Kevin Garnett pulls on his jersey and yells as the Celtics take a big lead in the second half of yesterday’s Game 7. Foto: AP
Breaking through
Doc Rivers won his first career playoff series as a head coach. He lost three first-round series with the Magic from 2001-03 and one with the Celtics in 2005. He is now 7-7 in playoff games with the Celtics and 12-17 in his career.
“I guess if you coach long enough, you get lucky and you can move on,” Rivers quipped yesterday. “I didn’t do anything, to be honest. We’ve got Kevin [Garnett], Ray [Allen], Paul [Pierce] and all those guys, and I’m just riding with them.”
JH/Metro
NBA. Ray Allen was wide awake late Saturday night, fighting to shake the negative thoughts of the Celtics’ Game 6 loss from his head. So he started sending encouraging text messages to his teammates to make sure the Game 7 preparation found no faults.
It sure worked.
The Celtics were flawless yesterday, beating the Hawks 99-65 at the Garden and proving they can be the most dominant team in the league when they show up. The C’s also advanced to the Eastern Conference semifinals for the first time in five years, and they will host the Cavaliers tomorrow in Game 1.
“The performance that we put out there [yesterday] is very typical of what we have done all year, or who we wanted to be,” said Allen, who scored seven points and set the tempo early by driving through the paint. “It was a very impressive victory for us. We were all very hyped going into this game.”
Allen wasn’t alone with his bout against insomnia Saturday night, as a good portion of his teammates admitted they didn’t fall asleep at all before yesterday’s game, including Kevin Garnett (18 points, 11 rebounds) and Rajon Rondo (10 points, six assists).
And the messages were delivered. The Celtics held the Hawks to 26 points in the first half, the fewest points they have allowed in a half in the playoffs in the shot-clock era (since 1954) and the least amount of points they’ve surrendered in a half all season. By comparison, the C’s scored 27 points in the first quarter.
What’s more, the Celtics held the Hawks to a season-low 29.3 percent from the field while attacking the rim without mercy, outscoring Atlanta in the paint, 60-30.
“I really had no doubt in my mind how we were going to come out tonight,” said Paul Pierce, who scored a game-high 22 points and grabbed eight rebounds. “You kind of saw it from the guys after Game 6 on the plane.
There wasn’t a lot of talking. We knew we let a couple games get away down in Atlanta. I knew we were going to take care of business.”
