By Lenn Robbins
Experience.
That ethereal, intangible quality that gets bandied about come playoff time like a tetherball. The Golden State Warriors allegedly had it. The Boston Celtics did not.
And for the entirety of these NBA playoffs, Boston, with no players on the roster that had ever won a championship, had cocked its collective head at this experience factor and shrugged. Experience?
The Celtics had not lost back-to-back games in these playoffs. They responded to losses that probably would have devastated other teams with a bounce back win. Calm, confident, and collected were these Celtics.
Until Monday night’s Game 5 in San Francisco.
The Celtics didn’t merely lose, 104-94, they unraveled in the fourth quarter like a K-Mart blue light sweater.
There was Marcus Smart, usually the voice of leadership, getting called for a technical foul and an offensive foul just one second apart. One tick. Jordan Poole followed the technical by making the free throw and followed the offensive foul by making a 3.
Suddenly, the Celtics, who entered the fourth quarter trailing 75-74 were down 85-74 with nine minutes to go.
The Celtics continued to shoot threatening looks at the officials but never really threatened the Warriors after that, falling into a 3-2 hole. For the first time in this postseason, Boston looked and acted like the youngest team in the playoffs.
They argued calls and got drawn into Draymond Green’s Black Widow spider web of trash talking and bully baiting. During a timeout with about four and one half minutes left, Green tried to wrest the ball from Jayson Tatum following the Celtics’ star to the Boston bench and being a Grade A pain in the ass.
“I just said, ‘F$#k it,’” said Tatum. “I just took the ball with me to the timeout and I kept the ball the whole time. They didn’t say nothing.”
The Warriors didn’t have to say a word. The Celtics were acting like a team facing three opponents – the Warriors, the refs and themselves.
“I think it was a little bit of that throughout the game,’ said Boston coach Ime Udoka. “So not necessarily only in the fourth. Probably something we shouldn’t do as much and we all did too much.”
Here’s the real rub for the Celtics. This was the game they could have, maybe even should have, won.
After his masterful 43-point performance in Game 4 in which he made 7-of-14 3’s, Steph Curry walked amongst us mere mortals in Game 5, going 0-for-9 on 3’s and snapping his absurd streak of 233 games with at least one made three. A less experienced team might have crumbled.
Yet the Warriors, who won titles in 2015, 2017 and 2018, didn’t fold as Curry (7-for-22) misfired. Andrew Wiggins (26 points, 13 rebounds) played another sensational all-round game. Green scored eight points, grabbed eight rebounds, dished six assists and fouled out for the third time in five games.
He has scored 25 points and been called for 24 fouls in The Finals. But he has won the head game with the Celtics.
Yes, the game was there to be won for Boston, a win that would have given them the chance to hoist the Larry O’Brien at home Thursday night. Now there will be a return trip to San Fran if the Celtics can mature and win Game 6.
The best way – maybe the only way – to do that is to stop treating the refs like the neighbor’s dog that keeps digging up your flowers and not engaging with Green, who is as annoying as a morning mosquito on a camping trip.
“As you guys know, I feel like we’ve been able to fend those things off, especially throughout the playoffs,” said veteran Al Horford. “For whatever reason, tonight I feel like it got to us.”
It sure did. Now, about that experience factor…