ECF Game 3 Celtics/Pistons Sat. May 24th, 8:30 PM

The ECF comes to the Palace as Detroit now has HCA and the momentum. Another crucial game.

Can Detroit protect their house???

Celtics have yet to win on the road in the playoffs, and after losing their first home game this post-season, their confidence isn't likely to be very high. The overall problem for Boston on the road in the playoffs has been their inability to put a complete game togther. Against Atlanta, their problem was entirely on defense--they scored at about the same rate on the road in that series as they did at home, but they couldn't get any stops in the 4th quarter in Atlanta. Against Cleveland, it was a mix of things, sometimes a few defensive breakdowns, but more of a struggle on offense. They couldn't score when they needed to in Cleveland.

So, as long as the Pistons play a good, solid, complete game at home, they should be OK. They probably won't even need to execute as well as they did in the last 3 quarters of Game 2. I really think that's the reality, not just chest-thumping homerism. Maybe the Celtics will suddenly get a really big contribution from someone off their bench on the road--maybe--but nobody's done for it them yet. As pleasant a surprise as it was for us to get such a big game from Stuckey last night, there was at least the precedent of him playing big while subbing for CB against Orlando, both at home and on the road. The Celtics haven't gotten that much production from anyone on their bench yet throughout the playoffs, not even against Atlanta. They're going to need to do A LOT of things they haven't been able to do yet away from home.

I clicked around a bit today on one of the big Celtics blogs, and I have to say I'm a bit mystified by how confident most of them seem to be. I don't see any sign that they're even close to panicking, despite losing their first home game of the playoffs and still with no road wins.

From when I checked during the Cleveland series, and a bit of the Atlanta series as well, the prevailing mood on that blog was almost throwing in the towel after all the big road losses. Few of them thought they would actually lose either of those series, but the overwhelming sentiment after those road losses was a sort of resignation that they wouldn't be able to win it all. Each road loss brought lots of comments along the line of "they're not as good as they looked during the regular season, and even if they get past this or that series, there's no way they can win it all this year." But after last night? Almost nothing like that at all. There's a lot of "the Pistons can't play any better than that, but the Celtics can."

Well...I'm not so sure. Maybe all their confidence is stemming from the fact that Ray Allen finally had a good game, and maybe it just brings them to back to when all 3 of their stars were producing simultaneously during the regular season. They were usually close to unbeatable whenever that happened. But Allen went from averaging 9 PPG in the Cleveland series, and 9 in Game 1 against the Pistons, to 25 last night. His regular season average was right in between those, at 17. Is he really going to AVERAGE 25 PPG for the rest of this series? I sure don't see that happening. And even if he starts getting into double digits more regularly, surely they'll still need some of their role players to step up more, which they haven't done at home in the first two games, and are even less likely to do on the road.

Not that I'm saying this series is over, or anything even close to that. But I'd sure rather be where we are than where they are, especially considering their terrible history on the road so far this postseason.

If you look on the realgm forum, there are a lot of doubters on the Celtics board.

I would say that the Pistons have finally reached a level where the other teams and even their fans have a healthy fear of our team. Because we don't have the flash, it is sometimes hard for them to understand why we are good, but it seems to have sunk in now.

On the other hand, there is also a lot of their fans who think we just played our best basketball last game and we will stumble.

One other thing I'm noticing is that this series is pretty classy so far. The comments from the players and coaches in the wins and losses are very professional and respectful. Hopefully that lasts.

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You can never have perfect introspection: because if you could, then you could determine what you were going to do ten seconds from now, and then do something else.

I was just struck by the disparity on celticsblog.com. The overall mood seems so different there in this instance from what it was when they were losing on the road to Atlanta and Cleveland. Of course, that might change if the Pistons get a solid win in Game 3, with the Celtics really struggling again on the road.

As classy as those a-holes can be. Players never shake hands until the series are over, but Sheed & KG have been after each game. Sheed chased down Doc Rivers to say something to him also.

Flip and KG have had a little embrace at midcourt just before the start of each game so far.

Doc Rivers also went above and beyond to downplay Rip's elbow to KG's face. He said something like, it should have been a flagrant 1, but those things happen in the course of the game out of frustration and Rip is a great guy.

Also, let's appreciate the fact that KG didn't overreact, fake injury, or generally be a wuss in any respect when he got hit. That probably saved Rip a game and some $$$.

Let us look at this from a positive point of view. When the fans throw the towels, Celtics won the series. So the fans were wrong. How about this time the fans are wrong again? They still believe which means this series is going to the pistons for sure.

But it's not that Celtics fans were "wrong" in the last couple of series; almost none of them thought they would actually get eliminated by Cleveland or by Atlanta. However, as the road losses kept piling up, it seemed like they were getting more and more pessimistic about their chances of winning it all this year, which of course couldn't be proven one way or the other until their postseason ends.

But in spite of actually losing at home last night, a lot of those fans now seem confident in a way they definitely weren't in the last round. I'm not saying there's any predictive power in that; it just strikes me as kind of weird.