Boston Celtics: The IT (Isaiah Thomas) Department Came Through

Isaiah Thomas cemented his All-Star status with a 42-point outburst to win Game 3 for the Boston Celtics.

They came to play last night.

After getting their collective butts handed to them in Games 1 and 2 against the Atlanta Hawks in the Phillips Arena, the Boston Celtics knew they had to do something before they ended up on the wrong end of the three-game deficit that teams, historically, have never overcome during the playoffs. This urgency was even more fierce when guard Avery Bradley injured his hamstring in Game 1 and was likely ruled out for the rest of this series.

Back home in the TD Garden, the Celtics decided that they didn’t want their season to end just yet. When your computer is on the fritz, you call the IT department. When your team is on the fritz, you do the same — except in this case, IT stood for Isaiah Thomas.

The scrappy small guard put his team on his back and helped the Celtics win at home, giving a bit more balance to a series that was looking very lopsided.

From the opening tip the C’s dominated, never trailing through the first quarter. The Hawks looked a bit lost, even for a road game, and their shots just weren’t falling. They were held to only 20 points in the first quarter. The Celtics poured in 11 three-pointers (Thomas was responsible for five of them), while the Hawks — including the formerly red-hot Kyle Korver — were held to just 9-of-36 shooting from three-point range.

The game was a very physical one, with altercations causing almost constant whistle-blowing and play reviews by the referees. Boston’s Jae Crowder was shoved into a stanchion during an ill-timed block by the Hawks’ Jeff Teague, as Crowder was already in the air for a layup. Crowder and the rest of the C’s thought it was a flagrant 1 foul, but it was ruled as a common one.

The bad blood continued to escalate, with players fighting even harder for positions or rebounds. Then this happened:

Things might have blown over, but then Thomas bumped into Schroder as they ran to the other end of the court. When Schroder tried to retaliate, members of both teams pulled their pugilistic guards apart.

Both players got technical fouls and Schroder was assessed an additional flagrant 1, and of course he was not happy in a tweet that was later deleted from his account:

(Now, Dennis…you know that nothing is ever truly gone from the internet!)

Thomas insisted that the hit wasn’t on purpose. “I didn’t mean to hit him. He got mad and he was talking. But it’s playoff basketball ,” he told Jeff Schultz of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “That’s what it’s about. I’m not going to back down from anybody and he knows that.”

Thomas’s overzealousness may come with a price, as the possibility looms of him being suspended in Game 4 for the hit. The incident is currently under league review at the time of this article’s publication.

The Celtics cannot afford to lose Thomas, especially as a result of a poor decision, if they want to keep their momentum going against the Hawks. Thomas is essential to the C’s playmaking, and his ability to get the ball in the basket doesn’t hurt, either. The saving grace is that Game 4 is in Boston but if they lose, the Celts will have to return to Atlanta, where they struggled so badly even before Bradley went down.

More hoops habit: 2016 NBA Playoffs: Each Team's Week 1 MVP

Kudos to the Celtics for breathing life into the Eastern Conference playoff games. Buckle your seatbelts, folks. Things may get very nasty.