Posted by Keith Langlois at 12:56 PM Just before the playoffs started, I asked Joe Dumars about Boston – about Boston’s whirlwind regular season, about the big three’s ballyhooed focus, about their willingness to sacrifice individually. After years of putting up big numbers on bad teams, Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen seemed delighted to share the glory and the responsibility equally for a change. And I asked Dumars about the certainty that Boston would head into the playoffs widely favored to get out of the Eastern Conference. He agreed wholeheartedly: “They should be the favorites. Conventional wisdom is that it’s going to take you a little bit longer to come together than it took them. I tip my hat to them. The way they came together, the way they made it work, they should be commended, big time. I tip my hat to Doc Rivers. You have to make it come together and he’s done a good job of that.” It was a sincere and gracious observation. Here’s what it wasn’t: a concession preamble. Because he went on to say this: “The only thing I’ll see about that – and we have a history of this – you still have to play the games. We’ve been the favorites the last three or four straight years in the Eastern Conference and we only got there twice. Two out of four years. That tells me you still have to play the games. I don’t so much worry about being the favorites any more. I worry about the games. Let’s get ready for the games and let’s play the games.” And then he said this: “What happens when you go deep into playoff series is you’re going to get tested. And it’s during those tests that you’re going to be defined. There’s nothing you can do to get prepared for that until it happens. You can’t talk about it, you can’t watch film on it – nothing. You just have to go through it. “I’m not going to sit here and project what’s going to happen to those guys once they get into those deep, tough playoff series. But I do know this: That’s when all the resolve inside of you has to come out, because it is a test unlike any other test. I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of 10 Eastern Conference finals, as a player and as an executive, and I’m here to tell you it is everything in you. Whatever you have in you, you better be tough enough to handle that. You’re playing to go to the NBA Finals when you get there. I don’t care what you say. I don’t care what’s happened in January or February. You’ve got to stand up and be ready. And it’s tough.” Here we are, the conference finals between the Pistons and Celtics – the series the basketball world anticipated for months – all tied at two wins apiece, the NBA Finals berth down to a best-of-three series. It’s time to stand up and be ready. And it’s tough. “I think Game 5 is going to be tougher,” Flip Saunders said Tuesday morning, Arron Afflalo shooting jump shots behind him – the only player in the building on a day Saunders told the team to stay home until time to gather for the flight to Boston, a much-needed physical, mental and emotional break amid the playoff storm. Afflalo真的是天天到球场报到 也是今天唯一一位 “But I think it’s going to be tough for both teams. We have a three-game series. As the series progresses and the end becomes inevitable for somebody, now all of a sudden there’s more pressure on both teams. We both have the same marching orders – a championship for either team. That’s what their goal is. It’s going to be very much a pressure situation.” This is the third straight series in which Boston has found itself in a best-of-three finish, but this one is different in that the Celtics have had their home-court invulnerability penetrated. Saunders saw signs of fatigue in the Celtics in their Game 4 loss. “Their shot selection was a little more frivolous than it was in other games, but that happens with fatigue and with pressure. With fatigue, it starts wearing on you emotionally. You start seeing a change in how teams play a little bit. We looked fatigued in Game 3, for some reason, and they looked (it in Game 4). … Every pressure situation turns into a stressful situation and when it turns into stress, you make bad decisions.” It’s no guarantee how either team will look tomorrow night back in Boston, but under extreme duress in Game 4 – facing a virtual must-win situation and with seemingly every referee’s whistle going against them – the Pistons held up well emotionally under conditions that in the past have caused them to come unglued. “They talk a lot about our team, local and national – ‘the switch.’ When things get tough, we lose our composure. And last night, the only guy that lost his composure was me, getting the technical foul. But our guys were very much focused. They know the importance of them staying on the floor. They know the importance of not giving points away. That was a big, big thing.” A big thing that gets bigger the longer this series goes, the stress compounding, the tests multiplying. As Joe Dumars told me when this series was still just a projection, it’s the time of year when teams are defined, a test unlike any other test. The Pistons haven’t always aced those tests. But this group of Celtics never has. And until they do, even their side has to wonder if they have it in them. http://truebluepistons.blogspot.com/ --

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