BOSTON—It took seven games against the No. 8 seed in the East. But at long last, with Saturday’s bruising 85-75 Game 7 win over the Sixers, the Celtics are finally moving on. And for many an NBA observer, that means the Eastern Conference finals will be the matchup we’ve wanted all along, one that we’ve wanted to see since the unforgettable summer of 2010—Miami and Boston, the New Big Three vs. the Old Big Three, with a shot at the Finals on the line.
OK, this all didn’t come together the way one might have expected. The Celtics, after all, did play Miami in the playoffs last year, and lost humbly in five games in the second round. Besides, it’s highly unlikely that this showdown would be taking place at all if not for the knee injury to Derrick Rose, the star point guard for the top-seeded Bulls. Boston’s win over the Sixers was downright unsightly at times, with the two teams each averaging fewer than 90 points and combining to shoot 42.6 percent from the field.
The Celtics’ struggles were clear in Game 7, when they started off missing 14 straight 3-pointers and, after repeatedly putting Philadelphia on the ropes, kept allowing the Sixers to make a game of it. That left coach Doc Rivers to pull together lineups with duct tape and chicken wire. Rivers, after speculating before the game that he might dip into his reserves and use Sasha Pavlovic or Marquis Daniels, instead played each of his five starters 37 minutes or more. He got just seven points in a combined 30 minutes from his bench.
The problem was compounded when captain Paul Pierce, who was 6-for-14 with 15 points on the night, fouled out with four minutes to play, at which time Sixers coach Doug Collins said he thought, “We have a chance to win this.”
Indeed, they did. It wasn’t until Celtics point guard Rajon Rondo—who had an 18-point, 10-rebound, 10-assist triple-double, but also committed seven turnovers—made a 3-pointer with a little more than two minutes to play in the game that the Celtics were able to breathe some relief.
And now, as was the case after their grinding first-round series with the Hawks, the Celtics get one day to breathe some relief before they play again. That’s problematic. Shooting guard Avery Bradley is out because of shoulder surgery, and Ray Allen probably should be out, too, gimpy as he is with bone spurs in his ankle—Allen made two huge fourth-quarter 3-pointers for the Celtics in Game 7, but he is still shooting just 26.9 percent from the arc, down from 43.5 percent during the year. Throw in the wear-and-tear that this lockout-shortened season has left on 36-year-old Kevin Garnett and 34-year-old Pierce, and this Celtics bunch is going into the next round with a hobble.
“It’s been taxing,” coach Doc Rivers said. “Obviously, we would have loved to have won in Philly. We would have loved to have won in Atlanta and finished it off. But, you know, those teams are good and they’re hard to play. We’ve done, I’m hoping, a good enough job of rest. We didn’t practice one time in this entire series, which is unheard of in a playoff series when you think about it. We walked through stuff. Literally, we didn’t run in the walk through. Tomorrow we’ll watch film. And then we’ll go play a game. The way we look at it with this team is, tomorrow is off and most of Monday off, and then we play. We just don’t have the bodies; don’t have the legs to do anything else.”
Many figured that the Celtics would be going to Miami for the conference finals last year, facing the newly formed Heat trio of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. Boston was the defending East champ, and had been within a few minutes of beating the Lakers for the 2010 championship—and they did not take kindly to the celebratory atmosphere around the fusing together of the Heat’s stars. But that was before the rise of the Bulls, and the second-half decline of the Celtics, which took some of the luster out of the Heat-Celtics playoff matchup.
This will be different, if only because the Heat and Celtics have managed to survive into the league’s Final Four. Sure, Miami seems to have gotten its act together, but the series against the Pacers was no cakewalk, with Indiana at least rattling the Heat in the first three games. The Celtics figure to take a similar approach, and with it looking doubtful that the Heat will have Bosh (abdominal strain) available, Boston could go ahead and muck up the conference finals the way they did the first two rounds.
It was, for both the Heat and the Celtics, a winding road to this point. But they’ll take it.
“I love where we’re at,” Rivers said. “I told them after the game, this is exactly where we thought we’d be. We’re going to Miami.”
