NBA Playoffs 2012: Boston Celtics Prove They're Contenders with Dominant Win

Seriously, who can count the Celtics out after that dominating 101-79 (and really it wasn't that close) Game 4 win? With the way they were playing, there isn't a team in these playoffs that can beat them. In the first three games, the Celtics looked anything but dominant. However, in Game 4, they were a runaway train that could not be stopped by anyone, not even Denzel Washington. 

Sure, they can't play like that every night, but even if they approach that level of play consistently, there are few teams that can hang with them. It was one of those games where everything went right, literally everything. 

Rondo's jump shot looked—dare I say it—pretty (he was 8-11 from the field and 2-3 from three). I honestly never thought I would type those words with a perfectly straight face, but here we are. At least for Game 4, we were living in a world where Rajon Rondo's jump shot was classified as "pretty."

Honestly, calling Rondo's jump shot pretty would be like turning on American Idol tomorrow and commenting on how good Steven Tyler looks (for those who clicked on the link, I'm sorry. I promise that image will be out of your head in at least six months).

(Given the fact I just called Rajon Rondo's jump shot pretty for the first time, something I never thought I would do, I figured it would only be fitting to make my first Steven Tyler/American Idol reference, another thing I thought I would never do). 

I am not saying that from now on Rajon Rondo will shoot like Reggie Miller, but with increased confidence in his jump shot, he will shoot more and score more. And for a Rajon Rondo that has already mastered the art of passing (did I mention that Rondo's assist-to-turnover ratio for the game was 16-1?), scoring and shooting is just icing on the cake. 

It wasn't just Rondo, though.

Great shooting became contagious for the Celtics and every player was catching it. As a team they shot 51.3 percent. Kevin Garnett (13 points), Ray Allen (12 points) and Paul Pierce (24 points) all shot over 50 percent for the game. Of more concern to Celtics fans and the legs of the Big Three, though, they all played less than 30 minutes.

With this win, the Celtics take a commanding 3-1 lead over the reeling Hawks. For every positive takeaway for the Celtics from this game, the Hawks have 10 negative takeaways (perhaps the biggest negative takeaway for the Hawks is that Erick Dampier's corpse scored just one less point than the guy they are paying $18 million a year, Joe Johnson).

It gets worse for them, though. They can't even hide behind the injuries anymore. Al Horford was there (albeit not 100 percent), and Josh Smith was there (he did look full strength) and it didn't matter. 

I wrote an article after Game 2 saying that the Hawks had no chance of winning the series. I would like to revise that now and say that the Hawks have a better chance of finding the fountain of youth than winning this series. Wait, scratch that, the fountain of youth is easy to find, it's in the Celtics' locker room. 

In any case, the Celtics are running away with this series and putting every other playoff team on notice.

Rajon Rondo has been arguably the best all-around player in the playoffs so far (at least, he has been the best all-around point guard in the playoffs), Paul Pierce is scoring as well as anyone (point me to another time someone has scored 24 points on 10-13 shooting in just 17 minutes), Kevin Garnett is posting double-doubles almost at will, Ray Allen is knocking down shots off the bench, the bench is starting to produce (28 points in Game 4) and the defense is as good as ever (the Hawks have yet to score more than 83 points in any game). 

At this point, the series is as good as over. That shouldn't come as a surprise, though. What does come as a surprise after this game is that banner No. 18 really doesn't seem that far away.

Call me crazy, but if the Celtics can at least scratch the surface of that performance for the remainder of the playoffs, they could shock the world.