Playoffs? This fantastic Celtics-Hawks clash requires a check of calendar

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http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/stor...=cshawks-081113

BOSTON -- You had to double-check the calendar after this one. It's still November, right? In fact, the midpoint of the month has not yet arrived, so this still qualifies as early November, correct?

Because the scene at the end of this barnburner -- and more importantly, a half-second before the final buzzer, was like something you'd see in late May or early June.

Paul Pierce screaming in delight. Kevin Garnett punching at the air. The Atlanta Hawks walking off looking forlorn, but certainly not dejected. Not after the way they stuck with the defending champs all night, not with the way they had this one in their grasp until Pierce rose over 6-foot-10 Al Horford and buried a 20-footer from the right side with a half-second left to give the Boston Celtics a 103-102 victory Wednesday night over the previously unbeaten Atlanta Hawks.

"It was the NBA at its highest level tonight, and we just happened to come up on the short end," Hawks coach Mike Woodson said. "We've grown a lot since last season, thanks to the Celtics. They put us in that frame of mind that you've got to come out every night and dig in and play, man. I told our guys before the game it was going to be a dogfight, and it was one of those games where somebody had to grind it out."

Prior to Pierce's game-winner, Marvin Williams put the Hawks ahead on a 3-pointer (he was 4-for-4 on 3s, and it should be noted that he was defended most of the night by the reigning Defensive Player of the Year, Garnett) from the corner with 7.4 seconds left. After a timeout, the Celtics got the ball into the hands of their go-to guy, and Pierce put the finishing touch on a superb 34-point effort.

After a 6-0 start, this night showed that the Hawks, who were blown out in this building four times during their seven-game playoff series against Boston last spring, are no fluke. This was their second game of a back-to-back set on the road, they were without Josh Smith, and did not have Zaza Pachulia for the second half after he injured his shoulder. What's more, this was the sixth quality opponent the Hawks had faced in their first seven games, they entered with the league's fourth-best defense, and they handled themselves with a considerable and admirable level of aplomb -- a character trait they simply did not possess last postseason when they were an entirely different team on the road than they were at home.

"I'm happy with my locker room, and we've just got to build off this game," Woodson said. "I thought we grew up in the playoffs, to push that team to seven games, it left a great taste in these guys' mouths.

"I don't look at this as a moral victory. A loss is a loss, and I'm sure the way we lost it doesn't sit well with these guys. But from a coaching standpoint I'm very optimistic and happy with the way we're going."

There's no doubt this game left the Celtics with something to think about, especially after they had to battle back from an early 16-point deficit to snap the crowd out of a malaise that seemed to linger throughout the building over the course of the first three quarters. A year ago at this time, the Celtics were killing teams almost as soundly as the Lakers (the NBA's only remaining unbeaten team) have been doing the past two weeks. But this season the Celtics have looked a little too uncrisp, a bit too fat and happy early in games (think Detroit Pistons, circa 2004-2007) before flipping their collective switch and playing their best basketball.

"We want tonight be a flagship to get our season going," Allen was saying beforehand. "We don't want to be a trampoline for anyone -- we did that for them last year."

But in the end, both things happened -- the Celtics had their house rocking like it did last June, and the Hawks showed they've already sprung to the level of the East's upper echelon.

Boston got great games out of Pierce (34 points) and Garnett (25 points, 12 rebounds, four assists) and better-than-mediocre games out of Allen (17 points, but only two in the second half) and Rajon Rondo (five points, 10 assists), but their bench was outscored 30-13 by Atlanta's (Hawks newcomers Flip Murray and Maurice Evans scored 14 and 13, respectively) and the Celtics had only five 3-pointers to Atlanta's 13.

Statistically, it was pretty much even. In fact, it was pretty much even all the way through, any way you looked at it.

Could anybody realistically say two weeks ago, much less six months ago, that Boston and Atlanta almost even by Nov. 12?

Didn't think so.

But the Hawks, at least for a night, were pretty much every bit as good as the defending champs. And so even though Woodson dismissed the notion of a moral victory, it pretty much amounted to that for Horford, who left the arena holding his head a lot higher than he did when last season ended so miserably and decisively in Atlanta's 34-point Game 7 loss.

"The swagger's there. We've got that swag," Horford said. "We want to let people know we're serious, and that's what we've been doing. We lost, that's the bottom line, but we get to play them a couple more times, and we'll be looking forward to those."

And, of course, we'll see where the Hawks are by the time they make their next trip to Beantown, which won't come until April 3. By then, it'll actually feel like spring outside. And there's no doubt that either of these teams will have trouble remembering the night in November when it sure did feel like winter had already passed.

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BOSTON – For so many of the Atlanta Hawks, the TD Banknorth Garden, and all that the arena represented, brought back many memories Wednesday, most of them humbling, a few even humiliating.

Maybe the luckiest Hawk was Josh Smith, who was hurt and didn’t make the trip to play in the mid-November epic, thus denying the compassionate and empathetic fans of Boston the pleasure of reminding him how horribly his Stepford twin performed here last spring. (The fans did have their way with Mike Bibby instead. He was the one who called them “bandwagon fans” last spring.)

But, as they say, that was then – and this is now. Atlanta’s fortunes in Boston did not change in the Hawks’ first visit to the city in the 2008-09 season. They still lost 103-102, thus ending their remarkable six-game winning streak to open the season.

But if the Garden was the Hawks’ charnel house last spring – and lopsided defeats by margins of 23, 19, 25 and 34 points would seem to indicate it was – the Hawks’ play on Wednesday night showed they appear to be warming to the place. The Celtics needed a tough fall-away by Paul Pierce over Al Horford with a half-second left to win the game.

Atlanta had a 16-point lead in the second quarter (which says as much about the current play of the Celtics as it does about Atlanta). The Hawks had a one-point lead after three quarters. They were in a tie situation in the final 30 seconds and took a one-point lead with 7.4 seconds left. They were there every step of the way, a sign that things have, indeed, changed.

“We’re playing together,” Bibby said. “When I first came here, it wasn’t like that.”

Doc Rivers, the Celtics’ coach, agreed. “They play hard and they play together,” he said. “Usually, young teams just play hard and not together because each guy wants to do it all by himself. Their effort is amazing.”

At first glance, these Hawks don’t look a whole lot different than the callow cabal of 2007-08, which, lest we forget, won only 37 games. True, they lost valuable reserve Josh Childress, whose quirky game, boundless energy and hustle are now on display in Greece. But two peripatetic vets signed on, Flip Murray (sixth team in seven seasons) and Maurice Evans (sixth team in six seasons) to help steady things. More to the point, the returning players showed coach Mike Woodson that they had not just earned a playoff check last spring. They also learned a valuable lesson from their losses in Boston.

“It all goes back to that series. The Celtics forced us to have to defend because if we didn’t, we wouldn’t have won three games in Atlanta,” Woodson said. “They forced us to play the way that they played – and it became a competitive series.”

Well, it was a competitive three games in Philips Arena. And Delta Air Lines got some unexpected extra business. But the games in Boston were competitive in the same way that the John McCain campaign was competitive in the District of Columbia.

The Hawks were the classic Young Team that preferred the comforts of home. Smith shot 27.7 percent in Boston – and 53.6 percent in Atlanta. Bibby shot 25 percent in Boston – and 40.5 percent in Atlanta. They were two different teams in two different cities, and simple math determined that they’d lose that battle.

However, the way the Celtics won gave the Hawks something to strive for as they came back for a new season. Woodson saw it right away. This most definitely was not the same group of guys he’d seen last fall. Or last spring.

“Knowing they could play and compete with the world champions gave them a different [look] in the summer in terms of preparation and then in coming back for [training] camp,” Woodson said. “It was probably the best, competitive camp since I’ve been here. It was a nice carryover into the exhibition season and a big carryover into the regular season.”

Or as Horford put it, “Watching the way the Celtics played and won, that’s something that coach really harped on in training camp. They defend. They rebound. That’s what we want to do.”

The change in this season’s first six games was impossible to miss. Atlanta entered the Celtics game ranked fourth in points allowed, third in defensive field-goal percentage and second in point differential. (The Celtics were first in points allowed and defensive field-goal percentage, showing that the more things change, the more they really don’t.) The Hawks were unbeaten, despite having lost Smith to an ankle sprain and Marvin Williams for one game due to a suspension.

Four of their first six wins were on the road; they won 12 road games in 2007-08. Ten of their first 16 games are on the road, and seven of those 10 games are against teams which made the playoffs in 2008. They won at Orlando. They won at New Orleans. They almost won in Boston. They’ve averaged 18,971 fans in their two home games – unheard of numbers in Atlanta recently – and the support came in handy in their home opener when they rallied from 23 points down to beat the Sixers.

The 6-0 start was the best since the 1997-98 team won its first 11 games. OK, who outside of the Lenny Wilkens Fan Club actually remembers that? That was the year Rick Pitino turned around the Celtics (not) and Larry Bird turned around the Pacers (yes) and the Bulls won in Michael Jordan’s final season (yes and not).

The Hawks that year were nomads at home, splitting their games between the Georgia Dome and Georgia Tech. They ended up winning 50 games and losing in the first round of the playoffs.

This year’s team has big aspirations, and to a man, they point to the Celtics series as the launch date. They won three games against the world champions, more than either the Los Angeles Lakers or the Detroit Pistons. They awakened the previously comatose basketball population of Atlanta and made Philips Arena the place to be in the playoffs. To this day, Celtics principal owner Wyc Grousbeck said Philips was the loudest building of the postseason. (That’s saying something, given all the faux noise that Cleveland needlessly bombards you with these days.)

The Hawks played a terrific game in their first visit to Boston since the annihilation in Game 7. They were one stop away from keeping their season perfect and inflicting the first home loss on the defending NBA champs.

“You can see the difference from last time. They’re poised. They’re playing harder,” the Celtics’ Sam Cassell said of the Hawks.

And even with the loss, the Hawks have served notice that they plan to be in the discussion this season, not merely viewed as playoff poseurs.

“We know what happened here,” Horford said of last spring. “We didn’t win, but I think the experience helped us. We took them to seven games. We gave ourselves a chance if nothing else. Everyone grew from the experience. We just want to take it from there.”

From what transpired here Wednesday, they look to be doing just that.