BOSTON — As the buzzards started to swarm, as the lead started to melt, as it seemed the scoreboard clock at TD Garden had started to malfunction, that's when all the talk about ghosts and goblins and gnomes seemed finally, at last, less a fairy tale than an understatement.
The lead had been 26, and if Mike Woodson were a student of irony he would have been close to sitting down, folding his legs, and lighting up a victory cigar. Except in a heartbeat, the lead was 19. And in an eyeblink, it was 10. And in the amount of time it takes to gobble a full sleeve of antacid tablets, it was four.
Anthony J. Causi
OH YEAH! Tyson Chandler, who finished with nine points, 12 rebounds and two blocked shots, pumps his fists during the fourth quarter of the Knicks' 88-80 victory over the Celtics in Game 6 last night.
"They made a hell of a run," Woodson said.
And as the Celtics were making that run, you had to squint hard to make certain there were only five of them on the floor, that they hadn't been joined by Hondo and Cooz, by Larry Legend and the Chief and a couple of quick-handed leprechauns. You had to cover your ears, because the inside of the arena suddenly sounded like the inside of a jet engine, just about as loud as sports is allowed to get.
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This wasn't just a run anymore. It was magic, black-ops magic, the kind that can make you want to swear off sports forever. The score had been Knicks 75, Celtics 49, with 9 1/2 minutes to go.
Now it was 79-75, and only six minutes had bled off the clock, and Carmelo Anthony's pocket had just been picked leading to an Avery Bradley lay-up, and honestly, Clapton could have been playing "Layla" in the seat next to you, his amp sitting on top of your knees, and you wouldn't have heard a note.
"We were trying to hang on," Boston's Doc Rivers would say. "Trying to believe. Trying very hard to believe."
There were believers aplenty all around them, 18,624, none of whom had abandoned the cause because, at the least, they wanted to salute these Celtics who'd tried to climb the 0-3 hill and were now trying to prowl an even steeper mountain. The Knicks were rattled. The Knicks were staggering. The Knicks looked terrified.
But the Knicks had one thing on their side:
They still had the lead, however tenuous it felt, however much it seemed like the scoreboard was lying.
"In the playoffs," Tyson Chandler would say, "you're going to face more than a few moments of truth. And how you respond to them tells you all about how far you're going to go."
And that is why this column isn't sweaty with poisoned darts aimed at the Knicks; let's be very honest: it's probably why you're still reading. Because you know by now that the Celtics never got any closer than four, or else you would've gone straight for the crossword puzzle this morning.
Because you know that Anthony answered his giveaway with a 13-foot pull-up jumper 22 seconds later that may well have been the most important basket of his NBA career and, 90 seconds after that, with a 3-pointer that snapped a personal 0-for-19 drought from downtown and essentially pulled the plug on the run, the game, and the series.
Because you know the Knicks prevailed, survived, endured, persisted, and thanks to this 88-80 victory will greet the Indiana Pacers tomorrow in the Eastern Conference semifinals at Madison Square Garden.
"It was tough, it was a struggle," Anthony said. "They made it tough on us."
"Those guys," Ray Felton said, shaking his head, "are warriors. And they showed why today."
But you know something? The Knicks showed something, too. We have no idea what the next few weeks hold for them, but it will probably not hurt as they face the Pacers, and whomever else, that they had to fend off the doubt that allowing the Celtics back into this series surely brought. There will come a time when they see a big lead vaporize — because in the playoffs, they always do — and know that when they had to put a halt to one of the craziest runs you'll ever see, they could.
They did.
"We succeeded as a team," said Anthony, "and that means something."
Said Chandler: "It's a small step. But also a giant step."
They can exhale now, and so can you. They survived. They advanced. They get another game tomorrow at the Garden, a new foe, a new challenge. The leprechaun, at last, has been shooed away.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com
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