Garnett created some doubt about that with a first-round playoff series of inspired play, plus one herculean opener to the conference semifinals. Entering Game 2 against the Philadelphia 76ers on Monday, the late-arriving crowd at the TD Garden seemed to settle into its seats with the notion that Garnett would lift the Celtics through this series with relative ease.
Instead, a puzzling absence of urgency about getting Garnett the ball combined with solid defense by the Sixers led to the Celtics losing 82-81 and falling into a tie with Philadelphia in their Eastern Conference semifinal series at a game apiece.
"Nothing was wrong with him," Celtics coach Doc Rivers said. "We just didn't go to him, plain and simple. I thought we never established the post."
For inexplicable reasons, the rest of the Celtics seemed to forget that Garnett had carried them to a slim victory only two days earlier. At the end of three quarters, Garnett had taken fewer shots than any Boston starter besides Avery Bradley, who had left in the second quarter when his left shoulder again slipped out of place.
Spencer Hawes and Lavoy Allen had something to do with it, too. Sixers coach Doug Collins turned to Allen, a rookie who played a shade over 15 minutes per game during the regular season, to guard Garnett for more than 30 minutes on Monday. Collins said he wanted to "put some strength" on Garnett, and the 6-foot-9, 225-pound Allen apparently fit the role.
Allen kept Garnett out of his sweet spots on either block, at times frustrating the veteran big man by not falling for Garnett's fakes and contesting shots without fouling. Allen was plus-21 in the game, the highest point difference of any player, but his contributions were not all intangible. The second-round draft pick out of Temple also filled out the stat sheet with 10 points, eight rebounds and two blocked shots. He beat the shot clock with 0.9 seconds left with a fall-away bank shot to break a tie late in the fourth quarter.
"Game 1, he got a lot of jump shots, a lot of open jump shots," Allen said of Garnett. "This game, he tried a lot in the post, so I tried to push him off the block to make him post out a little farther away."
There was no chance of Allen stopping Garnett, of course, even with Hawes covering Garnett in stretches and the rest of the Sixers trapping with their usual fervor. The Celtics suddenly seemed to realize in the fourth quarter that they need to get the ball to Garnett, and he responded by scoring 11 of his 15 points in the final 12 minutes.
Until he was whistled for a controversial moving screen with 10 seconds left in the game, Garnett was on his way to another MVP-caliber performance in the fourth. But the defense by Allen and the Sixers in the first 36 minutes necessitated just such a performance by Garnett to even get the Celtics back within striking distance.
"He's definitely shown up big for us in these playoffs," Sixers forward Andre Iguodala said of Allen. "He's one of those under-the-radar guys coming out of the draft, kind of like Paul Millsap or Carlos Boozer. Coming out, they just fell under the radar. Then when you put them in a position to just do their job, they excel."
Garnett has excelled for the past two weeks. On Monday, Allen helped assure that Garnett's excellence was not enough.
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