Boston Celtics fans are out for vengeance Saturday night as the C’s square up with the Los Angeles Lakers at Staples Center.
The last time the two teams tangled, the Celtics blew a massive lead in a gut-wrenching 129-128 loss on Feb. 7 at TD Garden. That loss snapped a five-game winning streak and sent the C’s stumbling, as they’d go on to lose seven of their next 10 games from there.
Not only that, it’s also another meeting of former teammates Kyrie Irving and LeBron James.
Irving and Celtics seem to have figured things out since flying out West for their most recent road trip, and Irving is hoping the C’s can keep that rolling Saturday. As for the hype surrounding another matchup with LeBron, well, Irving doesn’t seem to sweat getting past the hoopla, according to MassLive’s Tom Westerholm.
“It’s pretty easy,” Irving told reporters after practice on Friday, via Westerholm. “It’s not hard. It’s not hard at all. It’s just another game but going against a great competitor, a teammate like ‘Bron is always fun. You just understand that these head-to-head matchups probably will happen for a few more years and you just want to take advantage of them. Just the great players you get a chance to play against in our league, you always want to play well.
He also said that he doesn’t necessarily consider Saturday a revenge game for February’s tough-to-swallow loss.
“I wouldn’t call it revenge,” he said. “I would just call it us focusing on what we can control and just being successful for each other.”
Saturday is an important stepping stone for the C’s, who seem to be past a lot of their internal problems that plagued them in February. They’ve won each of their first two games on their Western Conference road trip, including a drubbing of the Golden State Warriors. A sound win over a struggling Lakers squad only would reaffirm the team’s newfound confidence.
