No ‘goon squad’ here
C’s must resist living up to Lue’s label
Eleven years ago, Danny Ainge flew to Los Angeles and rang the doorbell at Kevin Garnett’s Malibu home.
His mission: Sweet-talk the then-Minnesota Timberwolves big man to agree to a contract extension that would make possible a trade to the Celtics.
It wasn’t Garnett who answered the door. It was a journeyman NBA guard named Tyronn Lue, who was crashing at Garnett’s place for a while after undergoing offseason knee surgery. And it was Lue who told Garnett, “The Boston Celtics are your best opportunity to win a championship. They already have Paul Pierce. They went out and got Ray Allen. With you, they can win it all.”
So Lue already has a unique backstage role in the history of the Celtics.
Now, in his role as head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers, he has made yet another contribution to Celtics history: Lue is leading the charge to recast the young, apple-cheeked Celts as a collection of goons.
You may have missed Lue’s comments following the Celtics’ 107-94 victory over the Cavs in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference finals Tuesday night at the Garden, given the late hour and the overall jubilation taking place around town. But by yesterday you no doubt became aware that Lue said, “We’ve got to be tougher. I think (the Celtics) are playing tougher than we are. We see that. They’re being physical. They’re gooning the game up, and we’ve got to do the same thing. We’ve got to be tougher, mentally and physically.”
There it is: Lue says the C’s are “gooning the game up.”
Welcome to the big time, young Celtics!
Seems like only yesterday that Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, Terry Rozier and other carded-every-night Celtics looked more likely to be holding a paper drive for the Jimmy Fund than be associated with a collection of “goons,” but things happen quickly in the NBA.
Nor is it uncommon for coaches to accuse other teams of rough stuff. Happens all the time. Sometimes famously so: In the spring of 1991, as the Bruins were battling the Pittsburgh Penguins in the Wales Conference finals, B’s coach Mike Milbury referred to Pens coach Badger Bob Johnson as the “professor of goonism.”
But that’s hockey. It was also a particularly knockdown, drag-out series, which included a couple of hits by the Penguins’ Ulf Samuelson that shortened Cam Neely’s career. The C’s are guilty of no such affronts to future Hall of Famers, and that includes the incident under the boards Tuesday night when Tatum’s shoulder and LeBron’s head had a meetand-greet, the result being that King James had to leave the court for a while. But even LeBron called it “obviously incidental.”
Game 2 offered plenty of pushing, shoving and staring, but the only boardcertified cheap shot was authored not by a Celtic, but a Cavalier. We speak, of course, of J.R. Smith pushing Al Horford off a cliff in the late stages of the fourth quarter, a curious display of roughhousing considering the Cavs were desperately trying to get back into the game. The Celts’ Marcus Smart immediately went after Smith, earning both men technical fouls, but Smith also landed a flagrant-1.
A perusal of reader comments at cleveland.com did not suggest an uprising of Cavaliers fans who believe their team suffered at the hands of Boston’s goon squad. The talk out there appears to mostly be about LeBron’s future, as well as the Cavs’ alarming lack of (pick one: talent . . . passion . . . hustle . . . etc.) in Game 2. As one reader posted at the bottom of columnist Terry Pluto’s work, “The Cavaliers are in way over their heads with this more talented and better coached Celtic team and even the best player on the planet is not enough to overcome that.”
With three days off between Games 2 and 3, it’s possible Cavs fans will embrace the Celtics-as-goons storyline when the two teams meet Saturday night at Quicken Loans Arena.
And if that’s what happens, so what? If history has taught us anything, it’s that young people always try to act older, tougher, worldlier than they actually are.
It would be disastrous for the Celtics’ playoff hopes if the Young Ones started reading their press clippings, especially Ty Lue’s goon-it-up comments, and get it into their heads that they are for-real tough guys.
But if Lue wants to keep thinking the Celtics are goons when all they’re really doing is playing the feisty, aggressive basketball that his Cavaliers are not playing, there’s a chance this series won’t be returning to Boston.