The Celtics are certainly making history in this postseason. They had a record point margin defeat (124-95) against Cleveland, after which they won the next three games to close out the series. Now they have established a franchise-record playoff low for points, and, yes, that goes all the way back to 1948, and not just games in the 24-second clock era, which began in 1954.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, there is absolutely no such thing as momentum in this series, (or anywhere else, for that matter). What happens one night in this series has no bearing on what might happen when the teams take the floor again. Take, for example, the issue of the bench. Boston’s bench had been the Unsung Hero of Games 1 through 5. Last night the bench was scoreless until Nate Robinson converted a driving lefty 3-point play at the 9:56 mark of the final period. You don’t see too many NBA games in which a team only has four men score through three periods. We had one last night.
And for those of you who like hooks, be it known that for the sixth consecutive game the team winning the rebound battle won the game. And for the sixth consecutive game the team that won the first quarter won the game.
Kobe Bryant was under fire to some degree locally for scoring those 23 consecutive points in Game 5, this generally being regarded as a bad thing. Last night he was the key to the victory in that he came out strong, scoring 11 quick points on 5-for-7 shooting. But rather than use that as a pretext to scoring 40 or 50, he allowed the game to develop and his teammates to get themselves into the flow. After scoring 11 of his team’s first 21 points, at which point the Lakers were ahead by 7 (21-14), he scored only 2 of the next 26, at which point the Lakers were ahead by 20 (47-27).
