Celtics-Pistons Game Five: Clutchy

I missed most of the first three quarters of tonight's game due to tonight's Colbertification, but I caught the important parts. The Celtics played their best game of the playoffs (adjusting for the degree of the opponent), getting big efforts from Garnett, Allen, Pierce and (!) Perkins, and held off some shaky crunch-time decision making to take the 3-2 series lead.

Quick notes...

> I've never seen a player (Detroit's Rip Hamilton) get poked in the eye to the point where he looks like he's been permanently disfigured, and is lucky to get a timeout called before a turnover happens. Hamilton got a lot of cred from the refs from that call though, which came in handy when his arm was wrenched on a defensive rebound with less than 10 seconds left, again for no call. Boston-LA conspiracy theorists, start your engines!

> The fourth quarter began with the Celts up 14. After a nearly immediate 7-0 Pistons run, the teams traded turnovers and misses without a stoppage, and that's really where the Pistons failed to win this game. If this playoff season has taught us anything, it's that the trailing team has to break through and get the lead before the close, especially if it's the road team.

> Tonight was Rasheed Wallace's best effort of the series, with many made 3s, and even when he's effective, I still kind of hate the play. When Sheed isn't making those, it's just a layup line the other way, and it seems to take him out of the mix. He also got his sixth technical of the playoffs, and if and when the Pistons go down, expect him to get his money's worth on the seventh, which will get him an automatic one game suspension.

> Rajon Rondo will eventually lose a playoff series for the Celtics. He's got this weird habit of throwing up lazy lob passes out of traps to players who are 30 feet from the hoop. I don't know what gets into his head in crunch time, but when you add that to his 60% free throw percentage, you've got some bad attributes for a point guard.

> In future years, Pistons Fan will remember this as the start of the time when Rodney Stuckey was a better idea than Chauncey Billups. The rook's 3 with 90 seconds left cut the game to 1 and was Big Shot-esque, but when the Celts answered it with a shot-clock buzzer beating baseline jumper from Allen, nothing else good happened for them for the rest of the night. (Also, to be fair, Stuckey's missed and then made free thows late took Detroit out of their last chance to close the gap.)

> I'm not sure what's gotten into Allen in this series, but what was supposed to be a solid advantage for the Pistons (Hamilton over Allen) hasn't materialized enough for Detroit to have the edge.

Does Boston close in six? Considering that they are 1 for the playoffs on the road, um, no. Besides, Detroit has come back from every defeat in this playoff season with a win, and we've got to ensure that the Lakers have not only the better team, but also the rest advantage. The Finals are not looking climactic.