CLEVELAND -- That noise you heard from Ohio were a pair of backboards howling in agony.
The Boston Celtics and Cleveland Cavaliers spent the night turning Quicken Loans Arena into a pock-marked moon thanks to a brick-spewing festival.
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| Coach Doc Rivers might want to hide his face after his team shoots 39.7 percent. (Getty Images) |
Game 6 of this brutal, at times, horrifyingly ugly series was won by Cleveland, 74-69. Or, actually, it was lost by Boston.
The Celtics embarrassed themselves. Boston scored the second fewest points in team playoff history during the shot clock era. The Celtics set playoff basketball back so far that in the next game the NBA is going to replace its rims with peach baskets.
Not exactly the greatest effort from the Celtics. From about the two-minute mark of the second quarter to the 10-minute mark in the third Boston was outscored 19-0.
Instead of kicking the Cavaliers to the curb, they're kicking themselves in the rear for blowing a great opportunity to avoid a second Game 7.
Boston lost despite LeBron James basically being forced to go one against five since his supporting cast looks like Gladys Knight and plays like the Pips.
This was a prime moment for Boston to demonstrate that it possesses some sort of killer instinct. Instead, they're still winless on the road in this season's playoffs and seem to go through long, uninspired stretches of basketball, particularly away from home. It's the Celtics' version of Manny being Manny.
Because of this loss Cleveland now travels to Boston for the seventh game with supreme confidence. They're not a great team but they're better than the Atlanta Hawks, who melted like snow cones in the previous Game 7.
Cleveland may not win but they won't be intimidated.
"Our mentality is, 'It's just one game,'" said Cleveland's Wally Szczerbiak. "That's the way we're going to approach this."
Brown talked about Cleveland's toughness and he's right. Boston's 69 points is the lowest any opponent has scored against the Cavaliers in their postseason history.
