Sports Redux: Keep On Sluggin'

We wish we'd thought of this first: the perfect metaphor for these Eastern Conference Finals. Everybody's exhausted, everybody keeps fighting, and everyone streaming out of the Garden last night felt like they just went 15 rounds with a giant chicken. Yes, really.

But in the end, it's the Celtics with a 3-2 lead after last night's 106-102 knock-down, drag-out, stomach-punch Game Five. And with the Celtics' bench almost completely useless, they had to turn to the Big Five (Rondo and Perk get elevated for today; more in a minute), who played a combined 87% of all available minutes and need a week in Bimini more than they need a trip back to Detroit. But it is what it is.

It's hard to name a star of the game. Kendrick Perkins played way out of his head, scoring 18 points and 16 rebounds (he was outrebounding the entire Piston team until mid-3rd quarter). Rondo couldn't find the basket with a map (3-for-14), but he kept finding teammates who could, racking up 13 assists. Paul Pierce had a quiet 16. Ray Allen was 5-of-6 from 3-point land (29 total) and may have finally disposed of that chucker who was wearing his jersey for the last month. And Kevin Garnett mixed a little more inside-game to his game (but not enough, which kills us), leading all scorers with 33.

The game had no flow. One team would get a lead, the other would come back. In the first half, it was the Celtics who looked sluggish. In the third quarter, the C's built it up to a 17-point lead after a Ray three and two Perk free throws. But Richard Hamilton kept scoring, and Rasheed Wallace kept draining improbably 3's, and Rodney Stuckey had a scoring flurry that cut it to 102-101 with eight seconds to go. Thankfully, Ray and KG hit their free throws, and everyone could breathe again. And get ready to go to Detroit and hopefully finish this thing off.

The Onion profiles Paul Pierce. We laughed.

In other NBA news, the league has admitted that they screwed San Antonio by not calling a foul at the buzzer. Well, that's awfully nice of them. So the Spurs are even from the terrible refereeing that helped them against Phoenix last year, and the Lakers are happy beneficiaries. Who would have guessed that? Also, the Spurs era is over if the league is serious about fining floppers next year. Rasheed Wallace has some peppery opinions about the matter, but it's hard to tell whether he's talking about the patented Richard Hamilton drive-jerk-flail move or the Chauncey Billups kick-the-legs-out 3-pointer move he used on Rondo last night. Maybe the details are hidden in the bleeps.

The Red Sox have to be rooting for the Celtics to keep winning, since it pushes them down to the bottom of roundup columns. Tim Wakefield pitched a complete-game five-hitter, only to see his teammates completely inept, managing just two singles off Seattle's Erik Bedard and J.J. Putz. Unfortunately, one of the five Mariner hits was a home run by Yuniesky Betancourt, and Wake gets a brutal 1-0 loss on his record. The Sox can't get off the West Coast fast enough; they'll swing by Baltimore where Josh Beckett will try to stop the bleeding tomorrow night.

Pittsburgh learned a happy lesson in the Stanley Cup Finals; score, and you might win. Shut out for two games in Detroit, the Penguins rode the backs of whiz kid Sidney Crosby to a 3-2 win and tightened the series to 2-1 Red Wings.

AP photo by Elise Amendola.