BOSTON — One minute the Boston Celtics were giggling. The next they were gagging.
One minute the fans at the Garden were wagging their tongues at Kobe Bryant. The next they were swallowing those tongues in panic.
The Celtics nearly blew it Sunday night in Game 2 of the NBA Finals.
But they didn’t.
So, now, what to think?
Was this horrible scare only an aberration?
After all, the Celtics have outplayed the Lakers for vast stretches of this series in taking a 2-0 lead heading to Los Angeles for three games.
Or does this breathe possibility into the series?
The Celtics took a 22-point lead into the fourth quarter and extended it to 24 with just less than eight minutes left. That’s when the Celtics started playing like the game was already won.
They had been embarrassing the Lakers. They had been hitting threes in transition. They were enjoying a conga line to the foul line. They were the essence of team, moving the ball, defending like crazy. The Lakers’ triangle offense was in need of Isosceles to repair it.
Paul Pierce’s knee not only was strong enough to play on this night, his 28 points were showing up Kobe Bryant. Leon Powe came out of nowhere to slam dunk his way to a playoff career-best 21 points in 14 minutes, 39 seconds.
There was one play when Powe nearly went coast to coast for a monstrous dunk. Big Leon was looking like Dr. J, and Lakers coach Phil Jackson was left disgusted.
“I told the team we couldn’t play any worse than this,” Jackson said.
The Celtics were packing it in literally, and the Lakers seemed to be packing it in figuratively. During timeouts, Bryant was exhorting his teammates. What was he saying?
“Get our, beep, A in gear,” Bryant said after this 108-102 Celtics victory. “Play beep harder, a bunch of other beeps. ‘Eddie Murphy Raw’ times 10.”
This was supposed to be Kobe’s night. This was going to be the game when Kobe would score 40, maybe even 50 points.
This was going to be ballet in purple.This was going to be a night trimmed in gold. All the shots that didn’t go for Kobe in Game 1 were going to go in Game 2.
The Celtics could seal the lane airtight, filling it with body after big body, but this was the night when all those calls were going to go in Kobe’s favor.
Unstoppable.
That was the word Jackson used to describe Kobe one day earlier. The Celtics may win, but they weren’t going to stop Kobe.
Yet with eight minutes to go, he was stopped.
The Celtics beat the Lakers by 13 and 19 points in the two regular season meetings. They beat the Lakers by 10 in Game 1 and they were up by 24 heading into garbage time. Through seven quarters in the series, the Lakers had failed to score more than 22 points in six.
And then something happened. The Lakers scored 41 points in the fourth quarter, the fourth highest total in NBA Finals history. Kobe had 13 of his 30 points during that time. The Celtics stopped getting defensive stops.
“I thought we got too cute when we got the lead,” Celtics Coach Doc Rivers said. “We started trying to make sensational plays instead of keeping it simple.
“The first quarter was awful. The fourth quarter was awful. Thank God for the second and third.”
After a 9-for-26 shooting night, Kobe said he was going to pile it with the other bad shooting nights he had endured in his career, flush it and come back firing. This was the night Kobe was going to send the Celtics down the plumbing.
His talent could not be contained.
His ego would not be restrained.
But here’s the thing Kobe and his ego had to swallow: With eight minutes to go, he was being outscored by Powe. At one point, he was sitting on the bench, shaking his head in dismay as Powe landed two thunderous dunks.
Asked if he was surprised by Powe’s performance, Kobe smiled and said, “Just a touch.”
Early in the third quarter, Kobe drove to the hoop for a basket and promptly got nailed for a technical foul for screaming at Dan Crawford that he also had been hacked.
He was growing frustrated.
We talk all the time about Bill Belichick, a Wesleyan guy.
We talk all the time about Eric Mangini, a Hartford guy.
But maybe it’s Celtics assistant Tom Thibodeau, the New Britain guy, who’s the real defensive genius with ties to Connecticut. Kevin Garnett has said the players want to wring his neck some days, but they all rave about his defensive principles.
“(Thibodeau) has an unfair advantage,” said Bryant, whose 11-for-23 shooting left him 35-for-95 in four games against the Celtics this season. “He started drilling me, NBA basketball drills, when I was 14. So he kind of has inside information on what I like to do because he taught me most of the stuff. I’ve been facing his defenses here for some time, and they’re tough, very, very tough. Every single team he’s been on has had great strategies and physical defense. He’s awesome.”
The Garden fans derisively chanted Kobe’s name after he picked up his third foul with 1:53 left in the second quarter when he ran over a Pierce screen. The Lakers had only 10 fouls shots in the game. The Celtics had 38.
“I didn’t notice,” Bryant said, sarcastically.
“I’m more struck at the fact that Leon Powe gets more foul shots (13) in 14 minutes of play than our whole team does,” Jackson said. “That’s ridiculous. I’ve never seen a game like that in all these years I’ve coached in the Finals. Unbelievable.”
What really would have been unbelievable was if the Celtics set a Finals record for the biggest fourth-quarter lead blown.
Kobe hit two free throws with 38.4 seconds left to cut the lead to two. The giddiness was out of the Garden. Nobody was breathing. Somebody looked to be gagging.
It didn’t happen.
“We played with a sense of desperation and more aggression, and I think that’s something for us to take home and learn from,” Bryant said. “We noticed some things in the fourth quarter that we can do.”
We’ll see about that.
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