Now this is the series we had been waiting for.

The entire season fans were waiting for a match-up between Boston, a team that found a leprechaun by the name of McHale waiting for them last off-season, and Detroit, perhaps the most underrated team in the NBA this past decade . It seems that the Eastern Conference Finals are giving us everything we want. Now the question is can the Celtics achieve something that seemed to come so easily to them all regular season, win a single road game.

Don’t be confused. Nobody is asking the Celtics to become Mad Max, the road warrior. Still, you have to wonder if every stadium outside of Boston the team walks into comes off looking like the Thunderdome. And as good as the Celtics have been at home, now 8-1, the Pistons have been near equal to the task with a 7-1 home record themselves.

The oddest part of the whole situation is how certain the Celtics seemed to be that they could win sixteen home games in a single playoff, an accomplishment nobody has pulled off.  "We have no choice now but to get it done on the road," Paul Pierce said. Well, of course you are going to have to win on the road, Mr. Wizard! Even the 1996-97 Bulls, who steamrolled teams like perhaps no other, had to take a few at the other guy’s house. To imagine that any team could just hold serve at home without doing well, heck, not even well, average is about as ridiculous as thinking Chris Tucker will win an Academy Award for the next Rush Hour film he makes. (And dear God, you know he will make another one.)

So what will happen next? Allow me to play Miss Cleo for a moment. I won’t even charge you per minute. Detroit has been a buzzsaw the entire playoffs and certainly must be relishing the idea of playing the underdog in this series. It’s a look they worked perfectly against another team of superstars, the 2003 insane asylum that was the L.A. Lakers. But things won’t come so easily for the Pistons for one reason. Unlike a Laker team that had become fat on its own success, this Boston team is full of players that have not tasted any success in a Conference Final. It’s an X factor that the Pistons would be wise to not look past, otherwise they could very well be passing the torch sooner than they had expected.

Everything we see should lead us to believe this series is going seven games. We’ve seen role players step up as Rodney Stuckey did his best Mr. Big Shot impersonation. We have seen two of the greatest power forwards square off, and even seen a usually respectable Rip Hamilton pull a Bill Laimbeer move. (Props to the NBA for changing that foul to a flagrant by the way. There is no room for that, even in such a heated competition.) And yes, we have even seen Jesus Shuttlesworth get his groove back. The Celtics have got to like the fact that the Big Three all went off for 20+ last game.

While it may not be as simple as it seems, the way this series will go comes down to two keys. First, can Rajon Rondo be the man that the Celtics groomed him to be all season? He will have to be because the Sam Cassell experiment seems to have failed. If I am Celtics fan I am ripping my hair out at the timid nature Rondo shows any time he is within the free throw line. At the bar I kept hearing people say “Chris Paul or Tony Parker would have gone to the hole.” If Rondo doesn’t borrow a page from the Motown playbook of old and get some Zeke in him then the Celtics are done. (On a sidenote, I wonder if Isiah ever used the line “Got some Zeke in you” to any of the MSG staff. Let’s hope not.”)

The second key to the series is who will step up and take the big shots as the games go down to the wire, which they all will it seems. Chauncey Billups is still nursing a hamstring injury, and while Rasheed and Rip are solid shooters they are not as clutch or smart as Billups. Boston, on the other hand, has only seen one clutch individual effort in Paul Pierce’s display in game seven versus the Cavaliers. (Will people stop with the Nique-Bird comparison? It was nowhere near as exciting of a game or performance.) The irony of having three unselfish superstars is that when it comes crunchtime none of them seem to want the rock. This must change if the B Boys hope to make it out of the Eastern Conference, let alone win the trophy.

There are far too many questions left unanswered for us to play the role of “expert” and say who will win. Leave that to the likes of those who had the Jazz and Magic in the Finals. Geniuses. But one thing is certain, this is a series that has fans of the classic Eastern Conference match-ups of the 80s licking their lips.

In the end it will have one team’s fans hanging their heads.


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Photos Courtesy of cbc.ca and daylife.com, respectively