Cue Gino.
That’s right. The Celtics were supposed to be a stop along the line to the championship for the Cleveland LeBrons, but that’s not how it worked out is it.
Instead there was disco playing at the Garden last night and the Celtics are getting ready for the Eastern Conference Finals. The Celtics move on, the LeBrons, well they’re done, and we’re all witnesses to that.
The big difference in this series, in my eyes, is style of play. Cleveland is a victim of SportsCenter. It’s all about LeBron and what he’ll do, and the team bought into that. Sure Mo Williams had a couple of good quarters, but for the most part Cleveland lived and died by King James, who is wearing a jester’s dunce cap after a 3-for-14 shooting night in Game 5 and then his 9 turnovers last night. Sure he had a triple double and was a force, but you can’t turn the ball over that much in an any game, let alone an elimination game.
The Celtics on the other hand did it by doing things inside the team concept. Doc Rivers has defined a rotation of 8 guys, and they all played their roles. Every one of those 8 guys — the starting five of Rondo (our MVP), Pierce, KG, Ray Allen and Perk, along with Sheed (I know, it surprised me too), Big Baby and Tony Allen (who was a monster the last two nights) did something to help the team win. It was impressive how they worked together, and when it mattered most they didn’t fall into that awful habit of choking in the second half, like they did during so many regular season games.
The rest of the world will be focused on where the heck LeBron James is going to land over the summer and what this means to his “legacy.” Who cares. Tell me when he makes a decision (for the record I think this will be dragged out and he ends up staying put). Until then there are important games to be played, like Game 1 on Sunday.
That game is in Orlando, by the way, not Cleveland. Someone tell ESPN so they send the cameras to the right place.
The views and opinions in the Enterprise blogs are those of the author and are not neccessarily shared by Falmouth Publishing.
