Boston Celtics

Game 7 emotions

By Gary Dzen

2 minutes to read

Kevin Garnett couldn’t sleep. Paul Pierce couldn’t wait to get to the Garden. Ray Allen couldn’t stop texting his teammates words of encouragment.

After beating the Hawks in Game 7, the Big Three don’t have to worry anymore.

“I’ve been up for damn near 24 hours just thinking about Game 6 and the things we needed to do tonight,” said Garnett. “I knew defensively, when we were going through walk-through, how we were going to be for the game.”

Pierce, who ended his first-round boycott of the media, said the team didn’t need any speeches.

“You kind of saw it from the guys after Game 6 on the plane,” said Pierce. “There wasn’t a lot of talking. We knew that we let a couple games get away in Atlanta, and I just knew we was going to take care of business tonight… I was telling everybody I was so happy that the game was at 1 o’clock because there was no way I could of sat at home today all day today because of my anxiousness to get back on the court after Game 6.”

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Kendrick Perkins noticed the change in the mood of the team.

“It was crazy,” he said. “You could see guys on their face, nobody was trying to go home. Ray told me that this was the most important game of his career.”

Allen, who has obsessive tendencies, thought a lot about the game.

“I wasn’t nervous,” said Allen. “I didn’t sleep last night, just because before I go to sleep I let go of everything that happened during the day. Last night I was just thinking so much about the game, and what I wanted to do, how I wanted to do it, and what we needed to do. About 12 p.m., I started to send text messages to my teammates. When I got here this morning, I had to ask to make sure my attempts weren’t futile. They were encouragement texts, just letting them know that I was over here thinking about what was going to happen today, on Sunday, so just making sure everybody knew about all the great things we have done all season.”

  • Pierce, who was fined $25,000 by the NBA for making a “menacing gesture” in Game 4 that some have interpreted as a gang sign, had this to say about his self-imposed silence:

    “I just didn’t want to be a distraction to what we were trying to accomplish,” he said. “I just need to take a step back to myself and not be a distraction to others and everything that was going on, on and off the court. I just didn’t want to bring that attention back on my team, so we could just focus on playing basketball.”

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