Every morning, we compile the links of the day and dump them here… highlighting the big story line. Because there’s nothing quite as satisfying as a good morning dump.
Danny Ainge likely envisioned this moment, standing on a corner of the fabled parquet floor, congratulating a team powering into its second straight conference finals. The Celtics general manager built this group to win, spending $128 million on Gordon Hayward, dipping deep into his well of assets to acquire Kyrie Irving and using a top pick on Jayson Tatum. And so there was Ainge on Wednesday, waiting, his team streaming off the floor, a series-clinching 114-112 Game 5 win over the Sixers in the books to advance to the Eastern Conference finals.Only instead of Irving, Ainge was glad-handing Terry Rozier; instead of Hayward, it was Marcus Smart.
It’s been seven months since Hayward’s season ended and a little over a month since Irving joined him on the shelf. Either injury could have derailed Boston’s chances of getting back to the conference finals; both injuries should have. “Next man up” is a cute coach’s cliché, but talent ultimately wins out.
The Celtics? They just keep coming. They came with Rozier, a backup without a single start on his resume before the season who stabilized the backcourt following Irving’s injury and has spearheaded it in the playoffs. With ex-Patriot Drew Bledsoe in attendance — and the budding bromance between Rozier and Bledsoe will keep the simmering feud between Rozier and first-round foe Eric Bledsoe on the burner for a while — Rozier was stretched to 40 minutes. In the closing seconds, with Boston up two, it was Rozier who knocked a loose ball off Joel Embiid’s leg; his two free throws on the other end extended the lead to four.
“It was tough, but that’s been our season,” Rozier said. “We overcame so much and we pulled out a lot of games like that. We knew what time it was, we never got tight, and we just pulled it off.”
Yahoo Sports — Celtics are the Improbable Team facing the improbably dream
The Boston Celtics are right where we thought they’d be — only if you took a look at the google maps’ directions for how they got from opening night to the start of the Eastern Conference Finals, they’d look something like this:
The road to the this destination included more twists and turns than Lloyd and Harry faced on their road to Aspen. The Celtics should have been driving a spanking new sports car to the Eastern Conference Finals. But if appearances count, they’re showing up essentially in this:
In the last few days, I’ve heard some blowback about how people need to tone it down when mentioning how impressive it is that the Celtics are here — that they still have top-end talent in the form of Al Horford (funny how people change their opinion of Al to fit their narrative. One minute he’s average Al, the next he’s the reason what the Celtics are doing isn’t all that unexpected) and three former lottery picks in Jaylen, Jayson and Marcus Smart. It’s the same undertone you’re hearing from coaches around the league when none of them give Brad Stevens a Coach of the Year vote — “your team’s good, and yeah you’re good, but let’s not coronate you because you haven’t done anything yet.”
Actually, let’s. Because if we’ve learned anything lately, it’s that expectations change quickly, and blowing expectations out of the water is something worth celebrating, while failing to live up to them deserve scrutiny.
Brett Brown mentioned that the Sixers expectations had changed drastically before the start of the playoffs. A team that was just hoping to get a taste of the post-season at the start of the year had become a trendy finals pick by mid-April. So, now that the Sixers just got gentleman swept out of the playoffs in the second round, are we supposed to pretend those raised expectations didn’t exist? Plenty of people are quickly walking things back and eulogizing the Philly season by saying “if you had told me we’d with 52 games and get to the second round before the start of the season, I’d be so happy with that.”
Look, as a fan, I’d probably do that, too, but given how quickly expectations changed for Philadelphia over March and April, their exit in 5 games to this Celtics team should be labeled a disappointment.
On the flip side, the Celtics are where we though they’d be given the pre-season expectations. But expectations changed — twice. First on opening night, and then in late March. If Sixers fans shouldn’t be allowed to walk expectations back, then everyone around the NBA that picked the Bucks, or the Sixers, shouldn’t be allowed to walk things back, either, and delegitimize just how improbable this all is.
No one thought this version of the Celtics, the one driving an ’84 Sheep Dog, would be in the NBA’s Final Four. It is that impressive and it’s certainly a road no one thought they would take.
On page 2, Marcus Smart changed it all in an instant
The Sixers played their best game of the series on Wednesday night. They were on the verge of earning a Game 6 in Philadelphia with a gutty performance and it looked like they were going to get it after Dario Saric (game-high 27 points) used his 6-inch size advantage to lay the ball in over Marcus Smart in the post with 1:37 remaining in the game to put the Sixers up four.
“Just don’t go back to Philly. That’s all we were saying,” Smart explained of the team’s attitude when facing the late deficit. ‘We can’t go back to Philly. We’ve gotta end it now.’
The Celtics would need to play perfect basketball the rest of the way to pull off the comeback in such a tight timeframe. They did just that over the final 97 seconds of the contest, outscoring Philadelphia by a 9-3 margin to take home a 114-112 win and seal a trip to the Eastern Conference Finals against the Cavs.
The man at the center of that perfection on both ends of the floor? None other than Smart.
[…]
“That’s a Marcus Smart sequence,” Brown said of Smart’s steal. “That describes him so well. He misses the free throw and he’s the first guy back and gets the steal. He put his body on the line. He didn’t care if he got hurt – he was coming down with the ball. If anybody is going to come up with it, everybody’s got their money on Smart.”
Boston Sports Journal (subscription) — Marcus Smart makes his case for new contract by closing out Sixers
Marcus Smart is a riddle that no one can solve. The riddle goes, “what is Marcus Smart worth in the off-season?” Yeah — good luck with that one.
But for as much as it hurts the brain to figure it out and compute it all, there are too many nights like last night, on really big stages, where Smart is the biggest gamer out there. He wants it the most, and he stretches all of his talents to the limit to go and take it from the other team.
The Celtics do not win last night’s game without Marcus Smart, and it’s possible that means they don’t win the series. Smart’s quote is telling “Just don’t go back to Philly.” That’s about more than just not wanting to extend the series, that’s about not wanting to be on the wrong side of history. Smart simply didn’t let that happen.
Pay him. Maybe?
Related links:
NBCSports — In game five, it was Smart doing Smart things
And finally, this isn’t goodbye, Philly, but ’til we meet again
“The final piece (I told the team) is if we’re going to do anything of significance, we’re always going to have to go through the Boston Celtics,” Brown said.
“I respect, very much, this organization. I think Danny (Ainge) and Brad (Stevens) are fantastic. You’re always looking over your shoulder and watching how they’ve decided to grow their program. This was a hard-fought series.”
It’s tough to walk away from this series – as good a five-game series as one could draw up – and not yearn for more. For more postseason matchups. For continued growth of Philadelphia’s stars. For the endless possibilities the Celtics’ youthful core could attain if they follow their trajectory. The kids were everywhere.
The rivalry is brewing.
Mass Live — Brett Brown: “We’ll always have to go through the Boston Celtics”
I’m going to stand my ground and continue to say that Philly losing in 5 is a major surprise and Sixers fans should be disappointed in that outcome. But by no means am I trying to talk trash towards Philly — there will be plenty of time for that, because this is just the beginning of what should be years of playoff battles. See you next year, Philly, and perhaps for the next 5-7 years after that.
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