The Boston Celtics are one win away from their first Eastern Conference Finals appearance since Jason Kidd clinched his way into the championship in front of a Boston crowd back in 2002. But standing in between the Celtics—with their big three—and a shot at No. 17 is LeBron James and the defending champions of the Eastern Conference.
The Celtics might get past the Cavs, and they probably will, but then they will have to face their toughest test so far in the postseason with the Detroit Pistons on deck. And when the Pistons show up in Beantown next week, the Celtics and their 66-win season will quickly be over.
The mighty Celtics embarrassed themselves in the first round, needing seven games to defeat an Atlanta Hawks team that finished the year at 37-45, 29 games behind the C’s in the standings.
Led by an incredibly gutsy performance from Joe Johnson and Rookie of the Year runner-up, Al Horford, the Hawks gave the Celtics all they could handle. They brought the green and white to the brink of elimination before the NBA’s best team in the regular season and their $75 million payroll decided to show up.
Can you imagine the Lakers, Spurs, Jazz, Hornets or any of the other four teams from the West who were eliminated in the first round needing seven games to knock off the Hawks? Can you imagine any of the West’s best going to a decisive game against a team that would have finished 12th in the Western Conference and 13 games out of the final playoff spot? I certainly can’t.
But the Celtics managed to survive the scare. A scare so great it would have gotten the 2006-07 Mavericks off the hook. And if the Cavs let Boston off the hook in either of the next two games, they will have finally met their match in the Detroit Pistons.
The Pistons are already in the Eastern Conference Finals, resting up after defeating the Orlando Magic in five games, winning the last two without Chauncey Billups. The Pistons and Magic played 20 quarters of basketball in their conference semi-final series with Billups sidelined for 11 of those quarters. And even without their star point guard, Detroit was still able to go into Orlando and beat the Magic on the road after having dropped Game 3 in the same Amway Arena two days earlier.
The Pistons remain as the team in the East that other clubs pray they aren’t paired against early on in hopes that Detroit gets knocked off before they can even meet. And with the Pistons being that feared playoff contender with that special postseason intangible, they aren’t about to play second fiddle to anyone, especially not a Boston team that has shown its true colors when the lights have been the brightest and the stage the biggest.
During their string of five consecutive conference finals appearances (2003-07) entering this season, the Pistons had more playoff wins (64) than Boston’s starting five had playoff games.
Between Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, Kendrick Perkins, and Rajon Rondo, the Celtics starting lineup had a total of 46 playoff games under their belt since the Pistons began to own the Eastern Conference between April and June. Out of those 46 games, Rondo had contributed zero. In fact when Rich Hamilton and Co. started their dynastic run, Rondo was still playing high school basketball for Oak Hill Academy as a University of Kentucky recruit.
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