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LOS ANGELES: A 3,000-mile flight and short rest will test the Boston
Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers long before they meet each other in
Tuesday’s critical sixth game of the National Basketball
Association (NBA) finals.
The Lakers kept their championship hopes afloat
with a 103-98 victory here Sunday, pulling within three games to two
in the best-of-7 showdown to force a sixth game back in Boston,
where Game 7 would be played Thursday.
“It’s a terrible turnaround,” Celtics
coach Doc Rivers said. “Nothing you can do about it. Hell, it’s
a tough one. It’s as tough as you can have. Going west to east is
tough. Sleep patterns are messed up. There’s no way around it.”
Monday’s US coast to coast journey will keep
both teams from working out upon their arrival and challenge them to
regain peak levels in time for a game that could define their
careers.
“Both teams have the same issue so it could
come down to a game of mental toughness, who fights the fatigue
mentally better than the other group,” Rivers said.
The Celtics, who seek their first title since
1986 in a bid to stretch their all-time record to 17 NBA crowns,
were not helped by the long minutes played in game five by their key
players.
Scoring leader Paul Pierce, a top candidate for
NBA finals Most Valuable Player, played the whole game. His 38-point
performance will be important to repeat if the Celtics are to avoid
a one-game showdown for the crown Thursday.
“We will get a nice flight home, get in in the
evening and try to stay on schedule. I really don’t think about
it,” Pierce said. “That’s all you can do.
“Both teams will be ready come Tuesday.”
Ray Allen played 40 minutes Sunday and departed
quickly because one of his children was ill. Kevin Garnett and James
Posey went 33 minutes.
“I look forward to going home and playing,”
Garnett said. “It’s going to be like coming into the amazon,
into the jungle.
“The onus is on us. We’ve definitely got to
win in game six and come out and set our feet in the cement, so to
speak, establish something early and stay with it.”
The Celtics played Sunday without Kendrick
Perkins, sidelined by a sore left shoulder but confident he will
play in Game 6.
Spanish big man Pau Gasol of the Lakers will try
to play aggressive and physical inside, especially if Perkins is
hurting.
“Whether he plays or not we’re going to try
to be really physical and make sure we give it our best shot,”
Gasol said. “We try to be physical. We try to challenge them.”
The Lakers blew a 24-point lead in Game 4 and
squandered a 19-point edge in Game 5 but managed to recover the
second time to win.
“Thank God we don’t have a lead,” Jackson
told his team. “It’s important we don’t have something like
that because we just don’t know what to do with it anyway.”
But Gasol said holding off the Celtics gave the
Lakers a lift that helped erase the memory of one of the most brutal
chokes in NBA history.
“It was required to give our best intensity
and aggressiveness to be able to bounce back from that loss, painful
as it was,” Gasol said. “We played our hearts out. This win
definitely helped us to build our confidence back up.
“I know I didn’t want to see the Celtics
celebrating on my home floor with champagne and all that crap. I
definitely didn’t want to see that.”
-- AFP
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