New kids on the shock
Bradley trey caps stunner CELTICS 111 CAVALIERS 108
CLEVELAND With or without Isaiah Thomas, the Celtics have the kind of inner stubbornness needed to pull off what happened last night.
Avery Bradley’s open, rim-rattling 3-pointer with a tenth of a second left broke a tie for the most improbable result of the NBA postseason — a 111-108 win by the C’s against the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals at Quicken Loans Arena.
The win chopped Cleveland’s lead in the best-ofseven series to 2-1, despite the absence of the Celtics’ diminutive but dynamic offensive leader due to a season-ending hip injury.
Game 4 is tomorrow night in Cleveland.
The Celtics trailed by as many as 21, and their comeback marked the first time that a LeBron James-guided team has allowed a lead that large to evaporate.
Before this happened, James’ teams were 49-0 in those situations. Though Kevin Love finished with a front-loaded 28 points, to go along with 29 from Kyrie Irving, James had his lowestscoring playoff performance since 2007 with 11 points (none in the fourth quarter).
The Celtics were given bad news a day earlier, when the team announced Thomas, who was suffering too much from a labrel tear in his right hip to continue, was being shut down for the rest of the playoffs. And his teammates took every subsequent prediction of a sweep personally.
Gerald Green got a little angry.
“There’s nothing to explain,” Green said. “They’re a good team, don’t get me wrong. But do you think because everyone else counted us out we’re supposed to count our own selves out?
“I’m not like that, and I don’t think that anyone else on this team is like that. (But) that’s all you hear. Not one person said that we’ll win a game. This whole playoffs has been everybody counting us out. Just keep believing in ourselves.”
Enter Marcus Smart, suddenly channeling his inner Kevin Love. In the first half, Love drained nine of the Cavalier’s 14 treys. Smart answered with 19 of his 27 points in the second half, including five of his seven 3-pointers.
The Celtics, covered in a blizzard of 3’s at halftime, also won the downtown battle by hitting 11 of their 18 shots from out deep in the second half, when the Cavaliers managed only two more treys.
As Bradley pointed out, the Celtics also survived an enormous free throw gap, with Cleveland attempting 36 at the line to the Celtics’ 12 freebies.
Yet, to the surprise of many, the C’s were locked in a 106-106 tie with 36.3 seconds left following a JR Smith 3-pointer for the Cavaliers.
Jonas Jerebko gathered a kickout pass from Bradley and made a 20-footer to give the Celtics a 108-106 lead with 30.3 seconds left.
James took the inbounds pass, isolated first on Jae Crowder and then Al Horford, before driving and passing out to Irving, whose own drive leveled the score at 108-108 with 10.7 seconds left.
Following the halfcourt reset off a timeout, Smart took the inbounds pass for the C’s, waited then swung left to a wide open Bradley on the left side of the circle. From there, Bradley rattled home his 3-pointer for the win.
The play was also designed for Bradley, who took Smart’s pass with the nearest Cleveland defender 5 feet away.
“I think that one of the good things about this team is we’re able to believe in whatever Brad draws up,” Bradley said. “If it’s a good play, bad play, whatever it is, we all believe in it. I think that always helps because you’re able to just read and react after that.
“One of the plays that he drew up when Jonas Jerebko hit the shot, it was for me to lay the ball up. But it was a play that I knew that if they helped, Jonas would be wide open, and he was able to knock down his shot.”
An emotional Al Horford pointed to that calmness down the stretch, without their offensive star in the building.
“The way we looked at it was, we weren’t looking at the end. We just kept on focusing on making sure that we made plays,” Horford said. “We got stops on defense, scored on offense, kept chipping at the lead.”