NBA

Why Celtics Fans Should Be Freaking Out (And Why They Shouldn’t) After Game 6

We like getting fan perspectives on big sports stories – like the Eastern Conference Finals, for example. To that end, we’ve enlisted Boston fan Dan Spritz to share his Celtics-related thoughts during the series. His Game 6 postmortem is below.

LeBron James led the way with a masterful 45 points, 15 rebounds, and five assists, while Dwyane Wade added 17 points for the Heat. Rajon Rondo paced the Celtics with 21 points and 10 assists, while Paul Pierce shot abysmally from the field and only had nine points.

Why Celtics Fans Should Be Freaking Out

This was not a good game. It became apparent almost immediately that LeBron was locked in. He had 30 points and was 12-14 from the field… in the first half. There didn’t seem to be anything the Celtics could do to stop him. It felt unfair at times. He truly looked superior to everyone else on the floor. It was the kind of game where you knew what was going to unfold and knew that no one could stop it. I found it to be quite unpleasant.

Meanwhile, Pierce was an absolute disaster. He shot 4-18 from the field and was 0-6 from three. He never seemed to have anywhere to go with the ball, and his moves didn’t get him quite the space he is accustomed to. When he did get open looks his shots were still off.

Once the Heat pulled away, they held onto their lead. In every other game this series the Celtics have shown the ability to catch up whenever the Heat made a run. Even more, they’d outplayed the Heat in the previous four games. That was not the case in this game – Miami was consistently better from wire to wire. While LeBron’s huge game was the biggest reason the Heat played so well, Chris Bosh helped shore up the Heat’s complementary cast. He didn’t make a huge impact, but it’s obvious that he is an improvement at power forward. The fact that he’s still getting healthier is worrisome for Game 7.

Why Celtics Fans Should Be Feeling Good

Rajon Rondo’s knuckle push-ups after Mario Chalmers fouled him towards the end of the first half seemed like an example of something bigger. Despite looking like he was injured, he had the presence of mind to imitate KG’s ridiculous knuckle push-ups. A team has to have amazing chemistry to bring about that kind of action, and it seemed like the kind of spark that would finally get them going. Instead, they never got it going, and the only reason to feel good was that little bit of humor.

How I Actually Feel

The Celtics cannot beat this version of LeBron. When everything is going right his dominance is obvious to everyone. He made almost all of his shots, and it didn’t even look difficult. At times last night I was legitimately afraid of him. The fact that he is capable of that looms as a terrifying specter over Game 7.

Paul Pierce is going to play better, and LeBron has to play worse. That alone should count for 10-15 points. I don’t feel good about it, though. I expect it to be a close game, but it’s hard to imagine LeBron losing a game after playing so well last night. The fact that it’s in Miami is just the cherry on the anxiety cake.

Agree? Disagree? Be sure to follow Dan Spritz on Twitter, and write shouty, all-caps tweets at him about being a Masshole.