| Who Is Scared Of Whom When The Celtics Play The Pistons? Authored by Elrod Enchilada - December 18, 2007 - 8:29 pm
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The Celtics won 56 games was in 1990-91, a win total they have not approached subsequently. It was a darned good team, starting the season red-hot, 23-5 in November and December, not unlike this team. The Cs cooled off after Larry Bird injured his back and was limited to 60 games. But for the first third of the season the Cs looked like legitimate title contenders for the first time in three seasons, and for the last time until this season. The roster included not only the Big Three but also Reggie Lewis, Brian Shaw, Dee Brown, Kevin Gamble, Ed Pinckney and Joe Kleine. The Cs had located some talented young players to put next to the veterans and under first-year coach Chris Ford they were playing great basketball. Had Larry not gotten hurt, the team probably would have won 62-65 games, giving it home court throughout the playoffs. On December 31, 1990, most of us who followed the team closely thought we were as good as any team in the league that season.
But by the time the playoffs rolled around the Cs were struggling. In April the Cs was a paltry 4-6. They beat the Pacers in a dramatics five games in the opening round. Then the Cs played the defending champion Pistons in the next round. The Pistons had slipped quite a bit, winning only 50 games that year, and were clearly not in the same league as the Bulls or, for that matter, the Celtics. The Pistons had barely beaten the Hawks in a five game series to advance from the first round. The Cs had the home court advantage.
On the surface, this looked like a mismatch, even with Larry’s bad back. The Pistons as much as acknowledged that they were a shell of a team and all but conceded that if they somehow got past the Cs they would be slaughtered by the rising Bulls.
Perhaps the player whose game had slid the most was center Bill Laimbeer. Before the series Laimbeer said the Pistons would beat the Celtics for a simple reason: “They are more scared of us than we are of them.”
Those words haunted the Celtics, who were clearly the more talented team. They lost in six games to the Pistons, and there were some dreadful officiating blunders that would have caused Tommy Heinsohn’s head to explode. But the Pistons always played with a steely mental toughness and an assurance that the Cs did not have. It was the second season in a row that the Cs were eliminated in the playoffs by an inferior team. The year before it had been the Knicks in the first round.
Now had the Cs defeated the Pistons they would have almost certainly lost to the Bulls in the conference finals. But the Cs team that played the first third of that season, before Larry got hurt, could have stayed with the Bulls and given them all they could handle. As it was, the Pistons were swept in four games.
It is pretty clear that Rasheed Wallace has assumed the role of Bill Laimbeer for Wednesday night’s production. He has thrown down the gauntlet. They are going to play the mental toughness/handle adversity card. They are trying to get in the Cs heads and do a psyche job. It is going to be enlightening to see how this plays out. The younger quality teams in the conference, like Orlando, would likely melt. It is going to be something to see who has the mental edge in the era of the new Big Three. Come May and June this will likely determine which teams advance and which teams get tossed overboard.
For the first time in a long time, all eyes in the basketball world are on the Garden. Just the way it’s supposed to be. |
