This is a team that has been trying to establish home-court advantage and make the TD Garden a place where opposing teams are afraid to play. But in this, their last real homestand of the regular season, they've come out flat with three straight losses, including this painful 119-114 overtime defeat at the hands of the Houston Rockets.
April is a time to go hard or go home. There's no room for error when everyone's leaving it all on the floor because everybody has a reason to up the intensity a notch this time of year.
The Celtics and Rockets each walked into the Garden on Friday desperately seeking a win. For the Celtics, it was a matter of reversing the downward trend of their previous two games: home losses to San Antonio and Oklahoma City. For the Rockets, the situation was even more dire as they were one loss away from playoff elimination in the Western Conference.
Both teams had a sense of urgency and both fought hard for 53 minutes. But the Celtics made too many mental mistakes and the Rockets executed flawlessly when it mattered.
"You've got to give them a lot of credit," Paul Pierce said. "They came in and played hard. You give a team confidence throughout the course of a game, especially a team that expects to lose, then they run with it. The closer they are in the game, once it gets late in the game they get real confident, and that pulled them over the top."
The Rockets went into this one with their backs to the wall, and they found a way to get the job done. Even with their season practically over, with one foot out the door, they found the will to win.
"Excellent win," Rockets coach Rick Adelman said. "Probably our best of the year. It was all about them. As we kept talking about, it’s not about who you're playing, it’s about yourselves. They got us down a couple of times, and we came back at them and made some big plays down the stretch. I couldn’t be more proud of the guys who played.""
The Rockets' chances of making the playoffs had been whittled away to almost nothing this week. They were down to their last gasping breath, and they could have easily thrown in the towel. The fact that they persevered, depleted by injuries to basically just a seven-man rotation, and got a road win over the Celtics is pretty impressive. Especially considering how much the C's have left to play for.
"You've got to play the game," Adelman said. "You never know what’s going to happen. Hell, a lot of games in my career where I’ve seen teams come, they just come out, when you least expect it. But you've got to believe, and you've go out and play the game, and these guys did that. They got down, looked like they had us, and we came right back at them quickly. Just a terrific win."
The Rockets knew they were almost dead. It was only a matter of time.
The Celtics knew they needed new life. The two home losses this week had hit them hard.
This was the kind of game where the Celtics could have come out and sent a message, that they were back and they were ready to establish home court. A couple of setbacks meant nothing — they were ready to bounce right back.
But now the two losses have snowballed into a third, and a fourth is on the horizon unless the Celtics figure things out against the NBA-best Cavaliers on Sunday. The C's have got some work to do.
"Film and getting ready for Cleveland," Doc Rivers said. "We won't stay on this long, but we will be on it for a second. But like I say, you can't play in the past. You can learn from it, then you move on."
The Celtics have learned a lot of lessons by now. Soon, they had better apply them.
