Atlanta 87, Boston 86

[recap] [box score]

On April 15, 1965, John Havlicek stole the ball ... and tipped it to Sam Jones, who dribbled out the clock on a Celtics championship.

On May 26, 1987, Larry Bird stole the ball ... then found Dennis Johnson for the game-winning layup that gave Boston a 3-2 lead in its Eastern Conference finals series against the Pistons.

Tuesday night in Atlanta, Rajon Rondo stole the ball ... then lost the handle on the ensuing possession as the clock ran out, sending the Celtics' first-round series with Atlanta back to Boston for Game Six.

Yes, the steal is a storied part of Celtic history (and yes, I realize I'm leaving Gerald Henderson out of this), but the steal isn't enough. "Havlicek stole the ball!" doesn't become the most famous radio call in league history if the Celtics weren't ahead at the time. There's no "Now there's a steal by Bird!" without "Underneath to DJ" and, most importantly, "He lays it in!" And so, because Rondo couldn't turn the turnover into a basket, his late steal -- a potential series-winning play -- will likely soon be forgotten by most.

In case you missed it, let me set the stage. A few moments earlier, Paul Pierce had cut a four-point deficit to one, and Boston had gotten a stop on Atlanta's next possession. Pierce then missed a jumper, and Atlanta ran about nine seconds off the clock before the Celtics used their foul to give. Atlanta called timeout, then a second one when they couldn't find anyone open. After that, well, let's let the video take over:



A few things about this play:

1. Let's start with the obvious. Great read by Rondo, horrible pass by Josh Smith.

2. As bad as Smith's pass was, he made a very good play in the immediate aftermath. Rather than compound his error by charging recklessly after the ball, giving Boston the odd-man rush and possibly committing a foul, Smith did an excellent job of squaring up to Rondo and making him change direction. With no timeouts left, Boston's best opportunity for a bucket was something in transition. Smith stopped Rondo in his tracks and took away the transition opportunity.

3. Smith made a second smart defensive play once Rondo crossed halfcourt and ran a pick-and-pop with Kevin Garnett. Al Horford, guarding Garnett, jumped out on Rondo, and Smith resisted the urge to chase the ball, instead shading towards Rondo while staying in the passing lane.

4. After setting the screen, Garnett stayed in place for half a count before taking a step back out toward the three-point line, which was about the least helpful thing he could have done in that spot. That whole side of the floor was open -- a rim-run would have put pressure on the defense, and popping laterally to the foul line would have given him a better look and, at the very least, drawn Smith away from Rondo. As it was, Smith was able to stay within reach of Garnett while also being close enough to Rondo to discourage a drive into the paint. And even if Rondo had been able to find KG with a pass, it would have been a very long jumper, probably a step outside KG's comfort zone.

5. A few comments on Celtics Blog mentioned that they thought Rondo was trying to play "hero ball" at the end, and that that "selfishness" cost the Cs a chance to get up a game-winning shot. I think the opposite is true. Rondo's initial instinct is to pass in that spot, and by looking back to KG for a second, he let Horford catch up and trap him along the sideline. If he was in attack mode from the beginning, there's no way Horford could have stayed in front of him. Atlanta would have had to help from the weakside. Whether Rondo would have made a contested shot or had time to find an open teammate is anyone's guess, but it would have put the pressure on the Hawks.

6. Here's the real criticism: Rondo has to attack there. Even with the delay caused by his first look towards KG, he could have slithered past Horford to the baseline. From there it likely would have been a difficult finish, but no more difficult than the look he would have gotten had he been able to successfully bring it back to the right, which would have been a long, contested fallaway. (I seem to remember him doing something very similar at the end of a playoff game against Chicago and having the shot blocked by Derrick Rose.) And there's the very real chance that Horford would have fouled him.

A lot of people are saying we gave this one away, and I sort of agree: Rarely do you see a team facing elimination play as uninspired as Atlanta did in the first half, and we let them stay in it in the first quarter, before they got hot from three in the second. At the same time, how many elimination games are really won that easily? The doomed team almost inevitably makes a run. I do not believe that Boston could have effectively won this game in the first quarter.

The Hawks still don't worry me. Even getting a surprise contribution from Horford and sporadically strong play from Smith, Joe Johnson, and Jeff Teague, their offense is still pretty pathetic. It's not that they don't execute; they don't run anything to execute. It's the kind of one-dimensional offense that has never worked long-term against a Boston team in the last several years. Aside from some crucial missed assignments by Brandon Bass on pick-and-roll, Boston's defense was excellent (though our work on the defensive glass was not).

What does worry me, however, is Pierce's knee. The Celtics can still lose this series, and if they do, it likely will be traceable to the Captain not being at full strength. After Pierce came back for the first few minutes of the second half of Game 4, I figured the knee was nothing to worry about. But then I read today that the knee, which Pierce originally hurt in the shootaround on the morning of Game 4, was painful enough that Pierce almost didn't go at all on Sunday. And then today, after a fast start, Pierce appeared to tweak it again and wasn't the same, sitting for a long stretch in the second half. He missed a contested layup in the final minutes, and the potential go-ahead jumper he missed on Boston's penultimate possession was an airball. Pierce isn't the most explosive player, but he was definitely lacking his usual physical assertiveness for much of this game, which is enough to erode his effectiveness -- particularly in this advanced stage of his career. If he doesn't get better, the task gets harder -- and even if we succeed in beating Atlanta, we may regret not being able to rest him for a few days before the second round begins.

Game Six, in Boston, is Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern, on TNT.

Getting His Due

Regular followers of these pages may have noted that it's been nearly two months since I've posted. The reason for that is twofold. One is that the NBA offseason is full of rumors and scenarios, the majority of which don't pan out, and it's exhausting to keep up with. I've been paying attention, but not enough to really analyze them in depth, and I figured it'd be better to wait until next year's team was pretty much set before I provided my thoughts on it.

The second reason is that losing to the Lakers still stings. Even now, two months later, I'm still bummed that we couldn't hold on to a 13-point third quarter lead. Being so close to our eighteenth and most improbable banner, and not being able to hang on is tough; that it came against the hated Lakers, the favorite team of the city in which I live, makes it even tougher. Celtics fans are not used to their team not coming through in those situations. Perhaps one day I'll be able to exorcise those demons, but for now, I've said what I'm going to say about the Finals.

I'm breaking my silence for a different reason: Dennis Johnson, the man who probably had a bigger influence on my love for basketball than anyone other than my father, was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame this weekend.

I was very young during DJ's career, and so I'll leave it to others to supplement what you may recall of the Celtics' point guard during the 80s. But I was old enough to have a favorite player, and DJ was it. And I was old enough to understand what DJ meant to those teams, the role he played on one of the best collections of basketball players ever assembled. And I was at just the right age for that role to shape my understanding and philosophy of basketball, forever.

DJ was extremely talented, the kind of guy who could have dominated the ball and scored a bunch of points the way he had in Seattle prior to coming over to the Celtics in a trade for Rick Robey. But those Sonics teams didn't have Larry Bird and Kevin McHale and Robert Parish, and the Celtics did, and DJ understood that that meant that his job was to defend, to make sure the ball got to where it needed to get, and to make the other team pay for ignoring him if they chose to do so. DJ taught me that you don't necessarily have to score to contribute, that assisting on a basket or making a steal can be as satisfying as scoring a bucket yourself. (Indeed, I found that there is no feeling on a basketball court more exhilarating than changing the natural momentum and flow of the game by poking the ball away from the opposition as they rushed upcourt.)

Bird always said DJ was the best player he'd ever played with, and that, too, helped shape my basketball philosophy. If you were eight or nine years and a Celtics fan in the 80s, and Bird spoke, you listened, and those comments made me think about basketball and DJ in a way I might not have otherwise. I tried to be like DJ as much as I could. His uniform number, 3, became mine, and it remains my favorite number, my "lucky" number, to this day. I enjoyed a very modest basketball career in high school, and I always did my best to play the role of "system" point guard to perfection: Protect the ball, try to be a game-changer on defense, make just enough shots so that the other team couldn't forget about you.

Bringing it back to these current Celtics, what I want most for Rajon Rondo, certainly my current favorite Celtic and probably second only to DJ all-time, is for him to be a little more like DJ. They have vastly different games: DJ could shoot and Rondo can't, Rondo's flashy where DJ was solid, DJ was burly and strong where Rondo is wispy and quick. Two years ago, Rondo did exactly as DJ would have done, deferring to his veteran teammates in most instances. But now, with age and wear and tear taking its toll on the Big Three, DJ would have been quicker to take what is now the next step for Rondo: Recognize that he is fully capable of carrying his team offensively, and doing so when the situation deems it necessary. Drop an in-his-prime DJ into the third quarter of Game 7 in June, and there's no way Boston wastes possession after possession isolating its obviously exhausted top offensive options. That's when DJ would have gone to work.

As many of you know, DJ was inducted posthumously; many consider it an injustice that the selection committee didn't choose him immediately and a tragedy that he wasn't around to receive the honor himself. Myself, I'll never forget where I was when I found out DJ had died of a heart attack. I was in Las Vegas for work, and my best friend, Joel, called me to break the news, understanding that it was not the kind of thing I'd want to find out from ESPN. I called home to tell my parents about it, and found myself choked up while on the phone with my mother. I remember being surprised, at the time, that a man in his 20s could get that emotional about a basketball player he had never met.

Later, I decided it was a good thing, that I was glad that we never get too old to have heroes.

Dennis Johnson was my hero. And now he's a Hall of Famer.