LeBron & Kyrie make Zach Lowe’s All-NBA teams
April 16, 2015What Purpose Do Mock Drafts Serve?
April 16, 2015After agonizing over lottery balls for the past four springs, the Cleveland Cavaliers return to the postseason. And which team is there to greet them? The Boston Celtics: Longtime playoff tormentors and the club that eliminated the Wine and Gold in 2010. To call this matchup “juicy” is an understatement. There are plenty of articles that will look at the x’s and o’s of the matchup, but I want to ask a more important question: What does this series mean for Cavaliers fans?
Familiar Faces:
Fans of both Ohio State and the Cavs will need to reconcile their feelings this series because former Buckeyes Jared Sullinger and Evan Turner both suit up for the Celtics. Sully is in his third season with Boston averaging 13.3 points and 7.6 rebounds per game. His presence on the playoff roster is something of a surprise since he suffered a stress fracture in his foot on February 19. Initially declared out for the rest of the season, he missed 24 games before returning to action in early April. Sullinger is averaging 5.0 points and 3.7 rebounds in his seven games back. The C’s seem to be easing him back into the lineup and the 6-9 forward will likely come off the bench for Boston.
Picked second overall in the 2010 Draft, Evan Turner is already on his third team with Boston. The 6-7 shooting guard played in every game for the Celts and averaged 9.5 points and 5.5 assists. “The Villain” sunk game winning shots against Portland and Atlanta this season and has a 12.8 PER (league average is 15). Sullinger and Turner never played together in Columbus so it pretty fun that that are now teammates in the NBA.
Celtics fans will recognize Cavaliers’ center Kendrick Perkins who played parts of 8 seasons with Boston. Perk was a member of the 2008 World Champions and should be warmly received in Beantown (warm by Boston standards at least). David Blatt can likely make restaurant suggestions on the road; he grew up in Framingham, Mass – a short 33 minute drive away. Both teams have players going through some sort of homecoming.
History Lesson:
The Cavaliers and Celtics have collided in the playoffs before. Here is a quick recap of those meetings:
1976: Celtics def. Cavaliers 4-2, Eastern Conference Finals
No Miracle could save the Cavaliers after Jim Chones suffered a broken foot before Game 1. The series was at one point tied 2-2, but Boston took games 5 and 6 to advance to the NBA Finals.
1985: Celtics def. Cavaliers 3-1, Eastern Conference First Round
The Wine and Gold Orange and Blue snuck into the playoffs as an 8 seed only to match up with in-his-prime Larry Bird and the 1 seed Celts. The series was tougher than you would think from the standings – the games were decided by 3, 2, 7, and 2 points. Still, Boston advanced and later won the conference.
1992: Cavaliers def. Celtics 4-3, Eastern Conference Semifinals
A historically good year, the Cavs went 57-25 with Mark Price and Brad Daugherty turning in All-Star campaigns. Cleveland won a back-and-forth series as Larry Legend appeared in only four of the contests. His career ended with a loss to the Cavaliers, a fact which always cheers me up on a bad day.
2008: Celtics def. Cavaliers 4-3, Eastern Conference Semifinals
The 4 seed Cavs ran up against a Boston team on a mission. The Celts went 66-16 in the regular season and both teams in the series only won their home games. Unfortunately, the C’s had more home games. What I recall about this series was a free throw toward the end of Game 7. Cavs trail 95-92 with 7.9 to go; Paul Pierce is at the line shooting free throws (3:30 into this clip). His shot hits the back iron, goes straight up as high as the top of the backboard and falls in for the point. That summed up the whole series.
2010: Celtics def. Cavaliers 4-2, Eastern Conference Semifinals
This one still hurts. The Cavaliers were supposed to exorcise all demons (Chicago, Boston, and Orlando) on their way to the ‘ship. With the series knotted 2-2, Game 5 returned to Cleveland where LeBron James completely no-showed in an embarrassing 120-88 defeat. A 94-85 loss in Game 6 sent the Cavs packing, LeBron to Miami, and Clevelanders to the pub.
Celtics lead both overall playoff series (4-1) and games (18-12).
Cavs Fans’ Psyche:
The last time any Cleveland pro sports team won a playoff game was the Cavs’ Game 3 win on May 7, 2010 . The wait will reach 1,808 days on Sunday when the Cavaliers and Celtics tip off. There is poetic symmetry in this matchup, even if the rosters for both teams bear almost no resemblance to those of five years previous. On paper the Cavs look superior to the Celts and Vegas will no doubt favor the former to advance. Still, Brad Stevens has been known to motivate underdogs before so I would not expect a perfect series. Cavaliers in 5 sounds about right.
Eric Knappenberger (@CavsWITNESS) may have put it best:
25 Comments
Brad Stevens deserves some votes for coach of the year no way were the Cs supposed to make the playoffs let alone the seventh seed. That being said they shouldn’t win a game against the Cavaliers. Oh okay maybe one but that’s all. Meanwhile I’m hoping the upstart Bucks can take some serious wind out of the Bulls. Noah is banged up as is Taj Gibson. Hopefully both are even more banged up by the end of their series with Milwaukee.
“His [Bird] career ended with a loss to the Cavaliers, a fact which always cheers me up on a bad day.”
Now all the Cavs hate from Simmons makes sense…
My favorite part of that series was that in game6 Lenny Wilkins let Larry Bird have his way with them. He never gave him any pressure and just let Bird sit on the perimeter and pick the Cavs apart with pinpoint passes and open shots. Never an adjustment.
What was frustrating in game6 became the Celtics undoing in game7 as Lenny threw pressure at Bird the entire game and never let him have any space, which Boston could not recover.
I respect the job Brad Stevens did, but let’s see him go .500 before we go handing him any coach of the year awards.
Oh don’t you worry son if he stays .500 and better is coming. Btw, told ya OKC would come up short and miss the playoffs. #Boom
With that roster? Getting to .500 (or close enough) is a near miracle.
The only thing that gets me down about the NBA playoffs is that we no longer get to hear this before and during each game
https://youtu.be/V_h7Lm7C9Nk?t=1m25s
I believe the Celtics have the second best record in the East since the break. Behind the Cavs, yes, but this was the last of the feasible first round opponents that I wanted to see. A Celtics-Bulls-Hawks run isn’t as tough as any team out West faces, but it’s a lot tougher than what looked possible for the Cavs a couple weeks ago.
Only thing worse then ABC televising the playoffs is ESPN doing it. It’s sad but they are doing the same thing to baseball on Sunday nights now too.
Addition of Isaiah Thomas was huge. The only ways I can see the Celtics giving the Cavaliers trouble is if there are injuries, referees who feel the need to make their presence known by calling fouls on everything, Cavaliers being incredibly sloppy with the ball and/or playing three point shootout nightly.
I’m glad it wasn’t Indiana that’s who I thought would represent the toughest opponent. Indiana, Chicago and Atlanta would have been a gauntlet just to get to the finals. We’ll see though.
Is Joey Crawford in any of the crews for our series?
https://vine.co/v/ezaF1dWTire
This is true, but their schedule has been pretty easy as well. They had two wins against the Cavs that we all know would have been losses if our best guys hadn’t been resting. Look at the Celtics’ wins since January 15 (the date the Cavs turned their season around). They have a 1 point win at Portland (Aldridge didn’t play, sat out with a hand injury… they got 40 minutes from Thomas Robinson and Victor Claver at power forward), a 1 point win against Atlanta at home (Hawks were full strength, this was an excellent win), and a 3 point win at home against Memphis (this was another excellent win as the Grizzlies were full strength). They have two wins against Toronto (by a combined 3 points) in April that I am discrediting because Toronto has looked awful lately. We can give them some credit for beating the Pelicans twice. But that’s it. They beat the Bucks in their last game, but both teams were resting players. Conversely, the Celtics have losses against the Warriors (2), the Clippers (2), the Bulls, the Rockets, the Cavs (when they were trying to win), the Thunder, the Bucks(2), and the Spurs during that period. This is not a team to fear in the playoffs in spite of their recent record. If the Cavs don’t roll them in 4 or 5, we should be disappointed.
LOL
This series shouldn’t go beyond 5 games.
I haven’t looked at the schedule as closely as you seemingly, so these are excellent points to add. The Celtics point differential I believe over this time frame is +3.2, which would be third best in the East, but again, the schedule helps here.
And I agree on Cavs in five this round, and probably the next with Chicago. Still, I’d rather face any other possible combination before Atlanta than those two.
Gotcha, and for me the Celtics were the most favorable opponent in the opening round, but I see that more for the matchups. The Nets stink, but they have veteran players who have been in playoff games before and they may have another level to reach in the playoffs. The Celtics were already overachieving thanks to some great coaching, so I’m just not sure they have another level… they may be maxed out. The Bucks also stink, but the thing they have going for them is they are a nightmare to face defensively. They’re a team full of long dudes who can just switch on every single pick-and-roll (and we know the Cavs absolutely adore the PnR). I like how the Cavs match up against the Celtics. Aside from having four or five players who are better than their best player, I like how our big guys match up against theirs. Tyler Zeller and Kelly Olynyk can’t keep Mozgov from getting to the hoop and if they try, they’re going to rack up fouls. Similarly, Zeller and Olynyk can’t keep Tristan Thompson off of the offensive boards. They can put Sully, Zeller, or Olynyk on Kevin Love and it won’t matter, they can’t stop him. If they’re going to outplay their Cavs’ counterparts, they’re going to have to do it by hitting jump shots.
Personally, I find this match-up about as “juicy” as a twice-cooked shoe. Cavs can’t come out of it feeling particularly great about themselves, even if there are blow outs, given the talent disparity. Whoever we play in the second round will require about 40% more intensity. I’m actually hoping the Cavs get cuffed around in one game to make sure the kids know what happens in the post-season if you take anything for granted.
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Stop. This is professional basketball, they have a number of solid players and play in a lesser conference. They exceeded expecations and are generally well prepared. That said, Stevens does the same things wrong at Butler, botching rotation changes, burning some bad time outs to counter lineup changes made by opponents he failed to react to, and not having more than 1 plan for each game.
He’s a solid coach, in the middle 3rd of the NBA coaches, no greater or worse than anything 10 other guys could do, He went to a faster pace with a young team, this isn’t rocket science.
Second and third in starts on that team are Tyler Zeller of the “meh rotation player on a terrible Cavs team” and Evan Turner and his host of problems. Adding Thomas was a very nice pickup, as Shamrock pointed out. Otherwise, that is a pretty crap roster.
Yeah, yeah, I know. Everyone is really really good at pointing out rotation problems, bad time outs (or bad non-time outs), and gameplans that don’t work after the fact with 20-20 hindsight. I hear those people call the local sports talk radio station all the time. They do a great job at highlighting every coaching move that didn’t work from the night before. I wonder why both they don’t have full time coaching jobs and aren’t able to tell me about the issues before they happen. Maybe those things are correlated.
Like I said, there’s probably 20 good NBA coaches that could do fairly well no matter where they are, some would do a touch bit better or worse given their styles/preferences. If you want to pretend he’s some 2nd coming, so be it. Nice coach, which there are plenty of in the NBA.
The Cavs blowout along bolstered their differential by more than a point per game.
I was still sad that Cavs had to give up a 7-footer with actual skills like Zeller. On the other hand, I was sad when they gave up Karasev and his potential, and he couldn’t buy much PT on a disintegrating Brooklyn team. And Dion, whose refusal to adjust his game didn’t help OKC either.
I shall continue to carry a torch for Wiggins. Had to make that trade/finite window/blahblahblah. That will be my long term melancholy what-if if Love melts down under playoff pressure.
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