Some of the greatest performances in NBA history have come in elimination games. A player’s team is up against the wall, and he reaches down for that extra something; that push that will put his team over the top. In the spirit of the first elimination game of this Celtics/Cavs series, I took a similar route. I dug deep and scored an interview that was only possible thanks to the greatness of the NBA Playoffs. I sat down with Adam Cole-Kelly of VH-1’s Best Week Ever (and Cavs fan extraordinaire) to get his thoughts on the impending Game 6

Rich Levine: Adam, now that Doc seems dedicated to playing Rondo without Cassell-related interruptions, I feel like the Celtics chances are better than ever. As a Clevelander, where do you stand?

Adam Cole-Kelly: You know, it was intimidating enough going up against the Big Three, but i don’t know how we’re going to handle it now that Rondo has made it the… Bigger Four? Or is it the Four Leaf Scorers? Or maybe Rayjon Piernett? Whatever we call them, we’re going to have as much trouble containing them as I did coming up with a suitable nickname, and that’s a real double whammy. Rajon’s teardrops are so pretty and painful that they bring tear drops to my eyes.

Best Week Ever’s Adam Cole-Kelly and I are continuing our cutting edge coverage of the Celtics-Cavs series with a Game 5 preview. Well, I guess it’s probably more of a Game 5 review. You know what? I’ll just let Adam explain.

Adam Cole-Kelly: I don’t know if you guys ever buy stuff on ebay but I just scored a pretty sweet item recently: A fully functioning time machine. Amazingly my last minute bid of $45 did the trick. I guess most people were skeptical of its legitimacy. Suckers! Anyway, I just got it up and running this morning and my first order of business was clearly heading straight to tonight’s post-game press conference. When I got there I was saddened to discover that the Celtics had won Game 5 (being a foolish Cavs fan and all) so I returned to present day then went back to the press conference for a second time and lo and behold the Cavs had triumphed! Lucky for you all I captured excerpts from each press conference visit and would like to share them with you now. Also, I brought your faithful columnist Rich Levine along with me because I wanted to focus on Coach Brown’s comments and I figured he would be interested in what Doc had to say.

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Dr. Jon Niednagel-better known as Danny Ainge’s brain doctor. But with the second round of the playoffs in full swing I decided to reach out to Niednagel to see if he could help me get into the psyche of various Celtics and Cavs. He obliged and what follows are the inner monologues of various players in the hours after Saturday’s Game 3.

Underneath my own findings, our old friend Adam Cole-Kelly chimes in with some discoveries of his own. Turns out Ben Wallace’s dizzy spell and “inner ear infection” was actually caused by a chip ACK had placed in Wallace’s ear to relay his inner thoughts. Luckily said chip was contagious and it spread to all the other players granting him unprecedented access to their thoughts through the first three games of the series.

Rich Levine (Celtics fan):

Cleveland Cavaliers

Wally Szczerbiak: I have been shooting the lights out baby! I can’t wait to get home and watch how great I looked doing it on SportsCenter. You know, sometimes the shots just… ooh, look! I can kind of see my own reflection in that window. I look sharp.

There are lots of theories floating around out there as to why the Celtics are not winning on the road. From where I sit it comes down to one thing : aggression. When the Celtics play with passion and abandon on the defensive end it translates to their offense. When they shoot threes and settle for jump shots they become passive on the defensive end. In game three they still did a nice job of making Lebron’s life miserable, but forgot about everybody else. And the reason Boston didn’t have any free throw attempts with half of the second qtr gone was simply that they hadn’t done anything to make the officials blow the whistle. Refs in the playoffs tend to let teams play. You have to be extra aggressive to get a call, any call. The C’s have been that way at home not on the road. If they don’t get their defensive passion/aggression back tonite, we are in for another long series.

Rosalie
Waltham

Mike - I know it took a while to knock off Atlanta, but, why is it so easy for the press and broadcasters (not you or Tommy!), to
jump off the bandwagon of a team that has been so successful all year. Kevin Garnett is taking it on the chin from alot of these guys, and it just doesn’t seem fair. Nor does it seem right that PP has had such bad press also. I guess I take it personally when someone attacks the team they way they have this last week. Written by a die hard, long time
Celtic fan who watched Tommy play!!

Mike: Positive news unfortunately doesn’t sell newspapers or increase talk show ratings. Hopefully fans like yourself will have the last laugh.

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Scott Tomassetti
Rajon vs. Delonte

Back in seattle I can remember that Delonte kind of got the better of Rajon. How do you think that match up will go this series?
Personally, I think Rajon has grown so much since then that he might overwhelm delonte with his D. Delonte still needs to stay close to Delonte to keep him honest at the 3 pt line.

I trust Celtics general manager Danny Ainge, and I trust Celtics coach Doc Rivers. Still to this day, it amazes me how people were jumping down Ainge’s throat while he was in the midst of constructing a foundation for this team to be built on. You have to admit, when he came here, he was given a 100-year-old foundation that was destroyed by a one-man wrecking crew (Rick Pitino).

I know that Danny has made some unpopular moves in the past, especially when he traded forward Antoine Walker and guard Tony Delk to the Dallas Mavericks for center Raef LaFrentz, guard Jiri Welsch and forward Chris Mills during his inaugural 2003 campaign. But if you look back at it, he did what he needed to do; the combo of Walker and forward Paul Pierce was done, extinguished and downright tiresome. He also made a draft day trade in 2003 to get center Kendrick Perkins and point guard Marcus Banks from the Memphis Grizzlies.

In 2003, the trade of forwards Eric Williams and Kedrick Brown and center Tony Battie to the Cleveland Cavaliers for center Chris Mihm, guard Ricky Davis and salary dump Michael Stewart was deemed a fairly brilliant move. Davis at the time was a true scorer and still is, just not for us.

The following is a break down of the matchups between starters for Cleveland and Boston based on what we have seen during the regular season and the first two games of round 2.

Rondo/ West

Cleveland has left Rondo open on the perimeter to take jump shots, but Rondo has not taken the bait. West does a better job staying front of Rondo, but when West has to work around a pick he can get swallowed up by a bigger defender. At times Rondo will get in the air without a plan and it can lead to a turnover, but it is important that Doc let him be aggressive, because when the offense breaks down Rondo can create an opportunity about as well as anyone not named Kevin Garnett. It also makes an opponents defense pay more attention to him. West can be a good player, but he excels at secondary skills and is inconsistent with primary skills. West has done nothing against Boston in first two games, hitting a shot would be nice but there are too many possessions where West is just handing the ball off to Lebron and watching.

Advantage Heading into the Series - Rondo
Playoffs - Rondo

I got back in touch with Cavs-loving, Luke Ridnour look-a-liking Adam Cole-Kelly to get his thoughts on Game 2. Below, we each give a quick synopsis of Game 1, followed by two possible scenarios for tonight’s showdown. Also, like the cheap-shot taking Clevelander he is, Cole-Kelly used this arena to rip apart the moniker of Boston’s bloated prince: Glen “Big Baby” Davis.

Enjoy, and go C’s!

Rich Levine:

I suck at pool. But luckily for me, most of friends suck as well. Most of our games consist of drunken miscues, table scratches, the random behind the back attempt and someone, at some point, spilling their beverage onto the felt. It goes on forever until one of us accidentally knocks in the eight ball, putting myself, my opponent, the game, and anyone unlucky enough to be waiting for a table and watching the game out of their collective misery. Ladies and Gentleman, Game 1 of the Celtics-Cavs series.

WickedGoodSports.com & The Improper Bostonian’s Rich Levine brings you another installment of “The Dino Radja Experience.” On this week’s podcast, Rich is joined by Nick Altschuller, also of The Improper, and by special guest Adam Cole-Kelly, a writer for VH-1’s “The Best Week Ever”…and a delusional Cavs fan (sorry Adam, this is a Boston sports blog.) You can also check out Rich and Adam’s series preview.