The only constant is change

The Celtics swept the Pacers and, in the process, notched three clutch wins against them after securing Game 4 against the Cavaliers in a clutch-time situation, too. They have been in four close games during the playoffs and they have won all of them.

The knock on the C’s back in the second round was that they weren’t battle tested. Because of this, the detractors assured us, they would be pushovers whenever push came to shove. “Not battle tested” apparently means “will not survive.”

Yet, no team in the last twenty-five years has come back from five-point deficits with under two minutes to go twice in one series. The C’s haven’t done it twice. They’ve done it three times. Three times in four games against the Pacers the Celtics had to rally from rather intimidating late game deficits.

That’s clutch play.

The Celtics, I think we can safely say, are a clutch team.

We can also say that this has not always been the case. In fact, we can go so far as to say that earlier in the season, the C’s had some serious issues with their late game strategies.

But you know what? Earlier in the season a small black and white cat that we took in as a stray gave birth to four kittens on our hall floor.

Those kittens are now almost six months old. Their eyes have long been open, and they’ve gone from struggling to climb up into our laps to being able to cross the living room in three leaps, with one of us usually serving as a convenient launchpad. They’re the same cats — nobody’s come in and switched them out while we weren’t looking — but they’re different, too.

Boston’s roster has changed very little since their clutch time struggles were the talk of the regular season NBA crowd, and lest we think that this was just talk, there was substance to it.

For the C’s, going iso late was a terrible idea. Doing something more often than 26 of the league’s 30 teams, while doing it worse than 26 of them is no way to go through life.

It didn’t help that some of these late game ills were extremely visible, coming, for example, against expected title contender Denver, and after…