“Lot of swearing, lot of sinning on Easter,” the Celtics’ coach said as he sat down. “Lot of technicals. I’m done.”
Things had come to a head midway through the third quarter, when Mo Williams went a little bit too far mouthing off to referee Monty McCutchen, getting T’d up and sparking a tirade from Mike Brown on the Cleveland sideline. Brown got a double technical, McCutchen had him escorted out and the Garden crowd went into hysterics.
The score was 80-62 in the Celtics’ favor at that point, with six minutes to play in the third. Ray Allen went to the line for the three technicals, drained all three free throws and suddenly, the Celtics’ lead had been pushed to 21.
The Cavs easily could have folded up shop at that point and gone home, but this just wasn’t going to be that kind of game. You knew the Cavs would find their second wind and fight their way back, and they did.
They talked trash. They got physical. They did everything they could to get into the Celtics’ heads, and for a long stretch late in the third quarter and early in the fourth, it was working. This is the way it is these days between these two teams — the bad blood boils over, and to all of the 18,000-plus packing the TD Garden, it’s plain to see. Everyone saw the intense physicality on every possession, the contentious back-and-forth dialogue, the six technical fouls on the afternoon. It was no secret.
“We don’t like them, they don’t like us,” LeBron explained after the game, point-blank. “I wasn’t surprised at all.”
The physical, up-tempo brand of basketball was one that favored LeBron down the stretch. The Celtics got fatigued and frustrated as the Cavaliers began to claw their way back, and LeBron just kept powering on, carrying his team in the second half by scoring at will.
He wasn’t beating the Celtics with the fall-away jump shot — he was using his size and his strength to drive the lane, create easy layups, throw down dunks, draw contact and get to the line. Against a tiring Celtics team, it worked. LeBron piled up 16 of the Cavaliers’ first 21 points in the fourth quarter — he finished the quarter with 20 and the afternoon as a whole with 42. He willed the Cavaliers back into a game that looked lost.
“For me, as long as I’m on the court and as long as there aren’t zeroes on the clock, I feel like we have a chance to win,” he said. “There were a few calls that could have gone either way. The refs did a good job and had sense of what was going on out there on the court. We gave ourselves a chance to win, and that’s all I can ask from me and my teammates.”
The Celtics got more than a little peeved as LeBron and the Cavs made their charge back. Tempers flared. Kevin Garnett and Tony Allen started mouthing off to LeBron, trying to get under his skin. Rasheed Wallace mouthed off to the officials, and it got him a technical near the end of the third quarter. Doc pulled him out right away, and he wasn’t happy. Wallace wasn’t seen again.
There’s just something about these two teams that brings this stuff out.
“I don’t know,” Rivers said. “It’s two teams that I don’t think love each other, I can say that. And it’s two teams that want to beat each other. And I think in Cleveland’s case, early on we were having our way, so they got frustrated. In our case, late, they were having their way and then we got frustrated. I don’t think it’s anything more. I think it’s just that.”
Whatever it was, it fueled an intense, emotional game that came down to the final possession. And in the end, the result was a 117-113 victory for the Celtics on their home floor. A big win for a team coming off three straight losses, a team desperate to right the ship after a rough week. With this victory, the Celtics made it clear that they’re back.
Perhaps Doc put it best, as he stood up from that podium on Sunday afternoon:
“Easter’s about resurrection, right?”
For the Celtics, indeed it is. They fought hard for this one, and ultimately they earned a big win.
