Rondo leads reinforced Celtics lineup past Hawks for Game 3 win

BOSTON – Given the stack of injuries on his side of the ledger—star forward Josh Smith (knee) joined center Zaza Pachulia (foot) and Al Horford (pectoral) on the no-go list for Atlanta—coach Larry Drew said

that, coming in, his goal was to have his team keep Game 3 here at TD Garden close and hope that the Hawks could steal the win late.

They did, in fact, keep it close, trailing by a 60-58 count entering the fourth quarter. The Celtics looked ready to run away with it at the end, though, and built an 11-point lead that was holding at eight points with 4:02 to go—until an 8-0 run from Atlanta tied the game at 80-80 in the final seconds. When the Hawks were able to get a final-possession miss out of Paul Pierce to send the game into overtime, Drew had to be very happy with what his team had done.

There would be no stealing the win, though, as the Celtics were able to lean on a lineup reinforced by the return of Ray Allen (ankle injury) and Rajon Rondo (suspension) to pull out a 90-84 win in overtime. That puts the Celtics up, 2-1 in the series, with Game 4 coming on Sunday in Boston.

“You can look what our situation is from an injury standpoint,” Drew said. “The last thing I’ll do as a coach is use it as an excuse. I thought we were depleted but yet we were still in a position where we could have won the game. If I’m going to take anything positive from this certainly I’m very proud of our guys. … We’ve been a team that has had adversity throughout the season like everybody else and it says a lot about your team when they can step up in the playoffs short-handed and still put themselves in a position to win the game. We certainly had our opportunity. We just fell short.”

In what was a grinding game, getting Rondo back proved to be a big boost. Rondo racked up a triple-double, scoring 17 points with 12 assists and 14 rebounds on the night. He did shoot 7-for-22 on the night, with six turnovers, but in a game in which the Celtics shot just 40.5 percent (the Hawks shot 37.8 percent), those kinds of numbers were not a surprise. The Celtics were led by Paul Pierce, who had 21 points on 3-for-12 shooting, but was 14-for-14 from the free-throw line.

“I felt good about all the shots that I took, I took a lot,” Rondo said. “My teammates told me to stay aggressive. I missed a lot of easy layups, but the jump shots I usually try to take at the mid-range game. I accomplished them, I took them, but I missed them. There’s going to be nights like tonight where I miss a lot of shots, but I try to continue to fight through, continue to grind.”

It was star guard Joe Johnson who kept the shorthanded Hawks alive throughout. Johnson scored 29 points, but missed a key 3-pointer with 23.8 seconds to go that pretty much sealed Atlanta’s fate. Guard Jeff

Teague (23 points, six assists) sliced up the Celtics defense for much of the night, and elder statesman Tracy McGrady (12 points, nine rebounds) was able to pitch in, too.

From the beginning, there was no overstating the ugliness of the game. In the first quarter, the two teams shot a combined 30.4 percent from the floor and committed nine turnovers, which was in keeping with the overall tenor of the series. Boston shot 40.7 percent from the field and scored an average of 80.5 points in the first two games, just a little better than the 37.7 percent shooting from the Hawks. Atlanta was scoring 81.5 points per game in the first two. The Celtics held a 40-38 lead at halftime, with the sides shooting a combined 37.0 percent with 17 turnovers.

The Hawks are hopeful that Smith can play on Sunday. Coming as close as they did on Friday, they still feel they can emerge from Boston with a split and a tied series.

“We feel like our chances are just as good as theirs in the series,” Johnson said. “Unfortunately, we have three key bigs who are unable to play right now. So that is a minor setback but neither here nor there we still had a great chance to come out and win this game tonight. And it’s always a tale of two halves, it seems as if they’ve beat us in the fourth quarter in the past couple games.”