“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.

This might be the last time we use this photo.

A year ago, before the C’s last game of the season, I wrote this sentimental little passage :

None of this is meant to kill the vibe in the room (Monday night’s game took care of that quite nicely). But it is a reminder to enjoy watching these guys tonight, no matter the result. There may yet be one final Rondo-to-Garnett alley oop left in them, one last ill-advised Davis jumpshot to draw your ire, one final demand from Doc that the team pick up the pace. And for all the scattered half-efforts and no-shows over the last four years, no final estimation of this era would be fair without recognizing how superb this group has played and the renaissance their assembly sparked for this franchise. And there remains the little matter of that seventeenth banner they hung up in the rafters.

In sports as with anything else, it seems like there’s never enough time with the things you love. And however wildly our opinions may vary about the importance of a group of multi-millionaires playing a game, it seems reasonable to assume that love is the word many of you would use to describe your feelings towards them. Because ‘millionaires playing a game’ doesn’t do it justice. It’s not even close.

Last night’s twin disasters (game six, the news on Avery Bradley) seem to have repositioned the Celtics’ playoff prospects in everyone’s minds. A series win over the Sixers is far from assured and even if they do advance, with Bradley out, Ray Allen a shell of himself and even Paul Pierce’s health in question, the C’s appear underequipped to stop Miami’s perimeter stars from getting to the rim. The C’s look like serious underdogs even if Chris Bosh isn’t able to play.

But I’m still feeling a sense of zen with this team because they’re playing with house money. With everything that’s gone wrong this (condensed) season, it’s impressive the Celtics are a win away from the Eastern Conference Finals. You could reasonably argue they’re already a success.

Whenever the season ends, we need to talk about Danny Ainge’s recent proclivity for assembling, or failing to disassemble, teams that fall apart healthwise, but we should spend as much time talking about Doc’s incredible facility taking patchwork teams beyond their capabilities. I don’t have to reiterate this point to regular readers of the site but the Celtics are a terrible offensive team. They have no business challenging for a spot in the finals. So, that feels good.

It’s not even clear this is the final year of this era. Sure, Allen seems like he may be destined for Miami or Chicago or the Clippers but as his game and health have faded this year, we’ve been going through a slow breakup with him. We’re ready for Bradley to take over next season and happy to let go of any errant OJ Mayo talk. There are no concerns about Doc Rivers this season. Speculation aside, we know Doc will be back next year. And for years after that. Paul Pierce is signed for two more seasons and his market may not be vibrant enough for Ainge to move him. Kevin Garnett seems destined to wear green next season or spend his days on Malibu Beach, swearing at homeless drug addicts and other celebrities.

So, bring game seven and bring the Heat. Or don’t. Either way, the C’s have overachieved this season versus expectations and the obstacles in front of them. If we’re talking about the offseason on Monday morning, there’s plenty of healthy debate to keep us all interested until October.

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.

There’s this thing in math called the Golden Ratio. You, of course, know The Golden Ratio as Ace of Base’s fifth album, but it’s also a relationship between two numbers that shows up all over the place in art and nature. It basically means that, for two numbers, the proportion of the sum to the larger number is equal to the proportion of the larger number to the smaller number. (Please don’t quit on me now.)

I don’t know how to do a square root in WordPress to show the whole equation, so let’s just agree that the Golden Ratio is about 1.62. It shows up in the facade of the Parthenon and, supposedly, in the geometric compositions of plants and animals, like this angelfish:

So it’s fitting that the Golden Ratio also applies to the ideal shot chart of a man who was named after a fish: Brandon Bass.

In last night’s breakout game, Bass took five long jumpers, three short jumpers, and five FGA at the rim, plus five more that led to shooting fouls. That’s a departure from a typical Brandon Bass outing: he usually takes more than twice as many jumpers (8.1 per game this season) as he does shots at the rim (2.6, although we don’t have numbers for the times he was fouled).

The year long ratio between Bass’s jumpers and FGA at the rim this season was 3.11. I submit that, for the rest of the playoffs, he should seek to make his jumpers/rim FGA exactly what it was last night: 8/5 = 1.6. The Golden Ratio, almost. So if he takes six jumpers, he should balance it out with about four attempts at the rim. If he takes 10, he needs to go to the rim at least six times. I’m talking about shot chart numbers, so none of these ratios include his rim attempts that draw a foul, meaning he should actually be going to the rim a few more times than that.

Attacking the rim more often suits Bass for a number of reasons. First: Rondo rewards cutters. Bass, like Bradley, is almost always the third or fourth option on the floor. Defenders will sag off him, especially because of hit reputation as a jump shooter. But last night he betrayed his defender’s trust by cutting to the rim several times, and he was paid in dunks.

Second: he can get there on his own. If Bass gets the ball within five feet of the rim, he’s mobile enough to put it on the ground and spin-bump his way into better position. He does this with such wild, reckless joy I wonder why he doesn’t more often.

Third: he has fat strength. Have you ever played basketball against an actual fat person? Not fat like that Sixer fan: just a really beefy dude. Because fat guys are really, really tough to defend at the rim. Their extra circumference gives the ball that much extra protection when they put the ball up, so you as a defender find yourself struggling to get your hands anywhere near the shot, even if you’re the same height as the big guy. If the dude has any level of finesse, he’s either dinking layups in uncontested or getting fouled.

Bass isn’t fat, per se. But he’s very, very broad. Look at his shoulder-to-shoulder width sometime: he’s built like a soda can. So when he’s in good position and he goes up strong at the rim, defenders on his shoulders can struggle to find the ball without slapping his arm, especially undersized guys like the ones peppering the Philly roster.

So for the reasons above, Bass should try to hit that 1.61 ratio when he divides his jumpers by his rim FGA after the game. Bass’s jumper is obviously important. Defenders need to account for it. It’s also so aesthetically kooky it’s travels full circle to beautiful: the leg kick, the full topside coverage of the left hand, the 110-degree lean his body takes in the air. So it’s important for a lot of reasons. But as the Stockton-Webber team pointed out many times last night, Bass’s rim work should give him more open looks on his jumper, as his jumper will likewise give him a little edge when he takes that one hard dribble to the rim.

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.