I'm afraid that I've got little to say about anything other than the ejection.
Late in the second quarter, Eddie F. Rush whistled Kendrick Perkins for a very dubious reach-in foul on an entry pass to Dwight Howard. Perkins reacted in disbelief, turned and walked away from Rush, and voiced his displeasure.
It was a run-of-the-mill reaction by NBA standards. You see as bad or worse in pretty much any NBA game you watch. Rarely does it earn even a warning from officials. Wednesday night, in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals, it earned a technical foul.
And not just any technical foul. A disqualifying technical. A scuffle earlier between Perk and Marcin Gortat resulted in double technicals, and so when Rush rang up the big fella this time, it meant an early shower.
I can only assume that it was a mistake, that Rush wasn't intentionally sabotaging the Celtics, that he momentarily forgot that Perkins was carrying one technical, that he wouldn't do so much to decide the outcome of such an important game. But what a mistake it was. Perk is the Boston starter that gets the least attention, but his presence is vital to the Celtics' success against the Magic. Not only does he guard Howard better than any center in the league, he's Boston's only true center. Without him, Boston's chances of winning a given game against Orlando, while they don't completely disappear, drop dramatically. That's particularly true when Boston's thinnish front line is beset by foul trouble, as it was by the time Perk was shown the door.
The mistake was compounded as the game wore on. Later, one of Perk's key replacements, Glen Davis, caught an (apparently unintentional) elbow from Howard flush in the face, suffering a concussion. Without him, without Perk, and with Rasheed Wallace in foul trouble, Boston really had no chance.
Not only that, but Davis' status for Friday's Game 6 is up in the air. If he can't play, Boston will be shorthanded. Had Perk not been ejected, they would have only had to survive a quarter or so without Davis; now they may have to go a whole game without perhaps their most important bench player (at least in this series).
It could actually get worse for Boston. Perk's technicals were his sixth and seventh of this post-season, meaning he's due for a one-game suspension. The NBA rescinds technicals fairly regularly, and I frankly believe that both will be taken away. His first on Wednesday appeared to be an elbow into Gortat's midsection; further review showed that his arm actually slipped as the teammate whom he was pulling up lost his grip. Given that the officials' mistakes have already cost Perkins and Boston a game, it seems like it would work an injustice to force him to miss Game 6. But you always get nervous when these things are left in the hands of the NBA.
To mix in at least a little basketball-related analysis, let me get to some bullets:
- On Wednesday, the Magic did the one thing I was afraid of heading into this series: They got hot from downtown. The Magic are a scary team precisely because they can go 13-for-25 from behind the arc. They can only beat us in the next two games if they keep shooting that way, but it's a little disconcerting that they are fully capable of doing so.
- For the second straight game, Rajon Rondo got into early foul trouble. He really needs to cut back on the silly reach-ins early in the game. He needs to be a game-changer on both ends of the floor, and foul trouble stifles that both offensively and defensively.
- Rashard Lewis had a second straight "better" game, with 14 points, but he still doesn't look anything like himself. He had all of five points until the fourth quarter, when the absences of Davis and Perk forced Pierce into covering him. Pierce is simply too short to guard Lewis, and Lewis drained a few jumpers over Pierce.
- I can't decide if Game 6 is a must-win. One the one hand, I have absolutely zero interest in returning to Orlando tied at 3, with the specter of becoming the first NBA team to blow a 3-0 series lead hanging over our heads. On the other hand, we've been as good or better on the road as we've been at home all season, so a road Game 7 isn't the disaster it seems like. Obviously, I want to close it out in Game 6, but I am not sure I'll be panicking if we don't. That's especially true if Davis and/or Perkins can't go.
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