Cavs: With C’s coming to town on WED, recent playoff memories come to mind

On Wednesday, March 17, the Boston Celtics will be coming to Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. The Celtics just played the night before at home against the best team in the NBA, the Utah Jazz, in a nationally televised game, and lost a close one. Meanwhile, the Cleveland Cavaliers also have just played on Tuesday night, as they were in South Beach taking on the Miami Heat; albeit they lost via wider margin.

Right now, the Celtics sit in sixth place in the Eastern Conference with a record of 20-19, while the Cavaliers sit in 13th place with a record of 14-25. Even with a record of 14-25, the Cavs are still in a position to possibly make a run for the play-in, in theory, though.

Speaking of the play-in and more so, the playoffs, when Cleveland and Boston meet up it usually produces fireworks.

In that realm, with the C’s coming to Cleveland to face the Cavs on Wednesday, recent playoff memories come to mind.

The 2008 Eastern Conference Semifinals and the 2018 Eastern Conference Finals immediately come to mind.

After the 2007 season, it looked like the Cavs were going to rule over the Eastern Conference with an iron fist. But the Celtics decided to mix things up and make things much more interesting, as they made two significant trades as they acquired Kevin Garnett from the Minnesota Timberwolves and Ray Allen from the Seattle SuperSonics (who should still be in the league).

The Cavaliers tried to counter that somewhat in-season, by making their own trades to acquire Ben Wallace and Joe Smith from the Chicago Bulls as well as Delonte West and Wally Szczerbiak from Seattle.

These two new-look teams would ultimately square off in an epic seven-game series for the right to play against the Detroit Pistons in the Eastern Conference Finals. Six out of the seven games in the series didn’t make it into triple digits and were close games. The only exception was Game 3 in Cleveland when the Cavs blew out Boston 108-84 at Quicken Loans Arena. The others ended up being as follows:

• Game 1: Celtics 76 Cavaliers 72
• Game 2: Boston 89 Cleveland 73
• Game 4: Cleveland 88 Boston 77
• Game 5: Boston 96 Cleveland 89
• Game 6: Cavaliers 74 Celtics 69
• Game 7: Celtics 97 Cavaliers 92

In Game 7 of that 2008 second-round series, it was an absolute duel between two future Hall of Famers, as Paul Pierce of the Celtics and LeBron James of the Cavaliers were going back-and-forth, blow-for-blow. It felt like every time James made a big play for the Cleveland Cavaliers, Pierce would come right back down and make a big play of his own for the Boston Celtics.

LeBron scored 45 points for Cleveland and Paul scored 41 points for Boston. By the way, the reason it says future Hall of Famers is because Pierce was named as a Hall of Fame finalist this year (he should get in no problem) and LeBron, well, there’s not much that needs to be said.

From there, before the 2018 Eastern Conference finals, the Cavs and Celtics would meet in the first round of the 2015 playoffs. The Cavaliers would sweep the Celtics in that series, however, Game 4 in Boston was when Kelly Olynyk popped out Kevin Love’s shoulder and perhaps cost the Cavs the opportunity to get back-to-back titles (although losing Kyrie Irving in Game 1 against Golden State also cost the Cavaliers).

The two teams also met in the 2017 Eastern Conference Finals where the Cavs made relatively quick work of the Celtics in five games. Although, the two teams would quickly rekindle acquaintances in the 2018 Eastern Conference Finals.

Going into the 2018 ECF, the Celtics were No. 2 seed in the East and the Cavs were the No. 4 seed. After the first two games of the series in Boston, it didn’t look like the series was going the full seven games. Yet somehow, some way LeBron James was able to will the Wine and Gold back into the series and ultimately force a Game 7, and what a game Jeff Green would have in that one.

Much like Game 7 of the 2008 second-round series between these two, this Game 7 was a low-scoring defensive battle. One of the big highlights from the game was Celtics forward Jayson Tatum throwing down a monstrous dunk on James, actually.

That said, that was not enough to take the crown from the King and the Cavaliers as Cleveland defeated Boston 87-79. The aforementioned Green had a big 19 points, as prior KJG contributor Jackson Flickinger highlighted back after that one.

These two teams will rekindle acquaintances tonight in Cleveland as Collin Sexton, emerging point guard Darius Garland and company take on Tatum, Jaylen Brown and the C’s at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.

With the Cleveland Cavaliers being in a rebuild and the Celtics near the top of the Eastern Conference, it looks like it will be a while before the Cavs and C’s renew their fierce playoff rivalry.