Fear factors with LeBron
James enough for anxiety
The Celtics are playing Game 7 at home tonight.
The Celtics are 10-0 in the Garden in these playoffs and often look like a differ- ent group of dribblers than when they leave town.
Taken player for player, they are a better basketball team than the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The Celtics should be comfortable.
They should win... Except that there’s that LeBron guy — the one who hit them up for 46 points when they had a chance to close out the series on Friday. The potential for Mr.James to take over the proceedings and will — and score and pass and rebound — the Cavs to victory is very real.
It has to send a shiver of concern into the Celtic confidence. Right? Marcus Smart took in the concept late Friday night after the larger media crowd had dispersed. He took it in and he summarily swatted it onto a dressing room floor littered with scissored-off pieces of athletic tape and wet towels.
“I mean, if that’s what you’re thinking, then you don’t need to show up,” said Marcus Smart. “I’m just saying.”
No doubt the Celtics guard/ strong safety/puck-moving defenseman has proper respect for LeBron James and the devastation the best player on the planet can rain down on any entity that gets in his way. But Marcus Smart was born with a gene that prevents him from giving an inch. And he’s nurtured that gene until he’s become perhaps the most valuable player in the league of those without a consistent offensive game.
He’s fully aware of LeBron and will never lose track of him tonight even when the Cleveland colossus is on the bench. But Smart isn’t obsessing about him. He’s obsessing more about that tall, but abundantly do-able, task at Celtic hand.
“You know, we’re all here to play ball,” Smart said. “And in order for you to win games, you can’t have the mindset coming in that because he’s LeBron, it’s trouble. You can’t think like that.
“We’re coming in there, and we have to have a mindset and a mentality that we’re coming to try to take him down. And we’re on our home court and we’ve got to protect that. We know it’s not going to be easy, but you can’t have no fear.”
It’s rather like that episode of The Three Stooges where Moe asks Larry if he’s scared.
“No,” Larry says, “just apprehensive.”
Moe does a double-take, tells him that’s a “mighty fancy word” and asks him what it means.
“It means you’re scared,” says Larry, “... with a college education.”
Moe then does to Larry something along the lines of what the Celtics would love to do to the Cavaliers tonight.
But as much as the frisky C’s will seek to be highly aggressive on defense and bite the hands that beat them Friday, they have to be quick but calm at the other end of the floor. The most certain predictor of Celtics doom this season and certainly in these playoffs has been people breaking off plays and trying
CELTICS BEAT Steve Bulpett
to make something happen on their own. As we’ve noted here ad nauseum, you can survive missing a good shot because you’re generally in position to get back on defense. But settling for shots that aren’t really there early in the clock leads to bad floor balance and transition points for the opposition.
It takes great discipline to stay within the scheme and move the ball with mundane passes waiting for the openings to occur. And while there is definitely a correlation between this issue and the Celts’ youth, you know who else is having this problem? Kevin Durant and the Goliath State Warriors.
Coach Steve Kerr was seen chastising Durant in a nice way to trust his teammates early in the possession. Instead, Durant forced the issue in Games 4 and 5 and put the Dubs on the brink of elimination last night.
“You’ve got to wait,” said Smart, who isn’t always so patient himself — a trait shared by the Celts’ other Marcus, Morris. “You’ve got to make the play that’s there. But it’s human nature, especially when you’re feeling good — you know, you warmed up pretty well and the shot was there, and you feel like every shot’s going in.
“You put so much pressure on yourself to go out there and do it, when in reality you should just let it happen. You know, we all do it. But that’s the thing about being a professional. You’ve got to know about when to go and when not to go, when to do things and when not to do things. That’s going to really be the proof for us.”
The larger chore of winning would seem to be less difficult with Kevin Love being listed by the Cavs as being in the league’s concussion protocol and out for Game 7. But the truth is Cleveland’s defense improved on Friday when Love left after knocking heads with Jayson Tatum five minutes into the game. The Cavs were better able to switch on defense, which led to more doubleteaming of Al Horford.
Thus, as with the Cavs working hard to deal with the Celtics’ concerted crew of tall and athletic people, the Celts have to be even more fundamentally sound to probe the defense and find the openings.
And the Celtics don’t have LeBron to use as an assault vehicle. The Cavaliers have LeBron.
Which is why every piece of genius planning and preparation can be rendered moot in a Cleveland minute. So, Greenhearts, stay as confident as you want, but be apprehensive. Be very apprehensive.
‘We’re coming in there, and we have to have a mindset and a mentality that we’re coming to try to take him down. And we’re on our home court and we’ve got to protect that. We know it’s not going to be easy, but you can’t have no fear.’ — MARCUS SMART, on Game 7, LeBron James and the Cavs