BOSTON — On a night when the Boston Celtics looked to be 20
points better — heck, maybe even more — than the Los Angeles Lakers, the lead
was down to a precarious five points with 39 seconds left when the signature
play of Game 5 of the NBA Finals unfolded.

Kevin Garnett was inbounding from the sideline in the backcourt,
there were 20 seconds left on the shot clock, and the Lakers were pressing
man-to-man all over the court as Garnett was handed the ball.

Suddenly, Paul Pierce sprinted from the foul line closest to
Garnett and headed for the frontcourt, and Garnett fired a high-arching lead
pass toward where Pierce was heading. Pierce and Derek Fisher jumped
simultaneously, and the taller of the two caught the ball. Pierce quickly spun
toward the Celtics’ basket as he was falling out of bounds, rifling a bullet
pass toward Rajon Rondo as he made a beeline to the basket.

Rondo caught it and converted it into a layup, and a scoreless
spell that had lasted 3 minutes and 21 seconds was finally over.

Not one guy, but three, had cooperated on the biggest clutch play
of the game.

Quite fitting on a night when the Celtics were every bit the
better team than the Lakers in winning 92-86, no matter how breathless Kobe
Bryant had left everyone with one of his own signature hot streaks.

And even as Doc Rivers was conceding that the Celtics probably
need to capture Game 6 in Los Angeles on Tuesday night to win banner No. 18, he
was confessing that he was silently wishing Garnett had called Boston’s final
timeout instead of throwing that long pass to Pierce.

“Honestly, I would have rather had the timeout, because I
thought Kevin’s pass was a hard pass. He saw something that clearly I didn’t
see, but Paul made a catch, and the other thing we told them was to keep playing
through the catch. Don’t stop and hold the ball. Play and attack, and if we get
a layup, we’ll take it,” Rivers said.

The layup accounted for the final two of Rondo’s 18 points on a
night when the Celtics had four players reach double figures to the Lakers’ two
— Bryant with 38 and Pau Gasol with 12.

Rondo also had eight assists, but his seven turnovers were a large
part of the reason that the Celtics — despite a shooting percentage that was
well above 60 percent for almost the entire 48 minutes — still had a game on
their hands in the final minute.

Garnett was “sensational,” in Rivers’ words, with 18
points, 10 rebounds, five steals and two blocks, and Pierce (27 points) kept
pace with Bryant until No. 24 flew past him by scoring the Lakers’ first 19
points of the third quarter.

This victory looked to be in the bag (“Gino Time,” as
they call it in Beantown) after Rondo came flying out of nowhere to tip in a
missed shot with 3:56 left to make it 87-75, but Boston went cold. A turnover,
then six consecutive missed shots — three of them 3-pointers — along with two
clanked foul shots by Kendrick Perkins.

And the Lakers crept closer.

“I thought in the fourth quarter we tried to hold on to the
game and didn’t go get the game. We stopped playing the way we had for three
quarters,” Rivers said. “We can’t do that in L.A.”

The June gloom that blankets the California coast every morning at
this time of year will be a welcome sight to the Lakers after a week spent in
this chilly, drizzly, foggy city, where they had seemed to seize momentum with
their Game 3 victory Tuesday night.

But momentum has been a tricky thing to grab and hang on to in
this series, and Boston now seems to possess it after becoming the first team
to win consecutive games.

The Celtics’ collective energy was head and shoulders above the
Lakers’ throughout the evening (except for Bryant’s third quarter), and from a
tactical standpoint, a precision standpoint, an execution standpoint, Boston
was just flat-out better. But the C’s were sloppy at times and knock-kneed
toward the end, allowing Los Angeles to stay within reach on a night when the
Lakers’ turnover total (14) surpassed their number of assists (12).

“I thought we had a spirited locker room at the end of our
[postgame] session there,” said Lakers coach Phil Jackson, whose 47-0
record when his team wins Game 1 of a best-of-seven series is in jeopardy.
“They had a couple things fall into place, and we felt pretty good about
our comeback and the way we played at the end of the game.

“We’re upbeat about going into [Game 6].”

If there is a stretch the Lakers can point to as the one in which
this game was lost, it would be the third quarter, when the Celtics scored on
11 of their first 12 possessions to neutralize what Bryant was doing in hitting
shots from all angles with varying degrees of difficulty.

For more than a week, Rivers had been hammering home the point
that a Kobe moment was going to happen and that the Celtics were going to have
to withstand it.

That they did, but it was an uncomfortable final four minutes
until the Garnett-to-Pierce-to-Rondo play gave them some breathing room.

“I was just showing off my Randy Moss and my Tom Brady in one
play, that’s all,” said Pierce, who had his most sustained 48-minute
offensive effort of the series. “Going up to catch it, then I went to my
Brady mode when I was falling out of bounds to find Rondo on the receiving end.
It was all instinctive.”

When the Celtics are playing on instincts and in a groove, they
are as good as it gets in the NBA.

And on this night, as he had done three nights earlier, Rivers had
them as tuned in and focused as they had been since the second round of the
playoffs, when they battled back from a 2-1 deficit to eliminate LeBron James
and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Rondo’s bucket off the pass from Pierce gave Boston a 14-3
advantage in fast-break points, which more than compensated for the Celtics’
deficits in 3-point shooting (the Lakers had seven to Boston’s three),
second-chance points (L.A. had a 22-14 edge) and free throws (the Celtics made
just nine, the Lakers 17).

“Bottom line is, when they won Game 3, from that point on we
felt every next game is a must-win. Each game is a Game 7,” Rivers said.
“We said it in Game 4, we said it today and we’ll say it again. That’s how
we have to approach the game. We lost our wiggle room by losing [Game 3].”

They almost lost their wiggle room Sunday, too.

But with that long pass from Garnett to Pierce, and that
subsequent bullet from Pierce to Rondo, the Celtics finished this job.

But their work is not done, and the Lakers — as banged up and
short-handed as they might be — are not scared.

Game 6 will have a different dynamic, and the panic that is being
felt in Los Angeles right now will transfer to the East Coast if the Lakers
take the next one. And if you are purely a basketball fan, you should hope they
do. (Via ESPN)