If you've seen the newest Farrelly Brothers trailer, give last year's Boston Celtics the Hall Pass test. Look at the full panorama of that season from left to right. Hot, right? Eastern Conference champions, one game short of winning their 18th title. Now, block off their pre-Christmas schedule with your left hand, the postseason with your right. Still hot? Definitely not.
You heard the numbers all through last year's postseason: 27 wins, 27 losses over their final 54 games, That's two-thirds of the season, from a Christmas Day win in Orlando to the playoffs. As plain a barfly as any you'd ever encounter on the wrong side of last call, the lethargy spread so far as to give Celtics fans little cause for optimism in their team's opening-round series against the Miami Heat. But then, the C's reached into their handbag for some zit cream and mascara, and regained enough hottie swagger that the Larry O'Brien trophy kept buying them drinks. At least, right up until the house lights came on during Game 7 of the NBA Finals.
Same thing the year before: an all-time best 27 wins in their first 29 games, a 19-game winning streak heading out to Los Angeles, and the lead inside of four minutes to play at the Staples Center on Christmas Day 2008. From there, a 13-2 spurt by the Lakers sent the Celtics away empty-handed and into a pedestrian 23-16 spiral that disfigured any further resemblance to the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls.
Now again, this year. Boston's 23-4 start had local media romancing a run at the 72-10 gold standard established by the Bulls, something they are prone to do every mid-December. The Celtics took a 14-game winning streak into Orlando, and were about to add to it, holding a 12-point second half lead over a Magic team that were losers of eight of their last 10. It was looking like a green Christmas, but ended in another fade down the stretch, another foregone winning streak. They've now lost five of their last 12 games — one more than they had over the season's first two months — and look the part of just another not-so-ten cow sitting at the bar waiting for the next drink.
Beyond Mount Crumpet, nowhere is Christmas Day dreaded more than in Boston Celtics Nation. The bad blood between Santa and the C's goes back to 1948, when Boston dropped its first Christmas matinee ever, 80-77, to the Philadelphia Warriors. Things got worse in The Big Three era, when Patrick Ewing and the Knicks turned a 25-point deficit into a double-overtime victory in Madison Square Garden in 1985 in what many New Yorkers still regard as their best Christmas memory ever.
Boston played only two other Christmas dates — a 22-point drubbing in Chicago in 1991, and an even more lopsided 36-point defeat in New Jersey in 2002 — until they were added to ABC's must-see television lineup in 2008. That's when their Christmas malaise — the Celtics are 11-16 on December 25 — began turning into a season-long hall pass.
Part of the Celtics' post-Holiday blues may well be complacency, but injuries have also been a part, with Kevin Garnett the common thread. In 2008-09, Garnett went down in February and never regained his full health. Last year, he missed 10 games right after the Holidays, while Paul Pierce missed five games beginning on Christmas. This year, he went down with a calf strain in Detroit on December 29, and his return has been pushed back twice.
But there have been other health issues. Rajon Rondo missed the last seven games of December after spraining an ankle, and with Delonte West out with a broken wrist, Nate Robinson was left to handle point guard duties. In the frontcourt, they've weathered the loss of Kendrick Perkins, who is reportedly three weeks away from his return to the floor, but the KG injury became a critical mass that has taken its toll and exposed Boston's reserves. Jermaine O'Neal has missed 22 games — including the last two — and has been recommended for season-ending knee surgery.
Garnett is scheduled to return tonight when Boston hosts Orlando at TD Garden as part of a full slate of 13 games on Martin Luther King Day. The Christmas Day rematch features a newly-retooled Magic bringing their 10-2 run into Boston with top seed in the Eastern Conference coming steadily into focus. On Christmas morning they trailed Boston by 8 games in the loss column; a win tonight, and that deficit will be halved to 4.
While Boston has been losing troops, Orlando has been changing them out. Eight players swapped cities after two late-December trades, netting the Magic Hedo Turkoglu, Gilbert Arenas, Jason Richardson, and Earl Clark. Turkoglu in particular is a Celtics killer. In his first Orlando stint, he was instrumental in the Magic's 2009 seven-game second-round victory over Boston. His reunion with MVP candidate Dwight Howard will cause problems across the NBA, but maybe nowhere more than to Boston.
The acquisitions cost the Magic four players in return, including Rashard Lewis and Vince Carter, who were viewed as last season's missing pieces in returning Orlando to the NBA Finals. In the end, they wilted during last May's six-game elimination by the Celtics.
Boston has already surrendered the Eastern Conference lead once since Christmas — to Miami a week ago. However, the Heat handed it right back with three straight losses. As long as the aging, battle-weary, and oftentimes unmotivated Celtics continue roaming the NBA's corridors with their post-Holidays hall pass, they'll be looking to hand the top seed off again.
If it's to Orlando, the Magic might not be so willing to relinquish it.
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