“He’s having surgery today, so he’s out for the playoffs,” Rivers acknowledged.  ”It’s disappointing. Obviously, when a player goes down it’s disappointing, especially on what Avery has given us this year. His growth this year has been terrific. It’s been great. He’s become a very valuable piece to our basketball team.”

With Bradley out in the interim, Rivers talked about the chain effect missing his guard will have on his team’s lineup, especially against Philadelphia in particular.

“His ability to guard the best guard at the 1 or 2 has really taken so much pressure off [Rajon] Rondo in particular,” Rivers explained. “Without him, Rondo has to go back to that role and run the team, and that’s hard. That’s hard to do, especially against the team we are playing, who has two guards that attack. Rondo doesn’t have a lot of breaks [now]. That’s the way it is.”

Despite it all, Rivers is offering no excuses for this team heading into Game 7 tomorrow, who are dealing with their fourth season-ending injury of the season.

“We’ve been a team all year, stuff happens, you deal with it and you just move forward,” Rivers said. “That’s who we’ve been, and that’s who we need to be tomorrow.”

CH’s Take: The only new news out of the story is the fact Bradley is undergoing surgery so soon, which again signals just how severe the shoulder injury had become for Avery. For now though, the onus stay on Rondo, Ray Allen, Mickael Pietrus and Keyon Dooling (who is missing practice today home sick) to contain Philadelphia’s explosive backcourt. Doc made adjustments in pick and roll coverage in Game 3 which helped a lot, but the Sixers have countered, bringing themselves back to tie the series at three games a piece.

I guess my biggest question here is whether Doc will go deeper into his bench for Game 7 to look for a defensive spark, if his regular rotation aren’t able to contain Holiday, Williams, and Turner themselves. We saw a couple minutes of Marquis Daniels in Game 6, and both he and Sasha Pavlovic are big and able defenders on the bench who should be able to guard the likes of Evan Turner while out there. On his home floor, especially if Keyon is not at full strength, I’m curious to see whether Daniels (the most likely candidate) gets another shot. Either way though, Allen, Rondo and company are going to have to do a better job  than they did in Game 6 of keeping Holiday and Williams out of the paint.

Yet, despite the 17 turnovers and the 33.3 percent shooting the Celtics were still right there last night. After falling behind by 11 with 3:15 remaining, the Celtics strung together a quick 7-2 over the next 90 seconds, pulling them within six points with 1:40 remaining. After squandering an offensive rebound, Boston eventually got the stop they needed and had the ball down 6 with 52 seconds remaining. They would need to play perfect basketball the rest of the way to have a chance to tie, but they still had a chance.

From there, they went to a pretty familiar play, that you likely recognized. In fact, it’s a play they’ve had tremendous success in using at the Wells Fargo Center over the past few years, as seen here. The play starts as the video begins at 29 seconds, but feel free to watch the whole thing……it’ll make you feel better.

Over the years, the Celtics have gone to this Pierce/Allen pick and roll a lot, with Ray Allen slipping to the wing after a pick from a C’s big man. However, they started doing it so much and so well that teams started accounting for it. Check it out as seen in this game from 2010 against the Lakers, where Lamar Odom slipped off Kevin Garnett to challenge the Allen shot after the pick from KG:

So what did the Celtics do last night, when trailing by six points? They went back to old reliable, this time with a simple adjustment. Instead of running the pick and roll to the right, they sneakily ran it to the left side at the top of the key, and this time had Allen roll to the right wing. The result? A wide-open look, that would have made it a one possession game with 40 seconds remaining.

Now, even if Allen makes this shot, the Celtics’ still likely fall in this game. Boston would have needed another stop, and another 3 just to tie the final 40 seconds. Possible, but certainly not probable the way Boston was shooting all night.

If anything, this just goes to show you the value of a minor adjustment or twist to a play that will throw your opponent off guard. Boston has run this pick-and-roll set hundreds of times over the last five years probably, but that’s one of the first time I can remember them having Pierce take the pick to the left side of the floor (not his comfort zone) to get Ray open on the right wing. Nonetheless, despite the Sixers almost surely seeing this play on video, the subtle change to the setup alignment was enough to get Ray the wide open look.

Like 66.7 percent of the shots Boston had in Game 6, it didn’t fall. The good looks were there though for a lot of the game for this jump-shooting team. They just have to hope they will be there again for Game 7, and this time not rely on them so much.

How bad had it gotten for Bass? A guy who had averaged 33.8 minutes per game and 13 ppg in the regular season? Before Game 5, the former LSU star had played a grand total of 13 seconds of a fourth quarter against Philadelphia in Games 1-4 combined. It should also be noted those 14 seconds were at the end of game 4, when Philly had already secured the win. That’s four playoff games where a guy who had been a pretty integral part of the team’s regular season success didn’t even have a chance to see the floor in crunch time. For this entire series, Doc had been sending him out for a few minutes of the third quarter and that was that.

Now, I’m not attacking Doc for this. Besides the fourth quarter of Game 4, all of his decisions involving Bass were defensible. Still, it makes you wonder whether Bass had some frustration brewing heading into last night, a game where the team desparately needed his additional offensive punch and some improved defense to get over the top with Avery Bradley sidelined. After the game, Bass reflected on how he responded to the late-game benchings.

“With the leadership we have on this team,” Bass continued. “These guys encourage you to work hard, get your shots up, and watch more film and I took heed to it. I saw where I was open and I saw where I could be better on defense and it led to me being better tonight.”

And had there been any frustration building up over these past four games with the reduced court time? (just 24 minutes per game this series). The bait was laid out for Bass right there but he didn’t come close to biting.

“I wasn’t really frustrated,” Bass explained. “I trust Doc and his coaching ability. For me, I just stay ready and on a night like tonight, I was able to help.”

So simple, yet so refreshing to hear. And that’s the great thing about this team right now. You have a bunch of guys that know their roles, stay patient, don’t make excuses and don’t show frustration. Bass didn’t get down about his benching, he just took it as a cue to play harder and smarter.

The same goes for Greg Stiemsma last night. While he was spotty on the defensive end at times, the Steamer responded to a DNP-CD in Game 4 with 10 crucial points in Game 5 on 5-of-5 shooting, including eight big points in the first half which helped keep Boston in the game at the time.

Bass and Stiemsma are terrific representatives of the locker room makeover this team experienced in the offseason that is paying extreme dividends now. Instead of dealing with big egos and guys seeking attention, you have players committed to a team concept and also a couple bench guys whose voices are respected and heard in that locker room as Bass explained:

“At half, we were struggling defensively, Doc didn’t think we were playing for each other,” Bass said. “Then Reverend Dooling stepped up and gave us a little sermon and let us know we had to play for each other and in the second half we decided to do it.”

That’s a pretty tough locker room to be heard in, but Keyon is obviously a guy who has that cache. You can’t put a price on that on this kind of veteran team. A guy like Dooling getting through to the likes of Ray Allen and Paul Pierce as well as the younger guys in Bass and Rajon Rondo. That says a lot.

Brandon, like the rest of his teammates, is buying in though. He isn’t getting caught up in individual accolades either. After scoring a season-high 27 points and setting a postseason high for most points scored in a quarter in the NBA this season, Bass was given the opportunity to reflect on the accomplishment.

“I haven’t thought too much about. For me, it’s hard work. My motto is God, grind and greatness and grinding is what got me to this point and it’s what I’m going to continue to do.”

That grinding mantra has been the rallying cry of the Celtics, since they turned around their season at the All-Star Break. And now, thanks to Bass and company they have a chance to ride it into the Eastern Conference Finals.

Game 5
Sixers @ Celtics
7:00 PM EST
TNT
TD Garden

Offensive Efficiency:
Boston: 95.4 points per 100 possessions (11th)
Philadelphia: 96.6 points per 100 possessions (10th)

Defensive Efficiency:
Boston: 90.6 points allowed per 100 possessions (1st)
Philadelphia: 92.8 points allowed per 100 possessions (4th)

Probable Sixers Starters: Jrue Holiday (PG), Evan Turner (SG), Andre Iguodala (SF), Elton Brand (PF), Spencer Hawes (C)

View From The Opposing Bench: Philadunkia

Thumbnail: Avery Bradley is out of the lineup with two sore shoulders, meaning Ray Allen gets his first start of the postseason. Don’t take Bradley’s absence as as a sign Doc will reach further into the bench though, as Doc indicated those extra minutes would be split between Keyon Dooling and Mickael Pietrus. 

For Game 5, I joined Chris Forsberg over at ESPNBoston to break down what to expect tonight. Here’s a sampling of what we covered in our game of 2-on-2. You can check out the full post at ESPNBoston

2. What else will you be focused on in Game 5?

Robb: The lineup choices. Rivers and his staff had their first major hiccup of the postseason by riding their small lineup into the group against a larger Philadelphia front line featuring Lavoy Allen and Thaddeus Young in the fourth quarter of Game 4. The fact Rivers admitted as much in practice on Sunday has to be encouraging, but now that the Sixers have seemingly found the best counter to Boston’s smaller lineup in the Allen/Young duo, the question now is what adjustment will Rivers make with his troops. Does Brandon Bass start to see the floor in the fourth quarter now? And if so, who sits in crunch time for Boston, Avery Bradley or Ray Allen? There will be lots of decisions to be made with no easy answers, as the stakes increase for Game 5.

Forsberg: It really is an intriguing little chess match developing between Doug Collins and Rivers in regards to small lineups. For the first three games of the series, the Celtics went small to counter when the 76ers did the same, often operating with four guards (some combination of Rajon Rondo, Bradley, Paul Pierce, Allen, and Mickael Pietrus) along with one big (Kevin Garnett or Ryan Hollins). With the 76ers utilizing Young at the 4, the Celtics would pull Bass off the floor and hope that a smaller guard could neutralize Young’s versatility. Over the first three games, that strategy worked. But it crumbled in Game 4, the 76ers making their runs against Boston’s small unit and exploits the lack of size in the paint (particularly with the combination of Young and Allen). Will the Celtics flirt with staying big when the 76ers go small on Monday? Was Game 4 the outlier? Rivers admits it’s going to be a decision made on the fly and it will likely determine how Game 5 — and maybe this entire series — plays out.