Robb: Celtics Make Statement With Comeback Win Over Cleveland
BOSTON (CBS) – Statement wins don't come around much during the NBA regular season, but the Celtics managed to get one on Friday night against LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The Cavs were a motivated bunch under new head coach Ty Lue after dropping a road decision to the Charlotte Hornets on Wednesday. It wasn't a playoff atmosphere at Quicken Loans Arena but it seemed like it at times as Kelly Olynyk was booed relentlessly while making his first appearance in Cleveland following the Kevin Love dustup last year.
Double digit Cavs leads in both halves, including a 10-point edge in the early stages of the fourth quarter could have easily morphed into a blowout defeat for the Celtics. Instead of panicking though, they stayed the course and remained focus. They did not get frustrated as calls didn't go their way late either, hanging around just enough in the final minute to keep things interesting.
Jae Crowder made his first 3-point shot of the night at the best possible time, Evan Turner took advantage of sloppy defense by J.R. Smith to get a three-point play and Marcus Smart used his strength and perservence to jockeying for positioning on a rebound with Timofey Mozgov a player that is nearly a foot taller than him. All of those efforts set the stage for Avery Bradley to steal the game with a dagger three from the corner as time expired.
Stevens credited all of his players for playing their part in the monster comeback win down the stretch.
"Evan made a great play on the play before to drive and get fouled. Marcus Smart made a great effort to go for the rebound," Stevens said. "We ended up getting the ball and then we were going to have just a little action where we were going to look at Evan over the top [on the final play], but then LeBron is really freaking smart and he switched onto Evan before they inbounded, so that took that option out. …I thought it was a good, unselfish play by Isaiah to make that pass to Avery, and it was a heck of a shot."
Those types of plays were reflective of the grittiness the Celtics have shown in recent weeks, as they fail to give up on games in any situation.
"I'd say that this group has never [stopped trying]," Stevens told reporters in Cleveland. "That's been a calling card of this group. We haven't come out on top all the time, but we've won a couple games now where it's under 10 seconds [and we were] down three or four. I think we've also put ourselves in position, in multiple games -- we were down seven against Dallas with 33 seconds and had a chance to go ahead or tie with the ball with 16 seconds left. This game can change quickly and you just gotta kinda stay with it."
That kind of mentality has paid dividends in the win-loss column for Boston, as the team has won eight of their last nine games and 11 of 14 overall in the past month. They are now creating some separation for themselves in the Eastern Conference to the point where they are no longer just fighting for a playoff spot with a 30-22 record. Instead, they are battling for potential seeding (tied for No. 3 overall) with Atlanta as the possibility of home-court advantage for a round of the postseason starts to loom as a reasonable scenario.
While there are months left in the season for those standings to shake out, the one thing that Boston did come away with from Cleveland was a confidence boost. After being swept by the Eastern Conference champs with ease last April, Friday's win could be an early indicator that a tough fight may be looming a few months down the road.
"It gives you a sense of you're improving and getting better," Stevens said of the win. "Obviously, they didn't have Kevin [Love] at the end of the game. We hope he's OK, but I think that, for us, it was -- it would have been disappointing to lose that lead and not come out with a win. They made huge plays late in the game and I thought we missed some pretty good looks -- I thought we got good looks. But then for our guys to stay poised and score five points inside eight seconds is a good deal."
Brian Robb covers the Celtics for CBS Boston and contributes to NBA.com, among other media outlets. You can follow him on Twitter@CelticsHub.
