Celtics, Wizards seek to advance
Rested Cavaliers await winner of tonight’s Game 7.
BOSTON — Isaiah Thomas u s e d t o i magi n e what i t would be like to play in a Game 7 as he watched some of the NBA’s biggest names cement their legacies on the league’s biggest stage.
The Celtics All-Star will get his fifirst chance to do the same on Monday night when Boston hosts the Washington Wizards with a trip to the Eastern Conference finals at stake.
Whi l e T h o mas i s a n xious for the opportunit y, one thing he says he won’t be is nervous.
“I don’t believe in pressure,” Thomas said. “I’ve worked too hard to be scared of any type of pressure.”
Maybe not. But neither is a Washington team that pulled out a one-point win in Friday’s Game 6, becoming the fifirst home team to stave offff elimination on its home flfloor this postseason. Teams had previously been 0-10 during the 2017 playoffffs.
The Wizards will now be trying to be fifirst team in this matchup to win on the opponent’s home flfloor in 201617. All 10 meetings this season have been won by the home team.
“A lot of guys doubted us winning (Game 6) at home,” Wizards point guard John Wall said. “The last two years we were in the playoffffffffffffs we lost Game 6 here and we just had a lot of heart.”
Today’s winner earns an Eastern Conference finals matchup with the defending champion Cleveland Cavaliers, who have been await- ing an opponent since sweeping Toronto on May 7.
For the Celtics, an opportunity to face the Cavs would validate the No. 1 seed that Boston outlasted Cleveland for in the fifinal week of the regular season. It would also be the Celtics’ fifirst trip to the conference fifinals since 2012, the last such run made by Boston’s since-departed Big Three of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen.
I n Wa s h i n g t o n , t h e d rou g h t h a s b e e n much longer. The Wizards haven’t been out of the second round since 1979, when the then-Bullets beat the Spurs to advance to the NBA Finals. That series was Washington’s last time in a Game 7.
Game 7 will also — at least for now — settle the score between teams that haven’t hidden their dislike for one another. The Wizards wore all-black to a regular-season matchup with Boston in January before soundly beating them.
Several Boston players showed up wearing black for Game 6, but the Celtics weren’t able to end the Wizards’ season.
Washington’s Ian Mahinmi, who was part of the 2014 Indiana Pacers’ team that eliminated Washington in the East semififinals, said both Wall and Bradley Beal have matured a lot since then.
“Now, those guys are not babies anymore,” Mahinmi said. “They closers.”
Thomas has gotten advice this postseason from both Kobe Bryant and Paul Pierce after the Wizards evened the series in Game 4.
Pierce’s advice was ringing in his ears on Sunday.
“Winning’s hard. It’s not for ever ybody,” Thomas recalled Pierce telling him.
If it was easy it would be.” also my back to the basket,” Meeks said. “I’m working hard on my jump shot because in college I really didn’t get a chance to do that. In high school I did.”
That jump shot was a focus for Meeks last week, hoping to show teams that he can expand his game to the perimeter.
Although Meeks is rated as the 32nd best prospect by CBS Sports, several of the mock drafts do not have him being selected. And Meeks is very aware Whiteside was the 33rd player selected in the 2010 draft, was cut by the Kings, played overseas and in the D-League before signing a $98 million max contract last summer.
“It’s all about getting in the right position, getting the right opportunity and he defifinitely got that,” Meeks said. “He showed his ability. He was the leading shot blocker in college so he defifinitely has that abilit y. His rebounding and scoring ability he got better at as he went onto the league so he was defifinitely rewarded for that.”