For starters, not bad
C’s fans can bask in Game 1 glow
It was an unremarkable steal, the type of play you’ve seen a hundred times over the years, the type of play you cheer when it’s your guy doing the pocket-picking but don’t necessarily talk about all day long and again at work the next morning.
Except it was LeBron James out there on the parquet yesterday afternoon having the ball liberated from him by the Celtics’ Marcus Smart, and right away that changes things.
When it’s one of the greatest players in history getting his pocket picked — in the playoffs, on national TV, and (what the heck) on Mother’s Day — you remember.
And then there was the timing. There were two minutes and change remaining in the first half, the Celtics holding a 286-12 lead (OK, it was 55-33), and the Smart steal seemed not only to stamp “game over” on Game 1 but also to embolden Green Teamers who promised the Celtics would emerge victorious in their
Eastern Conference finals rematch against the Cleveland Cavaliers.
But this? This?
When it was all over at the Garden, the Celtics had rolled to an easy, bench-emptying 108-83 Game 1 victory over the Cavaliers, inspiring said Green Teamers to spill out to Causeway Street with visions of a trip to the NBA Finals dancing in their sweep little heads. Now it is true that the Cavs roared back with 29 points in the third quarter, whereupon Celtics coach Brad Stevens went on TV as the fourth quarter loomed and told Doris Burke about the “ebbs and flows of the game,” but the words were barely out of his mouth before another C’s run — it took less than four minutes for them to rebuild their lead to the 28-point perch — had turned this thing into something akin to what the 2007 Patriots did to all comers during those memorably angry weeks after Spygate had been adjudicated.
This is the part where a lot of very smart people want you to know that it’s just one game, adjustments will be made, the Cavs still have LeBron, etc. Stevens continued the ebbs-and-flows theme in his postgame remarks, along with saying what he undoubtedly said to his players: “Whether you did your job well or didn’t on that particular play has no bearing on Tuesday night. It’s a whole new game. You’ve got to do it again.”
Understood. But if ever Celtics fans — repeat: Celtics fans — have earned the right to spend an extra day gloating over a Game 1 victory, this is the time, this is the day. For much of this postseason the basketball intelligentsia has had the Celtics as underdogs to even make it to the arena on time, which makes this Game 1 victory, with its glittering 25-2 first-quarter run, the rare case when it’s not a cliche to put it out there that a team made a statement.
“It felt like we really fed off a lot of our crowd,” said Al Horford, bestowing sixth-man honors on the 18,624 in the house.
Not that anybody, anywhere, would suggest this thing is over. LeBron made sure to get the message out there, saying, “I’ve been down 0-1, I’ve been down 0-2. I’ve been down before in the postseason.”
But that’s not the postgame quoteage that should concern Celtics fans. No, the postgame quoteage that should concern Celtics fans was LeBron’s response to a question about “what happened” at the beginning of the fourth quarter.
He took the question literally, and then responded with an answer that was a) humorous, b) impressive, and c) scary.
“What happened?” he said. “The first possession we ran them all the way to two on the shot clock. Marcus Morris missed the jump shot, followed it up, they got a dunk. We came back down, we ran a set for Jordan Clarkson, and he came off and missed it. They rebounded it, and we came back on the defensive end and we got a stop. They took it out on the sideline. Jayson Tatum took the ball out, threw it to Marcus Smart in the short corner, he made a 3. We come back down, missed another shot. Then Tatum came down and went 94 feet, did a Euro step and made a righthanded layup. Time out. There you go.”
How precise was LeBron here? This precise: The NBA’s official transcript of LeBron’s do-it-yourself Sports Center misquoted him as saying it was Morris who got the 3-pointer, not Smart.
The message here is that LeBron is a details guy who’ll make adjustments for Game 2.
But that’s tomorrow. For today, Celts fans get to pick at the leftovers from Game 1, and for the simple reason that this makes absolutely no sense: No Gordon Hayward, no Kyrie Irving, and they’re up 1-0 over LeBron & Co. in the Eastern Conference finals.