I'm going to have to keep tonight's post short.  It's after midnight, I'm exhausted, and I have to get up for work early in the morning.  Watching the Doc Rivers-lead Celtics blow a 17-point lead  in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals will take a lot out of a guy.  To all my fans I apologize, but we'll be bringing the heat for Game 6.

Anyway, if we've learned two things from tonight's game it's that Doc Rivers is still a terrible coach, and we need our role players to step up if we want to close this series out.   

Although Boston went into the 4th up by 13, you would never have known it from the way they played.  Frantic, out of control, sloppy, lazy, etc etc etc...  pretty much a mirror of Game 3.  We had no trouble maintaining our leads during the regular season, but here in the playoffs we suddenly start playing like we're behind once we build a decent lead.  That falls squarely on the coach.  He needs to calm his guys down and stick to a game plan.  It's embarrassing to watch our team crumble once Detroit starts pressuring the ball and double-teaming our guards.  We've had 4 days to develop a counter-attack to this since Game 3... let's get on it Doc.

Also, the officiating was terrible tonight.  Absolutely abysmal... keeping pace with the crew from the Lakers-Spurs game.  The flagrant on PJ, the Technical on Perk, the foul on PJ when he broke up the alley-oop, the foul on Pierce on Stuckey's jumper, the way their pressure D is manhandling our ballhandlers... no consistency or logic behind these calls.  It's pointless to complain about it, but this is the Conference Finals... let's get our act together out there and stop trying to decide the game with the whistle.

OK, negatives aside... we're ONE WIN AWAY FROM GOING TO THE FINALS!!!!! 

BOXSCORE 

Our defense was just OK tonight, but our offense finally showed some life.  Pierce had another solid game with 15-5-6.  KG was dominant again, leading Boston with 33 points and grabbing 7 boards.  Rondo had a poor shooting night, going 3-14, but scored  7 points, grabbed 6 rebounds and had 13 assists (which is 1 more than we had as a team during Game 4), plus 4 steals.  Ray Allen came up HUGE for Boston tonight (on offense at least), netting 5 three's on his way to 29 points.  His defense was pretty terrible, basically letting Rip have his way with him for most of the night, but Ray hit a big jumper down the stretch and sealed the win with a couple free-throws.  Let's just hope he can string 2 solid games together.

MVC:   Kendrick Perkins!! He looked like Shaq at a CYO game tonight, just dominating the weaker Pistons.  Perk showed flashes of offensive brilliance, played his usual solid defense and just grabbed every rebound in sight.  Van Gundy (ESPN announcer) was joking that they were only going to announce rebounds that Perk DIDN'T grab, because he was so dominant on the boards.  His final line was (and I'm not making this up) 18 points (8-11 shooting), 16 rebounds, 2 blocked shots and 2 steals.  He even nailed both of his free-throw attempts.  He was too strong, too determined and too Beastual (I know it's not a word... just go with it) for Detroit tonight.  The announcing crew was trying to come up with a nickname for him tonight -- they decided on KP-43... LAME!!  Here's my suggestion: Perkenstein.  See what I did there?  It's like Frankenstein, but I've replaced "Frank" with "Perk".  Pretty clever, no?  Oh, no?  Well, it's late and I'm tired, so cut me some slack...

Lastly, despite doing everything we could to hand Detroit tonight's game (with a huge assist coming from the guys in gray), our wiley vets held on and walked off the court one win away from reaching the Finals.  If I was Doc I would hammer that home to our guys every second from now until Game 6 tipoff.  One win away from the Finals...  One win away from the Finals... One win away from the Finals... We need Perk, Rondo and especially Ray to come up big for us once again if we expect to steal Game 6 at the Palace, but if tonight was any indication, they just may pull it off.

Oh, one more thing... if you missed it, KG absolutely posterized former Celtic-great Theo Ratliff.