CLEVELAND — Let’s put aside the basketball analysis for a moment.

Instead let’s place the 2017-18 Celtics on an analyst’s couch and ask this question: Where are these guys’ heads?

Thanks to their 109-99 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals Friday night at Quicken Loans Arena, the two teams are headed back to the Garden for – drumroll, please – the winner-take-all Game 7 on Sunday night.

Game 7, we all know, is the steel cage match of the NBA, the NHL and Major League Baseball. Game 7s inspire books, documentaries, poems. (I can’t back that last one up, but I’m sure there’s an ode or two to Game 7 out there.)

But what’s going to set this Game 7 and this series apart from many of the others isn’t just that the home team has won every game so far, but with the exception of Game 6, the home team has won handily, convincingly. Heck, we might as well throw Game 6 in there as well; even though the Celtics were within seven points in the fourth quarter, LeBron James put a pretty bow on his 46-point night with a pair of late-in-the-night, back-to-back 3-pointers and then stopped to scream with such ferocity that he could be heard as far away as Akron.

So let’s get to this business of where the Celtics’ heads are: Do these guys bank on a Game 7 victory Sunday night simply because they’re home and the home team has ruled in this series? Expanding on this topic a little, should they give themselves a pregame pat on the back by reminding themselves they’re 10-0 at home this postseason?

Advertisement

They have history on their side, correct?

“At the end of the day you’ve got to make your own history,” Jaylen Brown said. “We gotta come out and do what we gotta do. People can say whatever they want, but two teams have to come out and play. At the end of the day we’ll see what happens after that.”

If you’re a concerned-citizen Celtics fan, you should pleased by Brown’s words. He may be young but he’s wise: He’s not about to wrap himself up in the flag of home-court dominance. Not with LeBron lurking in the shadows.

And if you’re a Celtics fan who liked what Brown had to say on this topic, you’ll love what guard Terry Rozier (a team-high 28 points Friday night) had to say.

“We can’t just rely on being at home as an excuse that it’s going to be easy, because it’s not,” he said flatly.

Perfect.

Advertisement

On a night when he was the best player in green, Rozier took all the pyscho-babble about Game 7 and turned it into one very simple, easily understood sound bite.

We can’t just rely on being at home.

It’s OK to be afraid, to be very afraid, of the youngish, inexperienced Celtics. Their springtime playoff run has been as joyous and fun as it has been improbable, especially at their Lion’s Den Garden, but Sunday night is going to be different.

Sunday night is when LeBron James takes the Cleveland Cavaliers back to the NBA finals, or it’s when he quite possibly plays his last game as a member of the Cavaliers. That’s why Sunday night’s Garden party will be no ordinary home playoff game, no ordinary Game 7, no ordinary nothing.

“As soon as I leave here and head home to Akron I’ll start to prepare,” LeBron said. “I’ll try to get as much sleep as possible.”

Will the Celtics’ sleep at all? They had the best seats in the house for LeBron’s season-saving performance, and Jayson Tatum in particular was practically in the King’s lap for those back-to-back fourth-quarter 3-pointers and the mighty roar that followed.

“After he shot it, I just walked to the bench,” Tatum said. “I didn’t see what he did.”

Just as well, perhaps. What LeBron did was offer a glimpse of what Sunday night is going to be.

Sunday night is going to be a bloodbath.

Copy the Story Link

Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.

Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.