Celtics Have the Green Light Again

Paul Pierce and Antoine Walker didn’t simply knock the Philadelphia 76ers out of the playoffs, they demolished the defending Eastern Conference champions.

Pierce scored 46 points--the fifth-best playoff performance in franchise history--as the Celtics won the final game of their best-of-five first-round series, 120-87, to advance to a conference semifinal matchup against the Detroit Pistons.

Walker had 26 points, nine rebounds and six assists for the Celtics, who are making their first postseason appearance since 1995. They had not advanced in the playoffs since 1992, Larry Bird’s final season.

Allen Iverson scored 31 as the 76ers tried to become the seventh team to win a five-game series after losing the first two. But they wilted when the Celtics went on a 19-4 run late in the fourth quarter, rekindling memories of the Boston Garden and the 16 NBA titles the Celtics won there.

“To have the game in hand and be able to soak up the atmosphere was a bonus--a great luxury,” said Boston’s Jim O’Brien, who is making his first playoff appearance as a head coach.

Pierce was eight for 10 from three-point range, one of his threes giving Boston a 97-79 lead with 6:05 left. The 76ers called time out, and the FleetCenter scoreboard showed crowd shots of Red Auerbach, Tommy Heinsohn, Danny Ainge, JoJo White and Cedric Maxwell. The fans went wild at the sight of the former Celtic stars, and the team responded.

Walker made a three-point basket to give Boston a 30-point lead with 3:11 left, but was called for a technical for taunting.

“To feel what some of the old guys were talking about, that we’ve heard about. To finally be a part of it and to build our own era,” Walker explained. “That’s what I was celebrating.”

The Boston fans closed it out with a traditional chant of “Beat L.A.!”

Philadelphia Coach Larry Brown dismissed rumors that he would not return next season and said: “If we’d played our best [Friday], I don’t think that would have been good enough. They hadn’t been to the playoffs in quite a while. But we met a team that appeared to be more relaxed than ours did.”

Brown’s contract runs through 2004-05, but he had had a spotty relationship with Iverson. Iverson said Friday that reports of their conflict were overblown.