Jonathan Lee    AccuScore Analyst
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Clearly Boston is the better team having taken five of six games from Los Angeles this season.  Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen might as well get sized for their championship rings now, and they have earned that right.  They can close out the series Sunday on the Lakers’ home floor, and if that doesn’t happen they would still have two chances to win in Boston.  Every team in NBA history with a 3-1 advantage in the Finals has gone on to win the series.  The 2008 Celtics will be no different.  AccuScore simulations project Boston as an overwhelming 90 percent favorite to win one of the next three games.

L.A. had a 21 point lead at the end of the first quarter, the largest such lead in history.  And yet, the Celtics kept their cool and continually chipped away.  The deficit ballooned to 24 at one point, and remained at 20 during the third quarter. Rajon Rondo was ineffective because of his ankle injury suffered in the previous contest, and Kendrick Perkins had to leave the game as well due to a shoulder injury.  Even without two starter, the Celtics methodically made their comeback with stifling defense.  The Laker bench scored zero points after halftime while James Posey and Eddie House scored 29 points combined.  The pair was continually open for short corner three-pointers, and hit six shots from distance.  The bench has decided every game in this series.  Sam Cassell and P.J. Brown stepped up in Game 1.  Leon Powe was tremendous in Game 2.  Sasha Vujacic was the man on Tuesday, and Thursday it was time for Posey and House to shine.

What is there even to say about the performance of the Lakers in the final three quarters?  The entire team collapsed, and lacked the poise and mental fortitude to put the Celtics away.  Kobe Bryant never found his shot and ended just 6-19 from the field.  The frontcourt of Pau Gasol, Lamar Odom, and Vladimir Radmanovic that was so dominant in the opening 12 minutes vanished and played timid basketball the rest of the way.  The Lakers were flat out-hustled and out-played by Boston.  Sometimes it is just as simple as that.

This game will forever be etched in NBA history, and will go down as one of the greatest games in New England sports lore.  The loss will forever be etched in the hearts and minds of the Lakers and their fans forever.  Everything was there for the taking for L.A.  An easy win Thursday would have given them all the momentum heading into Sunday’s Game 5.  A win in the final contest at home would have given them two shots to win the franchise’s fifteenth championship.  All of that disappeared in a flash, and instead Garnett, Pierce, Allen and the Celtics will hang a record seventeenth banner in the Garden.