Dennis Schröder had his struggles to begin the series but as it went on, he gained comfort, control, and started to really attack the Celtics, even if he yapped a little too much.
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After losing two straight on the road, the Hawks moved ahead 3-2 in the series and could close it out Thursday night in Boston. Thomas doesn’t have to score a ton to make the Celtics offense work, but he does have to pose a considerable threat.
Bradley’s injury caused everything to unravel. It was at the worst possible time and it only helped spark the Hawks run even more, which is something Boston was unable to do.
The Celtics suffered a slow death in the Hawks’ vice grip as their season ended with another blowout loss.
Thomas tried to motivate his teammates and/or threw them under the bus with his post-Game 5 debacle quotes: “They (weren’t) anxious about anybody else…Other guys have to step up and make plays”.
The scrappy Celtics did their best to claw their way back in the fourth, but the lead proved insurmountable, as the C’s were coulnt’ get within 10 points. “If they need me like they say they do, I’m all for it. I’ll do the best I can to put my recruiting hat on”.
Thomas may have had a 42-point outing in Game 2 of this series and finished with 25 points and 10 assists in Game 6. That choice has a 15.6 percent chance of turning into the No. 1 overall pick, and a 46.9 percent chance of landing in the top three. But really, his absence highlighted the bigger, systematic lack of shooting that Boston has been trying to hide all season. It was the Hawks’ first series-clinching win in Boston in five tries, and their first playoff win in Boston since 1988. The transformation was more gradual than sudden, the team slowly coming around to the idea of stopping teams rather than outshooting them.
The Celtics shot a mere 27.7 percent (13 of 47) and 17.6 percent beyond the 3-point arc (3 of 17).
Over the last two months of the season, at least, Thomas dealt with on-and-off pain in his left (shooting) wrist, for which he has undergone surgery in each of the last two summers. They have a lot of individual talent. The simple explanation is that the fatigue of being a full-time starter for the first time in his career got to him in the final months, and another summer of conditioning will solve him falling off late in the year.
The future appears to be bright for the Celtics but there is no substitution for experience in the postseason. Watching for him to bounce back will be a big question for Boston next year.
This year, it’s the opposite. “And that’s been a path in the last three years to get there”, Stevens said.
“We feel like we’re playing our best basketball”, Korver said.
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Cleveland broke out the brooms last season in taking the Hawks out in four games in the conference finals and went 3-0 against them this regular season. LeBron James is not Isaiah Thomas. Atlanta won for the first time since April 19 and avoided being swept by the Red Sox in the interleague series, which included two games in each city. The Hawks did a good job of keeping their emotions in check and took a rowdy Boston crowd out of the equation for good with that strong third quarter.
