We'll go back to the big smiles and back slaps as the C's get ready for Philly in a minute. But first… a serious note about Ray Allen's ankle, which is slowly failing him more than it's helping him. And the more it fails him, the less confidence he has on the court, which means he does things like miss free throws in key situations.
“I didn’t have the confidence on it.“ he said. “Right now it’s bothering me but I have a day tomorrow to deal with it.”
Ray with confidence makes the free throw with :09 left… making it a 3 point game instead of 2… completely changing the Hawks last second strategy and, very possibly, making the last :09 of the game a little less of coronary-inducing mess.
We all know how important Ray Allen is to this team. This is where things like blowing a chance to end the series in 5 come back to haunt the Celtics. If Ray's only got a certain amount of time left on the ankle clock… we blew a bunch of it by having to play last night. It could have been a day off.. more healing time… more time to get right before playing a tough, confident Philly team.
They're the 8th seed, but they were the third or fourth seed for a long time too. This won't be easy. This ankle issue will make it worse.
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