Celtics no strangers to Game 7 showdowns
For all the jockeying during the regular season to ensure home court advantage, there has been little payoff in the playoffs. Teams have been closed out at home, with the road team winning the deciding game in 10 of 11 series. The enduring images, beyond the juggernauts of Cleveland and Golden State, have been of superstars coming up short when they were needed the most, and of heartbroken fans slowly marching up the aisles while the games were grinding to completion.
The big exception has been the second-round matchup between the Boston Celtics and the Washington Wizards, where the mission seems to be to keep the home fans happy. After five consecutive games in which the home team came out on top, it looked as if the trend might be over in Game 6 on Friday night when Boston’s Al Horford banked in a 16-footer with seven seconds left.
But John Wall, Washington’s allstar point guard, was undeterred. He was already annoyed by the perceived slight of several Boston players arriving to the game wearing all black, and when Wall found some space between himself and Avery Bradley with three seconds left, he knocked down a 3-pointer that put his team ahead to stay.
“I ain’t going home,” a visibly excited Wall said in a televised on-court interview after the game. “They all come to my city wearing all black talking about, ‘It’s a funeral.’ We worked too hard for this, and all we ask for is a Game 7. Fifty-Fifty.”
While Wall is correct that Monday’s game will be a winner-take-all event, the Celtics as a franchise have a habit of making Game 7s far from a 50-50 proposition.
No team in NBA history can approach the 29 times that the Celtics have played in a Game 7. And the Celtics have won more Game 7s (21) than all other teams, except the Los Angeles Lakers, have appeared in.
In the Bill Russell era, the Celtics were unstoppable in Game 7, winning all 10 appearances. The pace has slowed, with Boston going 11-8 in Game 7s since Russell retired.
The Wizards and their forebears — the Baltimore Bullets, Capital Bullets and Washington Bullets — have not been asked to go the distance nearly as often.
The franchise has appeared in a respectable nine Game 7s, but the last time was in the 1979 Eastern Conference final against the San Antonio Spurs. Elvin Hayes and Bob Dandridge carried the Bullets to a win — nearly five years before Marcin Gortat, Washington’s oldest current player, was born.