Far from a money team

May 03, 2008|Bob Ryan, Globe Columnist

ATLANTA - OK, it is now time for Celtics fans to get annoyed.

They could cut the Celtics a lot of slack when they lost Game 3. They could cut them a little slack when they squandered a 10-point lead at the end of the third quarter and lost Game 4. But no more slack-cutting with these guys. Now, the Boston Celtics really have something to prove.

The Pistons did the job Thursday night. The Cavaliers and Jazz did the job last night. The Lakers did the job a long time ago. But the Celtics did not do the job. They did not take care of business in a championship manner. The team with the best regular-season road record in the NBA has now lost three straight in Atlanta, and tomorrow afternoon, at the Old Gardenish time of 1 p.m., they will play what must surely be the most unanticipated Game 7 in their 62-year history.

The odds are they will win it. The only Atlanta leads in the three games in Boston were 2-0, 7-5, 7-6, and 8-7. It's a different game in Boston. But it wasn't supposed to be this hard. There wasn't supposed to be a Game 7 in this series because if the Celtics really were the legitimate heirs to a throne, they would have ended this thing in Philips Arena last night. They would not have lost Game 6, 103-100, to the Atlanta Hawks.

And even if they win it, they will have soiled their résumé. They will enter a second-round series against the LeBrons without the comfort, satisfaction, and supreme feeling of accomplishment that come with winning a playoff game on the road. They will be reminded of this if/when they arrive in Cleveland for Game 3 and it will be way too big a deal. Just wait. You'll see. It will be an enormous issue and they will probably get annoyed at the story line, and that's too bad, because that is the price they will pay for creating unnecessary drama in a first-round series.

This was another messy game, and it was essentially lost in a 3-minute-8-second stretch in the fourth quarter when they were outscored, 10-0. James Posey had just hit a three to put them up, 89-86, when things got away. Sure, it began with a bad call (Al Horford did the quick-step long before he was sent to the line by Joey Crawford), but the Celtics had no legitimate beef since they had been the beneficiaries of many a dubious call as they were constructing a lead that would peak at 12 (32-20 and 34-22) and would be as much as 9 (67-58) in the third quarter.