GAME 5

Tomorrow night the Celtics play a huge game. They are tied in their best of 7 series with the Atlanta Hawks 2 games apiece. Nobody is really panicing right now in this region because the Celtics still have Game 5 at home in Boston. (They love that dirty water.) The Celtics have been amazing at home this season and especially in the third quarter of games. This one should be sewn up before the dreaded 4th quarter even gets there. But the question is still there, what if the Celtics do lose Game 5?

In that scenario they would have their backs against the wall and have to go back to the dreaded Phillips Arena (which might as well be the House of Pain for the C's right now) for a Game 6. Pretty much they need to win Game 5 right now, because the Celt's have played very hard in this series and it hasn't been successful at all on the road. I don't know what it is, I don't know if it's psycological that they can't play on the road or the theory that I believe is that Doc Rivers is in way over his head right now. They played well in games 1 and 2 and then somewhere he paniced. When the Hawks made their Game 3 push, he paniced and tried to keep his starters in the game instead of going with his set rotation that drove me nuts during the beginning of the series, but after they started consistently winning the younger players started to step up I started to see that it was actually working. Isn't that just like Doc though, just as soon as I start to agree with something that he does, he has to go and change it and turn it into a minus again. The second one of the younger bench players goes into the game and makes a bad play or misses a cut (apparently Leon Powe missed 5 defensive switches) he benches them and feels he can't trust them. So what am I to do about this? What can I do to to help raise the Celtics in Game 5?

I need to be there for them, I am scheduled to be at Fenway Park for the series finale with the Blue Jays thursday night, so me and my buddy Tommy Gunn are going down a night early and going to the TD Garden for Game 5.

I'm psyched, I haven't been there for a Celtics game since 2002 and that was against the Wizards. My pal Riley and I were going to get a chance to see Michael Jordan who decided that he needed to take that game off, but I still got to see the great Christian Laettner play, so I was happy. (Go DUKE!) My first playoff game in any sport, ladies and gentlemen, HERE WE GO!

~Sterling Pingree