Your Morning Dump... Where the Celtics believe in themselves. Right?

With Marcus Smart acting like a roundball Rambo, they remained true to the reputation they had established and continued to offer resistance. Eventually that got Cleveland to turn the ball over and lose its rhythm.

“I thought the difference between (Sunday) and the first two games,” said Brad Stevens, “is that was when things didn’t go our way, we didn’t stop . . . stop’s not the right word.

“When things didn’t go our way in the first two games, we (were) kind of like, ‘Oh, man,’ ” he said, slumping his shoulders, “and we went to the next possession. We let it affect the next possession.

“But one thing about this group though is they weren’t pointing fingers. There was no what-if mentality, no real moping. You know, we were all hurting a little bit on Saturday, but by the time we got to the gym (Sunday), we were ready to roll.”

Boston Herald

Steve Bulpett takes a deep dive into the Celtics’ psyche after Sunday night’s game. All this year, the Celtics have been quick to play the ‘nobody believed in us’ card, which, if you’re going to do that, now is the perfect time. I don’t know anyone, myself included, who thinks they can take 3 of 4 from Cleveland.

Stevens, in the highlighted quote above, puts his finger on the curious makeup of this year’s team. These guys do let themselves get taken out of games, they do let a bad defensive sequence turn into a bad offensive sequence, and on a team with a different coach, or maybe with different players, that would quickly degenerate into finger-pointing, the blame game, and everyone’s favorite: anonymous leaks to the media.

But that hasn’t happened. Even when the Celtics got taken to school by Cleveland on Friday night, the team stuck together. Myself? I expected a good game on Sunday, and I think they’ll have another fairly decent game tonight. This team needs its back against the wall to play its best. Put them in an 0-2 hole where they smelled like a bag of chicken skins on a hot day in their first two games, and they’ll show up. They’ve been doing that all season long.

And, I’m going to take a contrary stance on the Cavs as well: There’s a reason why they weren’t the number one seed in the East. They took it easy during the season, and they basically intimidated the Pacers and Raptors, the Celtics were the first good team that pushed them, and now that the Celtics have figured out how they need to approach these games, they’re going to be much more interesting. Cleveland’s gotten lazy.

Yeah, Cleveland is still almost certainly going to move on. Contrary to what Matt Moore thinks, the better team wins a 7 game series about 99.999999% of the time. You ain’t going to luck and fluke or even hard work and effort your way to 4 wins in 7 games, even if you might get one or two that way.

The Cavs can be pushed. LeBron has played a ton of minutes this season, their bench is, well, there are issues at certain positions, and the Celtics have confidence now. The Celtics won four straight after getting embarrassed by the Bulls. That 26-0 run that Washington went on? That was the high-water mark for them in that series. It went downhill from there. The Celtics, once they figure you out, will play you tough and scrappy, and they’ll wear you down.

Cleveland will move on, but this is not going to be a cakewalk.

Page 2: Where Isaiah’s got time on his hands now

This is the time I worried about for Isaiah Thomas. No more games. No more clear and present reason to put aside his grief and immerse himself in the playoff intensity.

Too much time alone. Too much time to think. Too much opportunity to replay moments with his sister, to recall the good days with a smile, then fall back to earth with the realization there will be no more.

Boston Herald

Another good article from Steve Bulpett yesterday. He’s right about what happens when everything that was keeping you busy–and distracted–goes away. And there you are, alone with your thoughts.

Larry Bird was out with back problems in February 1992, but he had come on a West Coast trip with the Celtics so he could attend Magic Johnson’s jersey retirement ceremony. At one point on the journey, we wound up having a conversation in some small practice gym and were surprised to learn that our individual postseason blues were not as uncommon as we’d thought.

I’m sure the span varies but, as we almost seemed embarrassed to admit, there is a period of time — maybe a week or two — in which you deal with a form of depression that feels almost physical in nature. It’s the result of the rapid deceleration from the schedule and difficulty convincing your subconscious that it’s all right to be sedentary.

During the season, there is always something you should be doing, always something on the immediate horizon. When you catch yourself relaxing, your heart can begin to race. For a player, even on a prescribed rest day, there is a game looming, or maybe you need to get in the gym to shoot.

For Thomas, the next game isn’t until next autumn, and that’s a whole lot of late nights when the rest of the family has already gone to sleep and you’re still awake thinking

Just the jar from the end of the season can throw players (and apparently also reporters) into a bit of a funk. It’s gotta be even worse when the season has been your escape from reality.

Finally: No, LeBron didn’t throw the game

New Theory: LeBron intentionally threw the game last night! (1/~)

— Handsome B. Wonderful (@JamPackard) May 22, 2017

When LeBron got into it with a heckler, and then with a reporter, he sure didn’t look like a guy who had carried out a devious masterplan.

He looked like a guy who ran out of gas and got embarrassed.

Yes, he’s going to be motivated in the next game.

But there’s a whole other aspect of this. He’s been playing a ton of minutes, and I’m betting that his legs are getting heavy in the 3rd and 4th quarters. If the C’s can keep it close until then, they can push LeBron and make him very uncomfortable.

And, really, it’s his fault he’s been playing so many minutes. He won’t let Lue call his number, so you get absolutely ridiculous stats, like him clocking dang near 33 minutes in that 44 point victory over the Celtics on Friday. 33 minutes. Isaiah Thomas didn’t even log 34 minutes per game in the regular season, and LeBron almost hit that in a game where he probably didn’t even need to log 25–and that with a plane flight and a 48 hour turnaround in front of him.