National Basketball Association

Celtics, not Heat, may be East favorites

Published May. 17, 2012 1:00 a.m. ET

Sam Gardner

Nearly an hour after finishing off the Philadelphia 76ers in Game 3 of their Eastern Conference semifinal series Wednesday, a few Boston players lingered, milling around the Celtics locker room before heading back to the team hotel.

In one corner, a trainer was busy strapping a fresh bag of ice to Ryan Hollins’ lower back as Hollins adjusted his black do-rag. Brandon Bass got dressed as he made small talk with a handful of media types huddled near his locker. Against the far wall, Mickael Pietrus chatted away, catching up with a couple of French journalists.

The remaining players quietly went about their business, while the rest of the reporters in the small, concrete-block room waited for star forward Kevin Garnett to finally emerge. The locker room door swung open, grabbing the attention of everyone inside.

It was Celtics point guard Rajon Rondo, just returned from his postgame media session at the podium, boombox in hand.

There was music blaring from the stereo’s speakers, though it was too loud and the moment too fleeting to even identify the song. By the time most realized he had walked in, Rondo had already scampered out the other door, headed toward the bus.

But in that ephemeral flash, the enigmatic Rondo — who had just scored 23 points to go with 14 assists in the Celtics' 107-91 win — showed an air of confidence that, to that point, had been missing.

If you didn’t know better, you’d say it was the swagger of a champion, and as the Celtics continue to improve and the Eastern Conference continues to shake out, maybe he has good reason to feel as if there’s something to boast about.

Because with the Chicago Bulls out of the picture, the Miami Heat down a musketeer thanks to a vague abdominal injury to forward Chris Bosh and the rest of the East lacking a viable championship contender, the odds that the Celtics could represent the conference in the NBA Finals are looking better every day.

Sixers coach Doug Collins would tend to agree, and that’s exactly what he insinuated Monday after the Celtics dominated his team to take a 2-1 series lead.

"You can tell with them, I think they're looking at that other series a little bit, seeing Chris Bosh being out,” Collins said, referring to Miami’s second-round series with the Indiana Pacers. “I think they see a tremendous opportunity for themselves, and you can just see with their game tonight that this is a much different team than we saw in Boston."

It’s tough to say for sure whether Miami’s bad fortune did anything to spark it, but the Celtics were on fire Wednesday, shooting 51.9 percent from the field for the game — and 63.8 percent in the middle two quarters — as they rolled to victory, turning the tide on a series that, at this point, is as good as over.

“It was really good; our offense finally came alive,” said Paul Pierce, who scored 24 points and had 12 rebounds in the win. “For us to score 100 points against a stingy defensive team was pretty good.”

Boston, which averaged only 86.5 points on 42.9 percent shooting and committed 32 turnovers in Games 1 and 2, had 26 assists and just seven turnovers Wednesday. Three of those gaffes came in the final three minutes of the fourth — courtesy of end-of-the-bench reserves Hollins, E’Twaun Moore and Sasha Pavlovic — with the game well in hand.

“A lot of guys tonight played and they didn’t think about what they were not doing,” Celtics coach Doc Rivers said, commending his players for putting the struggles of Games 1 and 2 behind them. “I thought a lot of guys just came and played.”

And if the Celtics can continue to perform like they did, it’ll be tough for anybody — including the Heat, even if they do get Bosh back — to stop them from reaching their third Finals in five years.

Indianapolis swiped home-court advantage from the Heat with a surprising 78-75 win in Game 2 — much as Philadelphia did to Boston in Game 2 of their series — and then blasted Miami 94-75 in Game 3 Thursday, but it's still too early to count out the elite tandem of LeBron James and Dwyane Wade just yet.

If the Heat don’t regroup, though, and Bosh’s injury puts Miami’s run of not five, not six and not seven championships on hold for another year, it would still be tough to see the Pacers getting past a more veteran Boston team in the conference finals.

A Celtics-Pacers series would be physical, and a bona fide star like Danny Granger — not to mention two-time All-Star David West and emerging talents Roy Hibbert and Paul George — could make things interesting. But it would seem likely that, in the end, the Celtics’ years of playoff experience would be the difference.

Philadelphia certainly won’t stand in Boston’s way anymore, and Collins seems to be realistic when it comes to his team’s fate. He celebrated his team’s lone win in the series thus far as though the Sixers had advanced to the next round, and even in defeat, he’s praised his team’s performances as valuable learning experiences for the future. This, clearly, is a Sixers team that is realistic about its fate and is playing for next year.

“This is a new experience for us,” Collins said. “Boston has . . . been through losing home court and going and winning. They’ve been through no Ray Allen, Rondo suspended and winning a Game 2 on the road. So it’s not like they haven’t seen everything.”

Indeed, the Celtics have seen everything and they’re ready for anything, something that wasn’t so certain just two short months ago. General manager Danny Ainge nearly broke up the party near the trade deadline and reportedly had considered trading some or all of the Celtics’ premier players and moving on to the next era of Celtics basketball.

With Boston, at the time, foundering and the future bleak, no one would have necessarily blamed Ainge for breaking up a Big Three unit on its last legs and starting the rebuilding process now, rather than waiting until next year. But the ninth-year GM held off and showed restraint, and now his patience is being rewarded.

"We're chasing something special," Celtics reserve guard Keyon Dooling said. "We're all extremely motivated to win. . . . The younger, athletic teams started a lot faster than us. We heard the ‘old’ comments. But we stayed the course."

There’s still a lot of basketball left to be played, but the Celtics are rolling and the swagger is definitely back in Boston.

Follow Sam Gardner on Twitter: @sam_gardner