Step off the ledge, folks. The Celtics have FINALLY won a game. The season isn't over. The team isn't in complete disarray. To paraphrase Doc... the sky is not falling.
Doc makes a great point about this 4 game stretch. If one shot had fallen in two of those three losses, we're singing a completely different tune.
What if...
... The Celtics inbound the ball to Rasheed Wallace in Orlando and he hits the 3?
Red Sky, which is where a lot of us were celebrating our birthday, would have erupted in hugs and high-fives. Chuck would have bought everyone a drink... the party would have raged into the wee hours of the morning as we celebrated a great win. The 4th quarter collapse? Pffft... what collapse? Orlando is a good team and Dwight Howard was playing out of his mind. Teams make runs in the NBA... so what? The Celtics, however, took every punch Orlando threw at them and, even though they had a briefly taken a lead, the eventual champion Celtics calmly came up with another brilliant set and knocked down a clean look to prove to everyone that they're the class of the east.
What if....
... Ray Allen makes the shot against the Lakers?
We're posting our "Losers" or "Anti-Kobe" shirts. We're lauding Doc for drawing up another spectacular last second play that involved not a pick and roll... or a pick and pop... but a pick and use the other pick to flare out to the 3 point line for a clean look. Yeah, it would have been another 4th quarter swoon but hey... it's the Lakers... they weren't just going to roll over and die. Of course they were going to make a last gasp. And Kobe hitting that shot was great for him... but there was too much time on the clock. Too much for Ray to do what he does best... hit the shot when it counts.
A couple of inches one way or another. The ball rolling a centimeter one way or the other in Ray and Sheed's hands on the release. A slight fade too far to the left on the jump. Those little, tiny things are the difference between us feeling confident about the Celtics fighting out wins as Kevin Garnett recovers.... and us trading everyone away and wondering if KG should just be taken out back and given the "Old Yeller".
The Celtics are, indeed, having some trouble closing out games. They are having issues with the second unit as everyone struggles at the same time. And yes, KG is still not 100%... Ray is shooting as bad as he ever has... and Paul Pierce is carrying so much of the load that you wonder if his wheels are starting to wobble.
But they're not as bad as people think because of the losses... and they wouldn't have been as good as we would have thought had they won. They've got work to do. And the good thing is... they've got time to get that work done.