So this is what an exorcism feels like.
A part of the Hawks’ inglorious history has been cleansed. Away with you, evil hauntings of Bird and Parish. Move along, Pierce and Garnett. Tommy Heinsohn — especially you, sir: out of here. (Bill Russell, you still looked like the perfect picture of cool sitting courtside, so you can stay.)
The Hawks have finally eliminated the Boston Celtics from a playoff series. It was as if the basketball gods looked down, patted them on the heads and said, “OK, enough torment. You can have this.”
They had a couple of mid-series hiccups, unexpected unless you consider the historical backdrop. But they took a lead at 11-9 on Thursday night, and the Celtics ate their dust the rest of the game. They led by double-digits early in the third quarter, by 20 a short time later, by 28 around the time we started to hear the name “Tyler Zeller” — a sure sign of Boston coach desperation.
A frantic Boston made it closer at the end, but the TD Garden scoreboard still tipped an unusual way when it was over: Hawks 104, Boston 92.
The Hawks won their first-round series 4-2.
Honest.
It really happened.
So cross that off your franchise bucket list for this century.
The Hawks saved their best defensive game of the playoffs, and one of their best of the season, for the clincher, as the Celtics were constantly harrassed and held to 36.2 percent shooting (34 of 94). Isaiah Thomas, who scored 70 points in the previous two series games in Boston, scored 25 in this but he took 25 shots, making only nine (one of seven from outside the arc).
Consider that a nice warmup for the next round against LeBron James.
“We just showed him a crowd,” Kent Bazemore said. “Any time he touched the ball, he was looking at four jerseys and had a guy on his hip. We flew at him.”
The Hawks had lost 10 consecutive playoff games in Boston. The last win: Game 4 of a second-round series in 1988 (Dominique Wilkins vs. Larry Bird). Their only previous series win over the Celtics came in the 1958 finals, when they were based in St. Louis. Canvas-high-top days.
Bob Pettit played for the Hawks when that happened. He wasn’t in the building Thursday.
Russell and Heinsohn played for the Celtics. They were sitting courtside. Dying a little inside.
The effort from the bench, particularly Tim Hardaway Jr and Mike Scott, buried Boston when this was still a game. The series left an impression on Hardaway, who is in the playoffs for the first time after two dead seasons in New York.
When told about the Hawks’ title win over Boston in ‘58, he laughed, saying, “I wasn’t born, yet. Even my dad wasn’t born yet. The only thing I grew up with in the playoffs was the Miami Heat vs. the Knicks (his father played for Miami). But the history here is great. I was looking around, seeing all the legends on the big screen. I was just soaking it all in.”
The city of Boston holds a special place in American history. But this hasn’t been the Hawks’ favorite stop in the postseason.
The Hawks won 112-104 in 1988 to take a 3-2 series lead, but you probably know how the rest of the series unfolded: The Celtics won Game 6 in the Omni, then the series clincher in the old Boston Garden, whenWilkins and Bird blew up the scoreboard.
Freedom Trail has been their own little Trail of Tears.
Most of today’s players know the 1988 series only from old highlight shows. They have even less of a connection to the last time — the only time — the Hawks’ franchise eliminated Boston in a playoff series: the 1958 championship won by their ancestors in St. Louis. Petit scored 50 points in the clincher.
“I respect the history of the game, our organization and the Celtics’ organization, but these are different players, different teams,” Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer said before the game. “I don’t think the people actually participating in the games really care very much or think at all about what’s happened in the past. All of those other things are just irrelevant.”
OK. So back to this century.
After two wins in Philips Arena to open the series, the Hawks reverted to mediocrity in Boston, losing Game 3 to an undermanned Celtics’ squad. Two days later, they blew a 16-point lead in the third quarter, watched as Jeff Teague morphed into a paralyzed wildebeest near the end of regulation and lost in overtime. Suddenly, a series that Hawks should have won easily after an injury to Boston’s Avery Bradley was tied at 2-2.
The Hawks rolled in Game 5 back in Atlanta to take a 3-2 series lead. But could that carry over on their return to Boston, as it did in the playoffs last year when they stumbled in series against Brooklyn and Washington but won clinchers on the road?
Their early defense screamed: yes.
They swarmed the Celtics, particularly Isaiah Thomas, blocked shots and cut off passing lanes. That may not have been the entire reason Boston shot 27.7 percent (13-of-47) in the first half, but it was a major factor. The Hawks went on a 14-4 run to open the second quarter and take a 13-point lead at 34-21, blew it up to 20 in front of bewildered Celtics fans and led 78-59 after three quarters following Al Horford’s turnaround baseline jumper at the horn.
Horford scored 11 points in the third quarter Take that, Heinsohn! (Heinsohn had verbally slapped Horford earlier in the series, not unlike the way Thomas physically slapped Dennis Schroder in Game 3.) The Hawks were now up by 17, and Celtics fans were checking phones for Deflategate updates.
That was it. The Hawks move on to play Cleveland.
One mountain at a time.
