By the numbers
The Celtics have won 16 NBA titles, but they’ve only had a losing road record in the playoffs during four of their championship runs: 1984 (3-7), 1976 (3-6), 1965 (1-4) and 1962 (2-4).
JH/Metro
Updated 2008-05-12 18:17
Cavalier effort has doomed C’s
Intensity on road must improve if Celtics want to advance
NBA. At some point, the Celtics will again win on the road. They’re just trying to make sure it doesn’t take until November.
The Celtics’ bipolar disorder in the playoffs — 6-0 at the Garden, 0-4 away — is so baffling that they can’t even figure it out, as Kevin Garnett told reporters after Saturday’s Game 3 debacle in Cleveland that no one in the locker room has an answer to this month’s million-dollar question.
Why is a team that won an NBA-best 31 road games in the regular season the only team remaining in the playoffs without a victory away from their home court?
Against the Hawks in the first round, it largely had to do with their intensity — or lack thereof — on defense and inability to maintain a rhythm on offense. The C’s seemed to correct those issues in the first six minutes against the Cavs in Game 3 despite their early 10-point deficit.
Sure, they weren’t completely crisp with their defensive rotations — evidenced by Ben Wallace scoring six of the Cavs’ first 16 points — but the aggression was there. And while the Celtics struck more iron than a mill worker, their ball movement was terrific, and they found open shots.
As the misses mounted and the deficit increased, however, the Celtics pressed and looked to crawl back with individual efforts. Through their urgency to erase Cleveland’s lead, the C’s failed to trust their system. When faced with the same adversity tonight in Game 4, the Celtics need to maintain their poise, especially on defense.
“Hopefully, we can learn from our mistakes,” Paul Pierce said. “Basketball is all about learning from your past mistakes. … We’re going to look at that and see what we can do better, especially on the road.”
With a 2-1 series lead, the Celtics need to right those wrongs tonight to keep the pressure from increasing as the games wear on.
“The main part about playing on the road, we’ve got to bring a lot more energy to the game from the start,” Pierce said. “The energy that we’ve had on the road is high, but it’s not high enough. In the playoffs, you’ve got to take it to another level.”
