Expect the unexpected
Little makes sense in this strange series
With all due apologies to David Bowie for co-opting one of his masterworks — may he and Ziggy rest in harmonic peace — this Celtics-Chicago first-round playoff series has certainly undergone some serious ch-ch-ch-changes in these last days.
Continually we’ve been required to turn and face the strange. Conventional wisdom has been taking a beating from the time the clubs showed up at the Garden on Easter Sunday with the Celts a heavy favorite to get this thing over in five games. Maybe four. Maybe six (hey, I’m still alive).
Then the Bulls swept the Celts out of the Garden in the first two. The Hall of Fame committee was considering waiving the fiveyear waiting period for Robin Lopez. Bobby Portis and Paul Zipser were taking turns as mystery marauder, hitting the C’s up for 19 and 16 points in Games 1 and 2, respectively.
The Bulls were pleasantly shocked to a degree after rocking the Celts, 111-97, in the Garden last Tuesday. One Chicago type called it the best they had played all season, which is saying a great deal for a club that beat Cleveland four times. He then added, perhaps not to jinx things by acting too happy, that the Bulls could easily go home and screw it all up. This was, after all, a 41-41 group with more than passing knowledge of internal stress.
But even he couldn’t have known the reasons for the Chicago downfall into 2-2 would be such oddities. No one was aware until Thursday evening, when results of Rajon Rondo’s MRI revealed a fractured right thumb. After averaging 11.5 points, 10 assists and 3.5 steals and generally bedeviling the Celtics in the first two games, it was announced Friday morning that he would be out “indefinitely.”
Who knew the Bulls would so terribly miss a guy they had benched for five games around the dawn of the new year?
Even harder to believe or predict is that the Celtics would find their groove by inserting into their starting lineup a guy who played 5:34 in Game 1 and never even got off the pine in Game 2. And five DNP’s? That’s nothing. Gerald Green picked up 29 of them in 2016-17.
So Gerald hits two early 3-pointers last Friday, and the Bulls were knocked back onto the heels of their hooves. Sunday he hit them even harder with 16 of his 18 points in the first half and seven rebounds in 23 minutes.
A move that reeked of desperation at the time to some was, in actuality, a simple rearranging of chess pieces that got others into better positions to attack the Bulls’ side of the board. In addition to what Green could provide, suddenly Al Horford was getting the ball in scoring zones more. The floor was spaced better, and all the Celts took advantage.
While Isaiah Thomas certainly took over Game 4 with 33 points and a brilliant third-quarter run that righted a listing Celtic ship, it should be noted that the C’s were a mere plus-2 with him on the floor when they were winning Game 3 by 17.
But the high pick-androll he had executed with Horford to help guide him to nine assists on Friday was the basis for him to catch the Bulls leaning toward that move and burning them with drives down a more open lane.
And now the path to the second round would seem clear for the Celtics, but if the past week has taught us anything, it is to count on nothing.
They hit less than 40 percent of uncontested jumpers in Game 2, and that is certainly within their range of possibility again. Sometimes shots just don’t fall.
And Jimmy Butler could surpass his 33 points from Game 4, though the way he got many of those — taking the rock and going oneon-one-or-more — seemed to take Chicago out of its more fluid offense that had Lopez hitting wide-open shots from out beyond the free throw line when he wasn’t killing the Celts on the offensive glass.
Conventional wisdom now is as sure the Celtics will finish this series off in six as it was that Chicago had this in the bag going home up 2-0 last week and that the C’s were a lock to dispatch these lucky-to-be-in-the-playoffs Bulls before this whole thing even started.
So who will be the one to emerge from the shadows to next impact this matchup? Is Joffrey Lauvergne going to take the first steps toward his own statue outside of United Center, or will Jordan Mickey escape the inactive list and blast the Bulls into the offseason?
Something unexpected is almost certain to happen in a series that has been stunningly defined by that concept.