I wasn't able to watch Saturday's game, but Monday's game -- the fourth quarter, at least -- was all about "want to." Word is that Doc Rivers called the team's first half play "soft" in the locker room at halftime, and that inspired them, but this game didn't turn around until 7:26 remained in the fourth quarter. The Knicks' Chauncey Billups had just hit a three-pointer and Rajon Rondo, stumbling over a Ronny Turiaf screen, had crashed into him. Billups' four-point play gave the Knicks a nine-point lead. Boston, which had been struggling to keep pace with New York all game, could have given up at that moment.
Instead -- with all the momentum heading the other way, with a blood-soaked bandage struggling to contain a cut over Ray Allen's right eye, with the Madison Square Garden crowd periodically into chants of "Paul Pierce sucks!" -- the Celtics scored the game's next 13 points. New York came back briefly to tie it, but Boston got the last ten points of the game for the final margin of victory.
I wish I had been writing down the sequence of plays, because it was full of defensive deflections, diving for loose balls, and stalwart defense. Two hustle plays come to mind, though: Rajon Rondo covering more than half the court, width-wise, to chase down a Ray Allen miss and throw it out of bounds off of Amare' Stoudemire; and Kevin Garnett diving for a loose ball near midcourt, his long arm tying up Stoudemire even as the ball rested squarely in Stoudemire's lap. The former play led to a Pierce bucket that brought Boston within two; the latter led to a KG jumper after he won the tip that completed the 13-0 run and put the Celtics up four.
This game was a battle. Troy Murphy was the first of three players to shed blood on the night, suffering a superficial cut in the first half that resulted in a trickle of red down the bridge of his nose. Allen was the second, falling victim to a stray Jared Jeffries elbow while contesting a rebound -- an inadvertent elbow, it appeared, but a reckless one. New York's Carmelo Anthony was the third, colliding with Rondo's elbow while going for a steal and opening a small cut over his eye. And the most blatant hit didn't even draw blood -- after grabbing a first half rebound, Anthony barely missed Glen Davis with one elbow before connecting with the side of Baby's head with the second.
Not one of these plays, by the way, drew a foul call from the officials.
In the end, Boston snatched this victory from the jaws of defeat. But the Knicks were complicit. Quite frankly, they panicked. They're 7-9 since trading for Anthony, and the frustration of unmet expectations on the league's biggest stage are starting to boil over. A win over the Celtics could have done a lot to buoy their sinking ship, and as that win slipped away, they sped up the process with bad shots and tentative offense, looking to the officials for help that wouldn't come.
To their credit, though, the Knicks are certainly relevant, especially if relevance is measured by how much I dislike them. In past years, I've gotten fired up in games against New York due to some lingering chippiness between Pierce and Quentin Richardson, and the presence of Turiaf, whose reckless disregard for his fellow players' welfare has led me to believe for some years now that he's one of the dirtiest players in the game. But this season it's different, the vitriol the Knicks have for the Celtics encouraged by the team's first meeting in New York this season, which Pierce punctuated by bowing to the crowd after his game-winner. There's a chance we see these guys in the playoffs -- the Knicks are currently the seven seed -- and while they don't seem like a threat to win a seven-game series against us, it'd certainly be a hell of a fight.
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