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Close, But No Victory Cigar for Celtics
LOS ANGELES - Win or lose Sunday night in Los Angeles, the Celtics were going to fly back to Boston on Monday morning. But they were hoping to bring a long lost friend along for the ride. Instead, moments after the Celtics' 103-98 loss in Game 5 of the NBA Finals at Staples Center, a heavy, golden Larry O'Brien, wrapped in a baby blue trophy bag, was being carried away from the Celtics' locker room.
He's still making the trip back East, but he can't ride on the team plane with the Boston Celtics. White-gloved handlers from the NBA offices were repairing to a holding room with the trophy and will take it back to Boston themselves. Making the trip with them is the Finals MVP trophy, which presumably would have been handed to Paul Pierce, whose 38-point, eight assist, leave-it-all-on-the-floor effort was almost enough to carry the Celtics to their 17th World Championship.
Pierce, still nursing the knee he hurt in Game 1 at the Garden, wanted dearly to win the championship in his hometown of Los Angeles, and to that end, played all but two seconds of the Game 5. One would presume that if he had anything left in the tank afterward, it was fumes.
Erroneous.
"I always leave it out on the court. That's something that I owe to my ballclub, franchise, every time I step on the court. And I have plenty in the tank. It's not over," Pierce said in his postgame press conference. "I've got to suck it up for two more games, if that. It'll all be worth it in the end."
Pierce's threshold for pain may be bordering on superhuman at this point, but his teammates haven't been as fortunate. Rajon Rondo played just 14 ineffective minutes and is clearly hampered by his sprained ankle, while Kendrick Perkins was seen shooting one-handed shots before Saturday's practice and lacked the required range of motion in his left shoulder to give it a go Sunday.
Before Game 5, Doc Rivers called him "doubtful" for a potential (and now very real) Game 6, and it's hard to believe that the prognosis would be any better for a Game 7 given Perkins' history with shoulder injuries and his bull-in-a-china-shop style of play.
The Celtics don't need injury issues to give them a sense of urgency, but with the body count mounting by the day, it would behoove them to finish off the Lakers ASAP. Sounds easy on paper, since no team has ever come back from a 3-1 deficit in the NBA Finals, right? Well, you can throw out all of the historic numbers, because they have zero relevance to a series that now stands at 3-2.
What is important, though, is that the Celtics are heading back to Boston with two more chances to clinch the title. And as down as the team may have been Sunday night -- Doc Rivers said that his team "thought they could and thought they should" have clinched on Sunday, they'll be back at it Tuesday in the friendly confines of the TD Banknorth Garden, where they've only lost once this postseason.
"It's an emotional roller coaster," Celtics radio broadcaster Cedric Maxwell said on his way off the pin-drop quiet team bus after Game 5. "You've got to handle the ups and downs." Maxwell, the 1981 Finals MVP and a two-time NBA Champion, speaks from experience.
The team may have been down Sunday night, but you can bet they'll be up for Game 6.
