Sam Cassell's nauseating legacy

It's not easy to ruin an early-season showdown between the East's two best teams. It's even harder when it's a back-and forth nail-biter decided by points scored in last tenth of a second. To ruin a game like this borders on impossible, but in tonight's battle between the Celtics and the Pistons, the up-and-into contact, as well as the NBA rule book's incomprehensible tolerance for it, found a way.

The Celtics won the first half and, in doing so, painted a basketball masterpiece. Ray-Ray was playing a game that would have made Jesus Shuttlesworth proud, KG looked like a man among boys, Rajon Rondo flashed brilliance, and Paul Pierce found himself in the unfamiliar position of sitting back and watching his teammates put on a show.

Then they got bored. The points were coming so easily that they started hesitating and looking for the even easier shot. Their first half flow, lurched, spurted and stalled. Their spacing fell apart, and the Boston ball-handlers found themselves trying to dribble through a tangle of out-of-position Celtic Bigs and  long-armed Piston defenders. They couldn't. Detroit's ball pressure reached a fever pitch, stripping Eddie House and Paul Pierce at half-courts a few minutes apart.

At this point, the intensity was so far gone from the Celtics that their demeanor, despite the score, suggested they were in the midst of a blowout. They weren't.  The Pistons had won the first 22 minutes of the second half, and Lindsay Hunter's uncontested lay-up off a strip of Pierce put the Pistons up 7 with 2 minutes to play.

The Celtics, namely Ray Allen, won the next 116 second. Ray Ray, having already assembled a sweet stat-line, found a new gear.  He went to the basket around a monster screen from KG, and when everyone in the building was expecting a floater, Ray went around the rim and threw it down like it was 1999.  House hit a 3 off a heads up pass from Allen to pull the Celtics within 3, the Celtics got another stop, and found themselves down 3 with 30 seconds left. Then they fell into disarray, letting the chance to go for 2-for-1 slip away. 4 Celtics clustered at the top of the 3 point line, none of them open.

It didn't matter. Ray rose up and, with Tayshaun's freakish arms in his face, stroked a 24 footer like he was alone in his driveway.

On consecutive possessions the usually-clutch Chuancey Billups lost the handle going to the basket and the equally-clutch Paul Pierce missed badly on an 18-foot fade-away with 1.7 on the clock.

The stage was set for drama. One more shot for Mr. Big Shot. He caught the inbound and rose up. Tony Allen went up. The crowd rose up. None of them should have bothered. It was an upfake, and as soon as Allen left his feet, Mr. Faked Shot jumped into him and shoveled the ball to within slightly more than 8 feet from the basket.  Foul on Allen. A tenth of a second on the clock.

And after 47 minutes and 59 seconds of grit, of perfect ball movement matched by lightning rotations, of Ray Allen's firepower, or Garnett's intensity, of Rasheed's uncanny 3-point opportunism, of stifling ball pressure, the game was to be decided by a pair of free throws earned through a play that would get you laughed off of every playground in the country.

There was no protest.  Everyone knows the rule.  For some reason that nobody can adequately explain, one player can launch himself into another and flip the ball blindly at the basket, and somehow earn himself two shots at the most charitable of stripes.

Billups hit them both. Players and fans scuttled out of a silent arena, and not even the Pistons seemed too thrilled.  Detroit got the W, Boston the L, but it was basketball that took the loss.