Celtics might as well pen their own eulogy following Game 1 choke

Sunday, May 02, 2010

By Michael Parente, GolocalProv Sports Contributor

Since there are no style points or moral victories in playoff games, let’s get right to the point and call a spade a spade: The Boston Celtics committed the mother of all choke-jobs last night in Game 1 of their Eastern Conference semifinal series against Cleveland.

Garden

Boston

Forget expectations. Forget what you thought – or, in this case, what we all knew – was going to happen. Expectations change quickly once the whistle blows, and for three quarters of last night’s series’ opener, the Celtics looked every bit like the championship team Beantown fell in love with two years ago.

You had Rajon Rondo slashing his way through the paint, turning the parquet floor into his own personal layup line against Cleveland’s matador defense. LeBron James couldn’t buy a jump shot with his multi-billion dollar Gatorade sponsorship. The top-seeded Cavaliers appeared to be just a step behind Boston’s pace, looking slow and out of sync against a team everyone expected to wilt under the pressure of facing King James on his own court.

For most of the night, the idea of Boston swiping home-court advantage from Cleveland seemed like more than a realistic premise – it seemed inevitable. Had they held on to win this game, the entire pendulum of the series would’ve shifted in Boston’s favor and the Cavs would have felt the weight of the world on their shoulders knowing full well they would need to score at least one signature victory at the Garden – no easy task despite how old, slow and uninspired the Celtics have looked all season.

Likewise, LeBron would've started getting the A-Rod treatment; in other words, pessimistic boneheads would've started to question whether or not he's capable of leading his team to the promised land. Who knows how he would've responded?

In the end, this game played out like most NBA games do, which means you really didn’t need to turn on your TV until the fourth quarter. King James took over, finishing with 35 points, while Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce checked out for the night; at one point, "The Big Ticket” and “The Truth” combined to shoot a woeful 2-for-10 down the stretch as Boston’s seemingly insurmountable lead evaporated into a 101-93 loss.

For all his chest-thumping, pile-jumping and mean-mugging, Garnett absolutely disappeared in the fourth while Shaquille O’Neal of all people (38 years young, mind you) hit big shots in the paint. Not even a patented Pierce flop – accompanied by a made-for-TV wheelchair escort off the court and a Willis Reed-esque return – could save the Celtics from Cleveland’s inevitable surge. James scored 12 of his 35 in the fourth quarter and iced the comeback on a long 3-pointer with 22 seconds remaning, a fitting nightcap for Game 1 considering today is the day he officially receives his second consecutive NBA MVP award.

The bottom line is Boston blew it, wasting a golden opportunity to make the Cavaliers sweat out the rest of this series. I had little doubt the Cavaliers would roll to the conference finals before last night’s tipoff. Hell, I would’ve picked them to win in three games if I could were it not for the fact this is a best-of-seven series. Now I’m certain it’s over. The Celtics had their chance. They gagged – big time.

Now they’re just delaying the inevitable.