This was insane. Did that really just happen? The Cavs literally just gave up with something like 1:30 left in the game down 9. A pretty much insurmountable lead, but certainly crazier things have happened. And besides, this is your season, Cavs! How can they just walk the ball up the court, not foul, and just refuse to try and pull out a W? Once again, if the tables were turned, you know Celtics players, especially KG, would NEVER let that happen. Ever. You don't just give up in an elimination game when the best player of our generation is probably going to leave the team.
This is not the same Celtics team of the latter half of the regular season. The switch has been pulled, whatever the switch actually was. My theory that I just thought of right now is that everyone is healthy, our chemistry is back, we've solidified our rotation, and our bench knows what its role is--something that hasn't been the case since probably Christmas.
Up 14 in the 4th quarter, I'm sure you felt the same feeling I did that an implosion was probable, if not inevitable. When James hit those back to back threes (Has he hit any threes other than those in this series? I really can't remember another one..), I thought, Oh man, here we go. But no. No panic. Doc calls timeout and we come out and regain our 9-point lead we had at the start of the quarter. Get hit and punch right back.
KG showed old-school tenacity proving once and for all his knee is not a problem
Among every player tonight, the one who was the most important was Kevin Garnett. That's not to take away anything from Rondo (who continued his unbelievable play: 21 pts, 12 ast, 5 steals) or the strong bench play of TA and Sheed (more on him later). KG was literally 2008-form, if not 2004. Again, I'm trying not to be a prisoner of the moment, but KG was consistent from horn to horn. He recognized the Cavs defensive schemes, first when they put Shaq on him (such a dumb move by Mike Brown) and later when they went with Jamison and Varejao. With each distinct defender, he did the exact right thing. Shaq: face up, hit jump shots. Jamison and Varejao: Post up and pound it in. He was 11 for 19 shooting for 22 points and 12 rebounds. And the boards were STRONG too. Anyone who mentions KG's knee again should be shot. There is nothing wrong with it. We were all impatient--the team doctors said that this type of injury would take a year to fully heal. When did he get surgery? Right about this time last year. Anyway, I know I texted some people and put it on my Facebook status, but that KG dunk (you know the one I'm talking about), it literally was slow motion. It was the strangest feeling ever. He hasn't dunked the ball that hard since I don't know when. That's classic KG, running straight down the lane, catching the pass, and going up for a dunk without any hesitation or second-guessing. I cannot heap more praise on this guy for not only this amazing game, but each game throughout these playoffs. This guy is not done yet.
Usually I'd analyze what we did wrong with Cavs players, but since they're in our dust now, it doesn't really seem necessary. I might as well give my 2 cents worth about the LeBron James deal. For one thing, I think it seems only fitting that this series ended with an awful turnover on a horrendous pass into the paint right to Wallace. No other Cavs were near the paint at the time. He did play aggressively and try for 3 and a half quarters, but disappeared after those "dagger threes" in the middle of the 4th. After that? Nothing. I think he tried one more pull up three and drove the ball one more time, getting completely swallowed up by Pierce. In fact, everyone on the Cavs was just so non-chalant about the loss as the seconds ticked away. Did Mike Brown tell them not to foul and just let it go? So weird. Anyway, LeBron, in my mind, is going to get the hell outta Cleveland. The post game press conference he had after Game 5 was stoic, as I wrote about in my last blog and his effort at the end of Game 6 was nonexistent. It's almost as if he was like, "Oh well, 9 points down with just over a minute to go. It was a good run here in Ohio, but clearly it's not working and I need to move on." Honestly, how can he come back if the organization did everything they really possibly could have to secure the pieces to make a legitimate title run? And now they get trounced in the 2nd round by an "old and past-its-prime" Boston team? My gut and my mind says no way he'll be in a Cavs uniform come October.
I don't want to speculate on the Magic series that begins on Sunday afternoon in Orlando. All I'm going to say is that we took them to the brink last year without KG. Sure, they didn't have Nelson then either, but if you're in a draft, are you picking Kevin Fucking Garnett or Jameer Nelson? Yeah, that's what I thought. Not to get ahead of myself, but I do like our chances. Perk (and Sheed) defend Howard really well. Perk is able to push him out beyond his 3-foot range and he just throws up bricks (like Shaq, but Howard has less girth to push his way back in). Rondo beats Nelson easily on both ends of the court. Who's going to beat us? Maybe Carter, but does he ever show up when it counts? JJ Redick? Yeah. I just don't know. Lewis can really heat up like Ray Allen, so he's a scary piece. All I know is that the Celtics are still the underdogs, the Magic haven't been challenged yet (at all), and we have infinite confidence after beating the best team in the league. Bottom line: I like our chances probably more than the Cavs series and, well, it'll be interesting.
Sheed knocked down a HUGE three in the critical 4th quarter and showed rare energy throughout the game.
Going back to the game, I must give credit where credit is due. Rasheed Wallace played phenomenal (phenomenally?). Other than a couple of really stupid fouls (seriously, if someone is driving to the hoop, don't give them a slight push so they list lazily to the left! otherwise, it's going to be a three-point play every time!), he showed tremendous energy rebounding the ball and knocked down the biggest shot since he's been here with that corner trey when we needed to stop the bleeding. Speaking of which, how much of an ass clown is Anderson Varejao? He was complaining to the refs about bleeding TWO trips up and down the court! To quote Jeff Van Gundy, who can get annoying, but this was gold: "So what if you're bleeding?...Play on!" Amen. People always say you hate Varejao when he's on another team, but would love him if he was on yours. "He's so lovable with that goofy clown hair! HAVE MY BABIES!!" No. Sorry, just no. I would not like him if he was on the Celtics. Sure, he plays with tenacity sometimes, but he's kinda a dirty player and that's just sort of a cheap way to play the game. And he shoots like a moron! No, ya know what it's like? It's like a girl! Girls always shoot like that. They shoot with both hands on either side of the ball and sorta just squeeze it out while pushing their arms awkwardly straight out from their chest. Just ugly ugly ugly. Not Celtic material. Go away.
I thought I'd save this for another time, but I'm in a giving mood and if you're reading this you can probably relate to the annoyingness of some in-game and in-commercial "things." I made up a quick list in my iPhone notepad (product placement!), so here we go!
Wtf is going on here.
I hate car commercials. Just in any situation. Especially local car commercials. The reason? This is not a product I'm buying every day, week, month, or year. You buy a car and usually don't buy another one for like 5 years. Therefore, car commercials are USELESS! I understand they're really not useless, but they piss me off. Specifically, what the hell is a "tent event"?!? Like, is there a circus at all Toyota dealerships? Do they put cars under a big ass tent? Is there some significance of the word "tent" that I'm not understanding? Like, does "tent" mean "great deals" or something? God, shut the effsicles UP! "0.9% APR financing for qualified lessees...Check out our All-New car drive on the side of a mountain and through a freaking river!" Which reminds me, when they say all-new, they are liars. Did they really take a 2010 Toyota Corolla and redo EVERYTHING in it so it's COMPLETELY new for the 2011 model? No. You didn't do that, so stop saying "All-new, bitches!!"
This next thing that grinds my gears are those TV show promos that appear on the bottom corner of the screen during the game. You know what I mean? They only really started showing up a few years ago. Some marketing genius decided it'd be a good idea to have a fully moving, big graphic that stays on the screen and blocks a quarter of the game for 45 seconds. "Hey boss! How about we piss our audience off by pounding our stupid ass, unfunny TV shows in their faces NOT during commercial time, but IN-GAME!" Fuck you, Mr. Guywhothoughtofthat.
This is the closest picture I could find to what I'm describing. Except it's during a game and the game is shrunk to at least half of what this image is.
Speaking of things taking up the screen, does anyone else want to stab things with ice picks when they decide to put up a HUGE BITCH box of stats while the game is going on, thus shrinking the game itself to a tiny window in the bottom right corner of the TV? What the fuck! I can't see anything that's going on and you're showing me that LeBron James struggled in Game 5?? Yeah, thanks. I freaking know that already. It's like, at least make the game the same size as the stat box, not 25-75%. Also, they leave so much room around the boxes and just have a color with some moving shit behind it. Like if it was a stat box for the Celtics, the background would be green with some flying silver lines and pieces of whatever flying around. It's a freaking overload! Just show stats in one, small line on the bottom of the screen as the game is being played next to the score/time. That's it. God. Pisses me off!
Fuck you, Charlie Tames!
Oh! That DAMN Dominoes commercial! "Oh, we gots to find Charlie Tames to get him to eat our new pizza!!" This wouldn't piss me off too much if they pronounced his name like it's spelled, "Taymez". But no. They decide to get everyone not to buy their pizza by pronouncing it "Thomas." Well doesn't that make a whole lot of sense! If I was this guy or his ancestors or whatever, when people would actually say, "Hey, Mr. 'Taymez'" by accident, I wouldn't even correct them. If you're a dick and insist on having it pronounced the dumbass way you do, then change the damn thing to "Thomas." Ass.
A couple more smaller things. One, hey! TNT and ESPN! Stop repeating the same 3 damn commercials over and over again. The Gatorade "Evolve" thing was semi-cool the first time, but that freaking SONG! AHHH! "E-V-O-L-V-E. Come on baby, come and dance with me!" I don't even know if those are the words, but it's just that stupid music. Gets in your head and does not leave. Ever. Gahhh. The second has more to do really with Game 5 since it was in Cleveland, but I'm sure other arenas do it too. Shut ya damn soundsystem up. It's done to an extent everywhere, even in the Garden, but Cleveland plays some stupid ass rap-techno mashup song the WHOLE GAME. Even when it's being played!! Isn't there a rule that they can't do that when the ball is actually in play?? Well there should be. And I absolutely HATE when they have their announcer or a prerecorded person repeating "Defense.....defense.....defense...." over and over and over again. Sorry, let the damn crowd do it. If you have to have a 10 decibel voice be saying it to the point where it drowns out the crowd anyway, what's the point? At least in Boston, we just have the "duh-duh....duh-duh" sound. The crowd does the rest. (The fucking Charlie Tames ad just came on. FML. It's literally becoming a joke right now and we only just finished the second round.) Basically the only commercials I like are the FIFA World Cup ads, if only because Bono/U2 are featured in them :)
Alright, hope you enjoyed all that! See ya'll Sundayyyyyy!!!
