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AUBURN HILLS,
Michigan—The
Detroit Pistons have become rather infamous for throwing
in a clunker, usually at home and even in the playoffs.
But Boston’s Game Three victory here Saturday night, the
Celtics’ first road victory after six straight defeats
away from home, appeared to be more about what they did
than what the Pistons did not.
Even
with the stress of going winless on the road longer than
any playoff team of their stature, the Celtics played
freely and efficiently last night, with a calm that
surely was missing in
Atlanta
and Cleveland. The Pistons are a much better team than
either the Hawks or Cavaliers, but the Celtics handled
Detroit with stunning ease for much of Game Three to
take a 2-1 series lead in this Eastern Conference final
series.
“They
got home court back,”
Detroit
coach Flip Saunders said. “Monday is a crucial game for
us—the biggest of the year.”
Boston
led by eight at the end of the first quarter, by 18 at
halftime, and by 24 entering the final minute of the
third quarter before surviving some nervous moments in
the fourth and settling for a 94-80 victory. It could be
attributed to Boston applying the same kind of
suffocating defense it played throughout the regular
season or an inexplicable ineptitude on the part of
Detroit’s
offense.
The
Celtics fouled hard and played defense harder. Before
the game, Boston coach Doc Rivers said his team failed
to play on-the-ball defense with the same ferocity it
did in victorious Game One. He compared what the Celtics
needed to do to Chauncey Billups and Richard Hamilton to
putting a constant pass rush in the face of Tom Brady.
It
certainly helped the Celtics’ cause tremendously that
Billups sat on the bench far longer than he wanted to
because of his again ailing hamstring, the one that kept
him out of Games Four and Five in the semifinal round
against Orlando. Billups needed all of the 13 days off
he had before this round to recuperate, but he reinjured
the hamstring Thursday night in Game Two. He promised he
was okay before the game, but took only one shot in 13
minutes of action in the first half and clearly wasn’t
himself.
Billups
returned in the fourth quarter, however, and hit a
timely jumper down the stretch. He finished with six
points.
The
Pistons went primarily with Lindsey Hunter and rookie
Rodney Stuckey in Billups’s playmaker spot in the second
half. And they did manage to cut into the lead in the
fourth quarter. But the Celtics, while they fumbled
around and allowed the Pistons to get within striking
distance in the fourth, managed the big margin well
enough in the end to come away with what many would
consider a very surprising victory, considering the way
the Celtics had played on the road the first six games.
The
Boston coaches and players had spun it that they would
get a road victory when they needed to, which they
hadn’t before now. Holding on as they did might suggest
this series has taken a serious turn in Boston’s favor,
heading into Game Four here in Detroit on Monday night
before it swings back east to Boston on Wednesday.
The
Celtics got off to what had to be considered the perfect
start. Boston scored the first 11 points of the game.
Paul Pierce and Kendrick Perkins got it started with
dunks. Rajon Rondo, annoyingly passive the first two
games of the series, got to the basket for three points
the old-fashioned way, and very quickly the Celtics were
ahead 11-0. Even though the Pistons would recover to
take a 17-15 lead, the Celtics kept running the offense
as efficiently as they did during their midseason
mastery of the league.
They
shot 53 percent en route to a 25-17 lead at the end of
the first quarter and promptly improved on that.
Everything the Celtics attempted worked in the first
half, even Rivers’s decision to use Sam Cassell after
keeping him on the bench for the end of the series
against Cleveland and the first game of the Pistons
series. Cassell, who hit two long jumpers, was part of a
larger bench effort that saw
Boston’s reserves score 19 points the first half.
The
starters, particularly Kevin Garnett, who finished with
22 points, and Perkins, who hit six of his seven shots
and grabbed 10 rebounds, were as effective as any team
could ask on the road this deep into the playoffs. The
Celtics shot 46 percent and held the Pistons to 38
percent shooting.
Detroit’s
big men, meanwhile, were total no-shows, which is
perhaps why many in the standing-in-the-aisles crowd
here booed the Pistons at halftime and in the third
quarter as they fell further and further behind before
their comeback came up short.
“We took
care of business, getting our first win on the road,”
Garnett said. |
