Sleepless Celtics Regain Identity in Game 7 Garden Party
There was very little talk on the plane home from Atlanta Friday night, and several guys said that they really couldn't sleep for most of the weekend.
Paul Pierce was just glad that Sunday's game was in the afternoon so he wouldn't have to wait around all day.
Even though they never trailed in the series against the Atlanta Hawks, you would have sworn the Celtics had their backs against the wall and were facing elimination for the past week. It wasn't until Sunday when the situation was truly, "win or go home."
Celtics Coach Doc Rivers, who got 10 solid hours of Ambien-enabled sleep Saturday night, said before the game that today was no day for pregame speeches. He just needed to remind the team who they were.
Apparently, that worked.
So the Celtics came out on Sunday, ran the Atlanta Hawks off the parquet in three quarters, and suddenly the team has a fresh start. They looked like the 66-16 Celtics, the best-defense-in-the-NBA Celtics, the NBA Finals-favorite Celtics and the training-camp-in-Rome-Ubuntu Celtics. Those familiar old Celtics the Garden knows and loves destroyed the Atlanta Hawks 99-65 in Game 7 of their grueling Eastern Conference Quarterfinals series Sunday.
"I just told them after the game that that was the Celtics," Rivers said. "I thought, obviously, that we played terrific basketball tonight. The defensive energy was off the charts and the offense was great."
Kendrick Perkins helped set the tone by protecting the hoop, blocking five shots and grabbing six of his 10 rebounds in the first quarter.
"It was crazy," Perkins said of the team's mood before the game. "You could see guys on their face, nobody was trying to go home. Ray told me that this was the most important game of his career."
And the rest of the Celtics played as if it was just that, dominating the paint on both ends of the floor.
When the Celtics weren't stopping the Hawks on drives to the hoop, they were scoring inside themselves. In the first half, the Celtics scored on just three outside jumpers. Everything else came from the paint. Rivers lauded his role players for coming up huge.
"I thought the quote unquote role players played their role at a star level," Rivers said.
The Hawks were less fortunate. Overwhlemed by a raucous Garden crowd, Atlanta shot poorly and didn't defend much better.
Josh Smith, who blocked 19 shots over the course of the first six games, swatted just one shot tonight and was an absolute non-factor. Mike Bibby had just two points and two assists. Zaza Pachulia got in foul trouble early, and the only impression he made was on the parquet when KG flattened him with a backcourt pick (think WWE shoulder block off the ropes) that had a little extra shoulder and a lot of extra love for two weeks worth of antogonism.
Rather than the Hawks feeding off the fastbreak, it was the Celtics who found themselves out on the run, and by the time Marvin Williams finally tried to stop it by clotheslining Rajon Rondo (a shade less nasty than McHale on Rambis) to the deck, the damage was done. The Celtics were up 23 at that point (9:09 of the third) and after seeing their point guard attacked, they went for blood. The lead ballooned to 36 after three and tickets for Games 1 and 2 against the Cavs were set to go on sale before the game was even over.
For his part, Garnett said after the game that he could tell his team was ready at the morning walkthrough.
"We pretty much just thought, 'let's get it on,'" Garnett said.
They got it on, and finally got it over with, too. Round 2 versus the Cleveland Cavaliers starts Tuesday, and the Celtics return to Waltham to practice Monday afternoon.
As for tonight? They'd better rest up.
