Re: the 2 story lines of game 2

Rajon Rondo took center stage in the 2012 Eastern Conference Finals last night.

As Celtic Nation continues to digest last night's thrilling and ultimately heartbreaking 115-111 overtime loss to the Miami Heat, two dominant story lines have emerged.  Let's take a look.

Story line no. 1:  How about that Rajon Pierre Rondo??

In this morning's Boston Herald, Steve Bulpett described it as "the best performance of a young career now littered with triple-doubles and other such statistical finery."  Today on Twitter, self-styled franchise historian Bill Simmons upped the ante, anointing it "one of the greatest Celtic performances ever."  But none other than Earvin "Magic" Johnson gave higher praise than Bulpett or Simmons during last night's post-game analysis on ESPN, calling Rondo's 44-10-8 one of the greatest performances he'd ever seen.  Period.  And he reiterated that opinion via tweet.

Excuse me for being a bit of a Debbie Downer, but I think we all need to take a deep breath here.

"Are you serious right now, Earvin?"

A few short weeks ago, you'll recall that another Celtic was grabbing headlines after stuffing the stat sheet in a hard-fought game 2 on the road.  Paul Pierce's 36-14-4 lifted his team to an 87-80 victory in Atlanta against the always-pesky Hawks, and we all bowed down at the Captain's feet.  For the umpteenth time in his Hall-of-Fame career, we touted no. 34's greatness, and we all said the same thing: It wasn't just that Paul delivered, but that he delivered when the opposition knew he had to.  Joe Johnson & co. knew Paul was going to take the reigns of the C's offense in the wake of Rondo's one-game suspension.  They saw the flurry of step-backs, fade-aways and pull-up threes coming like a menacing funnel cloud on the horizon, but they were just as defenseless as those poor cows in Twister.

It's safe to say that the Heat didn't see Rondo's performance last night coming.  Not in the way it did.

Erick Spoelstra can claim that he's "tried almost everything" to stop our quirky point guard all he wants, but that's utter bologna.  (Pardon my salty language!)  Like every other team the Celts face, the Heat have rarely considered respecting Rondo's jump shot -- and last night, he finally made them pay.  Rondo set a new career high not because he annihilated the Heat with an all-time great performance; at the heart of it, Rondo thrived by doing all the things he normally does well, while adding an NBA-caliber J.  If teams defended Chris Paul like they routinely defend Rondo, he'd pull a 1962 Wilt and average 50 a night.  More to the point, if CP3 ever scored 44 in the same fashion Rondo did, we wouldn't be calling it an all-time great performance; we'd be questioning Spoelstra's sanity for letting him get so many clear looks at the basket.

So I'm sorry, Magic, but Jeff Van Gundy and Mike Breen's calls of "That's a practice shot"; "Well again, Chalmers is giving him a cushion..."; and "An open jumper -- hits it again!" aren't exactly going to find a place in the annals of NBA lore alongside, say, "Oh!  A spectacular move by Michael Jordan!"

However...

Don't be sad -- I'm going somewhere with this!

The big-picture importance of Rondo's game last night is the glimmer of hope it provides that maybe -- just maybe -- teams won't get away with defending Rondo like they currently do indefinitely.  And that's a hugely positive development for the outlook of the post-Big 3 Boston Celtics.

I realize that the tone of the last few paragraphs could lead you to believe otherwise, so let me say on the record that I love Rajon Rondo.  Loved watching him grow into an All-Star in '08 and '09, even as Danny Ainge demonstrated a shortage of confidence in "his guy" by signing the likes of Sam Cassell and Stephon Marbury.  Loved watching him lead the charge to the Finals in '10 and play through that brutal elbow injury last spring.  And I want to believe in the notion that Rondo will be the centerpiece of the next chapter in Celtic history after the Truth-Jesus-Ticket troika rides off into the sunset.  But I've never been 100% convinced it will work.

It's not that I don't think Rondo can be the best player on a contending team -- he has been for the last several years, after all -- but the holes in his game have always been gaping enough to make you wonder whether the C's might bottom out quickly as the rebuilding process begins in earnest.  Rondo's personality being what it is, you then have to wonder how quickly no. 9 might wear out his welcome in the locker room as the losses pile up and the frustration mounts.  If, however, Rondo can shoot the ball half as confidently and competently as he did last night on a consistent basis, my fears go out the window.  Rondo immediately lifts his ceiling to the level of the league's all-time great point guards, and he enters Chris Paul/Steve Nash territory.  That is, with Rondo on our side, we'll never be out of the playoff hunt -- regardless of the quality of his supporting cast.  And no, that's not something you could ever say about Paul Pierce, or Kevin Garnett.

The future, however, is the future, and we're here now -- how Zen! -- which brings us to story line no. 2:  How about these conspiracy theories??

Nope; they're both Paul.

Sure, you can still make a few bucks off the cockeyed story, but Sir Paul McCartney did not die in a car crash in 1966 (over 30 years before he got the "Sir").

Similarly, you can drown yourself in a sea of anecdotal speculation, but there was a one-in-five chance going into last night's NBA draft lottery that everyone would say the thing was rigged (New Orleans odds + Brooklyn odds).

And finally, you can get just as angry as you want, but there is no David Stern-orchestrated, referee-executed conspiracy against our beloved Boston Celtics.

To be clear: you can get just as angry as you want (as if you were waiting for permission).  The no-call on LeBron's swipe across Rondo's face in overtime, for instance, definitely got me steamed, too.  That potential four-point swing might have been the difference in the outcome of the game.  But if you honestly think that somewhere, the commissioner was laughing maniacally in his evil lair as it happened, you might need a swift punch in the face from Buzz Aldrin (who I'm fairly certain did, in fact, walk on the Moon).

If you can't get past the prospect of some level of conspiracy, however, you might try to frame your perspective with the words of the like-minded Chuck Klosterman, who wrote the following in his endlessly entertaining 2004 book of essays on pop culture, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs:

...This is what sets the NBA apart from every other team sport in North America: Everyone who loves pro basketball assumes it's a little fixed.  We all think the annual draft lottery is probably rigged, we all accept that the league aggressively wants big market teams to advance deep in the playoffs, and we all concede that certain marquee players are going to get preferential treatment for no valid reason.  The outcomes of games aren't predetermined or scripted, but there are definitely dark forces who play with our reality.  There are faceless puppet masters who pull strings and manipulate the purity of justice.  It's not necessarily a full-on conspiracy, but it's certainly not fair.  And that's why the NBA remains the only game that matters: Pro basketball is exactly like life.

So the question becomes: What do you do when life knocks you down?  The answer: You get right back up again.  (They're never gonna keep you down!)

Or, in this case specifically, you summon all the grit and balls (© Kevin Garnett) you can muster, and you lock in on the task of evening this series in front of the best and rowdiest home crowd in the league.

LeBron?  Dwyane?  Udonis Haslem?  (What a gamer THAT guy is, by the way.)

See you tomorrow night at the Garden.  Come prepared for a bar fight.

Don't worry, Paul.  You'll hear us.