ATLANTA - Good grief, now what?
The series with the Hawks is 2-2? The 37-win Hawks who looked clueless, hapless, and hopeless in Games 1 and 2? The Hawks who TNT's Mike Fratello said didn't even belong on the same court with the Celtics in the first two games? The Celtics couldn't get one win down here against that team? Yes. Yes. Yes. No.
So, Doc Rivers, what do you tell all those people who are on the various bridge ledges in and around Boston?
"Don't jump," the Celtics coach said shortly after his team dropped its second straight game at a raucous, sold-out Philips Arena, 97-92, a loss that now makes it a best-of-three affair with Game 5 tomorrow night.
"I told the guys this after the game. 'Yes, we're going home. But you can't rely on the fact that you're at home. You gotta make it OK,' and I think we will. I don't think anything is going to shake our confidence."
Well, Joe Johnson might not have shaken it, but he might well have stirred it a little last night, especially with his epic fourth-quarter performance. The Celtics still have the advantage in the series. The Hawks still have to win one in Boston. But while that may still be a daunting task for the Hawks, you get the sense that it's not as daunting as it was before. In a way, they don't know what they don't know - and they're having a blast not knowing it.
"We got a little momentum going now," said Johnson, who finished with 35 points, 20 in the fourth quarter (when he personally outscored the Celtics, who had 17). "Back in Boston, they hit us and we never hit back. But we've got the momentum now and we've got to take it."
Where to begin with this one? Save for a shot-from-guns start and a defensive stretch at the end of the third quarter, when the Celtics played the way they did all season, Rivers's lads had few answers for the young, springy, energetic, athletic, and opportunistic Hawks. Atlanta also is developing a resiliency previously unseen and, frankly, one it didn't show much of during the season. The Celtics hit the Hawks with a 16-3 start in the first 3:28 - and Atlanta ended up leading by 5 after one.
But the real head-scratcher for Celtics fans was the fourth quarter. The aforementioned defensive stretch at the end of the third, in which the Hawks were completely shut down and went four possessions without getting off a shot, enabled Boston to take a 10-point lead into the fourth. In the regular season, that was money. During the regular season, the Celtics were 23-3 on the road when they led after three quarters. And this was a double-digit lead.
"We'd been down before," shrugged Johnson, referencing the first quarter. "We knew we had a chance."