LeBron James now has a chance to tell the Boston Celtics the same thing he told his mother Monday night at Quicken Loans Arena: “Sit your (behind) down.”
Having beaten the Celtics two straight times to even their best-of-seven Eastern Conference semifinal series, James and the Cavaliers have a golden opportunity to steal Game 5 tonight at 8 at TD Banknorth Garden.
It won’t be easy. The Celtics are 41-6 at home this season, including 6-0 in the postseason, when they’ve allowed just 75.5 points a game on the parquet floor.
The Cavaliers, however, have numerous reasons to be optimistic, not the least of which is the fact they’re deadlocked and James still hasn’t found his jump shot.
Should the 6-foot-8, 250-pounder suddenly heat up tonight, which is entirely possible, Paul Pierce and the Celtics could have a very difficult time wrapping up James and Co.
It was Pierce, everyone no doubt knows by now, who committed a hard foul on James with 4:13 to go in the second period of Game 4.
Ironically enough, the momentum of the two players carried them into the first row of seats along the baseline, which is precisely where an extremely angry Gloria James was sitting.
In a sequence that is already all over the Internet, Gloria got out of her seat and had words with Pierce and Celtics teammate Kevin Garnett, leading James to tell her, “Sit your (behind) down.”
“The commissioner (David Stern) doesn’t care if that’s my mother,” James said. “You can’t afford to let fans get involved in the game. I told her to sit down in some language I shouldn’t have used. Thank God this wasn’t Mother’s Day.”
The scene brought back memories of a game from James’ days at Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary High School, when Brush’s Roy Hall committed a hard foul and Gloria rushed out of the stands in an attempt to protect her baby.
“You know how moms are,” James said Tuesday on “Mike and Mike in the Morning.” “They don’t care about anything that’s going on but their son. She still thinks I’m 2 or 3 years old.”
Now 23, James apologized to his mom after the game Monday, but he need not apologize for his 20-of-78 shooting (.256) in the first four games of the series.
So what if he’s averaging just 18.8 points, down from the league-leading 30.0 he put up in the regular season.
So what if he’s 7-of-53 on jump shots, including a dreadful 2-of-33 on jumpers inside the 3-point arc.
This series is deadlocked, and the Celtics, who won a league-best 66 games in the regular season, appear to be reeling.
The Cavaliers, on the other hand, know they could easily be up 3-1. What’s more, they know James still hasn’t put up one of his trademark 40-point, eight-rebound, eight-assist games in the series. Best of all, they now know they still have a great chance to win even if their superstar isn’t carrying them.
None of this, it should be noted, means the Cavaliers will win tonight. But they have a chance, and that didn’t appear to be the case after Boston won the first two games of the series.
The Celtics play with an entirely different attitude at home, but the Cavaliers are quickly developing a very tough mindset of their own.
Not only that, Cleveland’s underrated defense has held Boston to 81.5 points and .405 shooting in this series. If the Cavaliers can limit their turnovers and approach those defensive numbers tonight, they just might, as they like to say at The Q, “Rise Up” and beat Boston.
And if that happens, it just might be time for the Celtics to sit their behinds down.
Contact Rick Noland at (330) 721-4061 or rickn@ohio.net. 

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