Celtics can’t rely on parquet alone in Game 7
CLEVELAND, OH » Let’s put aside the basketball analysis for a moment.
Instead, let’s place the 2017-18 Celtics on an analyst’s couch and ask this question: Where are these guys’ heads?
Thanks to their 109-99 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals Friday night at Quicken Loans Arena, the two teams are headed back to the Garden Sunday night for — drum roll, please — the winner-take-all Game 7.
Game 7, we all know, is the Steel Cage Match of the NBA, the NHL and Major League Baseball. Game 7s inspire books, documentaries, poems. (I can’t back that last one up, but I’m sure there’s an ode or two to Game 7 out there somewhere.) But what’s going to set this Game 7 and this series apart from many of the others isn’t just that the home team has won every game so far, but that, with the exception of last night’s Game 6, the home team has won handily, convincingly. Heck, we might as well throw Game 6 in there as well; even though the Celtics were within seven points in the fourth quarter, LeBron James put a pretty bow on his 46-point night with a pair of late-in-the-night, back-to-back treys and then stopped to scream with such ferocity that he could be heard as far as way as Akron.
So let’s get to this business of where the Celtics’ heads are: Do these guys bank on a Game 7 vic- tory tomorrow night simply because they’re home and the home team has ruled in this series? Expanding on this topic a little, should they give themselves a pregame pat on the back by reminding themselves they’re 10- 0 at home this postseason?
They have history on they side, correct?
“At the end of the day you’ve got to make your own history,” Jaylen Brown said. “We gotta come out and do what we gotta do. People can say whatever they want, but two teams have to come out and play. At the end of the day we’ll see what happens after that.”
If you’re a concerned-citizen Celtics fan, you should pleased by Jaylen Brown’s words. He may be young,
but he’s wise: He’s not about to wrap himself up in the flag of home- court dominance. Not with LeBron lurking in the shadows.
And if you’re a Celtics fan who liked what Jaylen Brown had to say on this
topic, you’ll l- o-v- e love what Terry Rozier (a teamhigh 28 points) had to say.
“We can’t just rely on being at home as an excuse that it’s going to be easy, because it’s not,” he said, flatly.
Perfect. On a night when he was the best player in Green, Rozier took all the pyscho-babble about Game 7 and turned it into one
very simple, easily-understood sound bite.
We can’t just rely on being at home.
It’s OK to be afraid, to be very afraid, of the youngish, inexperienced Celtics. Their springtime playoff run has been as joyous and fun as it has been improbable, especially at their Lion’s Den Garden, but tomorrow night is go-
ing to be different. Tomorrow night is when LeBron James takes the Cleveland Cavaliers back to the NBA Finals, or it’s when he quite possibly plays his last game as a member of the Cavaliers. That’s why tomorrow night’s Garden party will be no ordinary home playoff game, no ordinary Game 7, no ordinary nuthin.’