at Gasol. Kendrick Perkins is back, stepping on the court where his 2009-10 season ended horribly, and he’ll help , even if he’s not in peak shape yet.

The Celtics can defend better than anyone before the shot goes up. They’ll have to finish against the Lakers.

5. Testing Artest

The Celtics will try to take away all of your options on offense — sometimes they pull it off — but against good teams, they’ll have one player whom they’ll be willing to tilt their defense away from if necessary. Against the Magic in the Eastern Conference Finals last season, it was Matt Barnes. Against the Lakers’ starters, it will be Artest.

Artest has played miserably for most of this season, but he has fared better over the last two weeks and is quietly approaching the 40-percent mark from three-point range. He’s being more selective from deep, and that has surely helped his shooting accuracy. Against teams with strong small forwards, like Pierce, it helps the Lakers when Artest plays well enough to at least stay on the court. He did that and more in Game 7 last season, and he’ll have his chances on Sunday.