BOSTON — The Boston Celtics weren’t expected to be here a month ago, and yet here they stand.
The C’s finished off the Philadelphia 76ers in Game 5 on Wednesday night at TD Garden, overcoming Philly’s late charge to win 114-112 and advance to the Eastern Conference finals, where they’ll face the Cleveland Cavaliers for the second consecutive season.
If you’d think head coach Brad Stevens wants his squad in the film room early Thursday to prepare for LeBron James and Co., though, you’d be sorely mistaken.
“Three days is plenty of time to prepare,” Stevens said after the game. “It’s not like they’ve never watched Cleveland before, we played them in the Eastern Conference finals last year. LeBron’s on just a ridiculous run of play and we know that it will be quite a challenge. But the most important thing that our team can do (Thursday) is go outside, get away from it for a day and take a day off. Take a deep breath.
“We’re asking a lot of the seven guys that played a ton (Wednesday night) and they’re going to keep playing a ton. And then we’ll reconvene on Friday, Saturday and really go to work on how we want to play on Sunday.”
Sound advice.
Stevens has pulled all the right strings so far and there’s no reason to think this won’t have the C’s energized for Sunday’s Game 1.
