Sunday Shootaround

Take everything you thought you knew, crumple it up, throw it in the trashcan, and set it on fire. Behold the Celtics and the Bulls, a series between a one seed and an eight in which neither team can win on their home floor, not playing any point guards is a reasonable adjustment, and Paul Zipser and Terry Rozier are difference-makers.

This is a series where one can say with a straight face that an injury to Rajon Rondo changed its entire complexion. It’s a series where Gerald Green can start a must-win game. If we are living in basketball’s age of reason, this series has been a satire worthy of Swift. At the very least, it merited a profane Kevin Garnett testimonial delivered to the Celtics before Game 3.

The C’s certainly needed something to rouse them from their nightmare scenario that was punctuated by the ease in which the Bulls inflicted their damage on Boston’s psyche. Some of it was predictable, like the Bulls massive rebounding advantage, and some of it was completely unexpected.

Role players like Zipser, Bobby Portis, and Nikola Mirotic became prime factors and Rondo returned from postseason exile to be one of the two best players in the series. The other had been Jimmy Butler, which only proved yet again that stars matter in the postseason and the Celtics are short of top-end talent.

If Game 1 was a disappointment, Game 2 was a slow motion embarrassment for the Celtics. Teams that let opening games slip away on their home court are supposed to come out with force. They are supposed to retake control of the series. The C’s did neither. They were scattered on offense and disconnected on defense. They griped with each other and hung their heads. It got so bad that Rondo suggested the Celtics had quit and Avery Bradley didn’t disagree.

Because this is Boston, the reaction was over the top, although not entirely unjustified. Brad Stevens is not on the hot seat and Danny Ainge will still be the decision-maker this summer.

Still, it was accurate to point out after Game 2 that Stevens had as many postseason wins as Fred Hoiberg. Just as it was totally fair to note that Ainge didn’t upgrade the roster at the trade deadline when the Cavs, Raptors, and Wizards all made moves to strengthen their teams. These are the kind of recriminations that come with a collapse as thorough as the Celtics had on Tuesday.

The players were not spared either. Al Horford was barely a factor on Tuesday. He later said that he waits for the game to come to him, which is not what you want to hear from you max free agent big man. Jae Crowder, Marcus Smart, and Bradley were not able to pick up the shooting slack from Isaiah Thomas, who flew home to Seattle after Game 2 to grieve with his family following the death of his sister the day before the series started.

Thomas was tremendous in Game 1 and then clearly and understandably off his game on Tuesday. That made it very difficult for the Celtics to score and that’s the extent of the analysis here. We use sports as a window into the human condition, but there is no deeper meaning in a senseless tragedy.

Outside the Hub, Celtic schadenfreude was out in force. Draft picks and cap space are wonderful things to have, but they ain’t never scored a point in the playoffs. The future may sound lovely, but the present is tenuous and the present is everything in the postseason. Their lackluster performance reinforced all the negative perceptions associated with a team that has grasped at legitimacy even as it rose in the standings.

The Celtics may have been waiting to be exposed in the playoffs, but what made this so remarkable was that it was the freaking Chicago Bulls making them unravel. The same Bulls that spent a good part of the year bickering in public and private. The same Bulls who needed a late-season push to even get into the playoffs had come together in beautiful harmony. To be fair, even they were surprised to be in this position, and no one really believed they had full control of the series yet.

Against that backdrop, the Celtics were finally the desperate team in Friday’s Game 3. They played with urgency, but they also played with poise and control. Helter-skelter possessions slowed down and resulted in quality looks. When things started to go awry toward the end of the first half, the C’s made a strong push to start the second and sustained a Butler flurry late in the third to emerge with a relatively easy victory.

Stevens’ decision to start Green was shrewd. It allowed the Celtics to start small and stay that way with Jae Crowder logging most of his minutes at the four. The extra shooting helped space the floor and negate some of Chicago’s size advantage, although they still got crushed on the boards.

On offense, a series of staggered screens for Thomas helped unlock Horford, who may have played his best game in a Boston uniform. The shooters finally made shots. Bradley, in particular, was sublime throughout. Their bench units, which had been almost unplayable at times, came through with a huge performance.

The Bulls, meanwhile, looked disjointed without Rondo on the floor. He had been crucial in not only establishing their rhythm on the offensive end, but also disrupting Boston’s timing by overplaying passing lanes. For whatever he’s lost physically, Rondo always did have a beautiful basketball mind and he has the Celtics playbook down cold.

“Hated him,” Dwyane Wade said after Game 2 in regards to a question about Rondo, his longtime playoff antagonist. “That hate is that respect. When we played against Boston back in the day, he knew all the plays. He messes up your first option. And then he knows the second option.”

Rondo’s renaissance was only one of several odd developments over the first two games, but it was easily the most important. Hoiberg started Jerian Grant in Rondo’s absence, who was not effective. Hoiberg then turned to Michael-Carter Williams, who was even worse.

The Bulls’ offense was reduced to a series of Butler and Wade drives to the basket, and Butler had one of the worst shooting playoff games of his career. With Rondo out indefinitely with a broken thumb, that may be their best offense the rest of the series. If the Bulls are going to pull this off, Butler has to continue being the best player on the court.

The rebounding is still the thing here. It’s been the Celtics’ fatal flaw throughout the season and it was always going to be a problem during the playoffs. When they have played their best basketball, such as a March win over the Cavaliers, they minimized the damage on the boards. When they have been at their worst, like they have most of the time against the Bulls, they look like kids trying to keep up with adults in a backyard volleyball match.

The Celtics were better in Game 3, but it’s a measure of how bad they’ve been that they could still allow 15 offensive rebounds and 17 second-chance points and call it a successful performance. Still, the effort was there, particularly from the guards who cracked back on box outs and didn’t try to leak out in transition.

So where do we go from here? Who the hell knows. Thomas hasn’t gone off since Game 1. Butler isn’t likely to miss 14 shots again. Literally any outcome short of a James Young podium game on Sunday would be plausible, and neither team should feel secure about their chances by the time the series returns to Boston next week.

There’s always one first round series that stands out from the others in its extreme eccentricities and rapid momentum swings. It just happens to be one where the series doesn’t start until the home team wins a game on their floor.