Seeing this was believing

June 13, 2008|Bob Ryan, Globe Columnist

LOS ANGELES - Now I've seen it all.

All season long this Celtics team has done improbable things - like nobody sweeps the Texas trip, you know? - but this was the absolute showstopper. Did I really just see the Boston Celtics come from 24 points down after submitting a horror show of a first half and come back to defeat the Lakers in their own building?

I believe I did.

They did it by obliterating the Lakers by a fairly amazing 57-33 score in the second half. They did it by taking control of the game in the final six minutes, coming back from their last deficit (81-77) with a 15-6 run, capped by an icy left corner 3-pointer from James Posey, who lived up to the praise heaped upon him way back in the early part of the season by Pat Riley, who informed the Boston media that the Celtics would really come to love Posey when they saw him raining threes in the playoffs.

The 97-91 Celtics triumph gives them a 3-1 series lead and means that the 17th Boston championship, and first in 22 years, could come as early as Sunday night. But Doc Rivers doesn't want to talk about that.

"It's a great position to be in," Rivers pointed out. "But you have to win one game four times, you know what I'm saying?"

Yes, Coach, everyone knows. And everyone also knows that in order to win a championship, a team needs contributions from more than its stars, and last night's astonishing comeback was fueled by a pair of bench performers who picked a very nice time to have their best games of the playoffs.

First, there was Posey. The 6-foot-7-inch swingman threw in 18 points, 12 of which came on threes, the largest of which was that aforementioned shot from the left corner with 1:13 to go. That gave the Celtics a 92-87 lead, and if a good team is up by 5 with a little more than a minute to play, it generally knows how to close the deal.

And how about Eddie House? This guy had, in his own words, "fallen off the face of the earth" during these playoffs, racking up five DNPs and four other abbreviated situational appearances. But he never stopped working in practice, never complained (publicly, anyway), and, most importantly, never lost faith in himself. He kept telling himself that his time would come.

Last night was House's time. With 8:22 remaining in the third quarter, his team trailing by 18, Rivers made a decision. He put Posey in for P.J. Brown (who had himself replaced the injured Kendrick Perkins). A minute later, Rivers took out Rajon Rondo and put in House, which gave the Celtics a small lineup in which all five men were offensive threats. And that's the way it remained for the duration of the game.