Hopefully, Lebron James Doesn't Read CelticsBlog

Yes, we got smoked at home in a game that could have sent us to the Finals.

Yes, Lebron James scored 45 points and nearly accounted for half of the Miami Heat's offense.

Yes, it's going to be tougher to close this out in Miami Saturday night.

But here's the dirty little secret that the Celtics coaching staff and the players don't want Lebron James to know. Huddle in, everybody. They want him to keep shooting. Rondo can talk about Lebron being too "comfortable" all night and how the Celtics' defense needs to cut down on his "airspace," but Boston would welcome that kind of hero-ball every night they face the Heat. They beat him in 2008 on their road to a championship and effectively ended his career with the Cavaliers in 2010. His output tonight is exactly the type of one-dimensional performance that wins MVP's but doesn't win rings.

Consider these numbers: in the regular season, the Miami Heat were 20-1 when Lebron shot fewer than 19 times a game; they were 25-16 when Lebron played like he was still in Cleveland and shot over his average field goal attempts of 18.9. When every TV pundit from Charles Barkley to Stephen A. Smith to Chris Broussard was goading Lebron to take over and silence the critics, I was hoping that Lebron was not fake reading The Hunger Games trilogy and watching TV. That kind of thinking plays exactly into Boston's hands.

The Celtics defense is geared to either get the ball out of the team's best player's hands or force them into a bad shot. Give credit to Lebron tonight. He was taking and making those shots. He may have gotten in the lane a few too many times for my comfort level, but if he's going to make fadeaway 15-foot jumpers and contested deep 2's, I'm OK with it and I think Doc is, too. In Games 1-5, Lebron was shooting 17-57 outside of 10 feet. That's under 30%. Last night, he was an uncanny 12 for 18, making nearly as many jump shots in one game than he did in five games that included two overtimes.

If he's settling for those shots and simultaneously not driving it to the lane, putting pressure on our defense, forcing us to rotate, putting Pierce in foul trouble, and involving his teammates, so be it. Could the Celtics have played better defense? Sure. There's always another scheme or different look they could have thrown Lebron, but when a notoriously bad shooter is shooting tough shots, you give him more rope.

So tomorrow, I'm hoping ESPN, Erik Spoelstra, and the Miami media stroke his ego just as much as they threatened to tear him down and dismantle the team before Game 6. I hope they somehow recreate The Decision before Game 7 where Jim Grey asks him if he's going to play all 48 minutes and shoulder the load for the Heat. I hope South Beach starts prematurely celebrating Friday night like they've already won the Larry O'Brien. Please please please anoint this guy as the second coming of Michael Jordan. I want his head to get so big for Game 7 that he has to wear the rings of Saturn as a headband.

Like everybody, I really wanted Boston to close this out at the Garden in front of the home crowd, but in some perfectly poetic way, this is right where we want to be: the team's back up against the wall in a do-or-die game with Lebron James thinking he's Bruce Lee in Fist Of Fury.

At the end of the game, I was trying to gauge the mood of the veterans. They weren't sulking or feeling sorry for themselves. You could see them scheming for Saturday night, putting together a plan as a team to beat the Heat. And then the expected--or unexpected, depending on how you look at it---thing happened. The crowd started chanting and you could see Doc and KG bobbing their heads to the Garden cheers. They know this isn't a one-man show or even a 15-player team. It's going to take everybody to win Game 7 and there was no better time to start putting it together than right then. So...

LET'S GO CELTICS. Clap, clap, clapclapclap. LET'S GO CELTICS. Clap, clap, clapclapclap. LET'S GO CELTICS. Clap, clap, clapclapclap. LET'S GO CELTICS. Clap, clap, clapclapclap. LET'S GO CELTICS. Clap, clap, clapclapclap. LET'S GO CELTICS. Clap, clap, clapclapclap. LET'S GO CELTICS. Clap, clap, clapclapclap. LET'S GO CELTICS. Clap, clap, clapclapclap. LET'S GO CELTICS. Clap, clap, clapclapclap. LET'S GO CELTICS. Clap, clap, clapclapclap. LET'S GO CELTICS. Clap, clap, clapclapclap. LET'S GO CELTICS. Clap, clap, clapclapclap. LET'S GO CELTICS. Clap, clap, clapclapclap. LET'S GO CELTICS. Clap, clap, clapclapclap. LET'S GO CELTICS. Clap, clap, clapclapclap.