BOSTON — As they hit the floor against the Knicks for their first Game 7 which was disguised as Game 4, the Celtics came out with the starting lineup that began the series, a unit featuring Brandon Bass back in the first five, aligned defensively against Carmelo Anthony, while Jason Terry was back on the bench.
Boston coach Doc Rivers explained his reasoning.
“I just like Brandon on Melo more,” Rivers offered. “Like I said, the smaller lineup, the numbers actually say it’s better. But I like our defense better the other way.”
And that is one prime reason why the Celtics survived for yet another Game 7, which will be packaged as Game 5 tomorrow night at the Garden.
“Me personally, I think we won the game because of Brandon,” said Celtics guard Avery Bradley, referring to Bass’ workman-like, although foul-plagued, effort on Anthony.
 and Jeff Green (26 points) more freedom to work offensively.</p>
<p>“Slow him down a little bit. That’s all I wanted to do,” Bass explained of his approach. “My defense is a lot better, as far as communicating. I take a lot of pride in defending. So I won’t say I’m so much of a great defensive player, I just take pride in it (and) hopefully, that leads to us getting a win.”</p>
<p>And it certainly helped in Game 4 when the Celtics averted the sweep dreams of the Knicks and forced a return to New York. Bass, Jeff Green and Paul Pierce all took turns on Anthony. And all were in some form of foul trouble.</p>
<p>“It’s a lot tougher,” Bass said of defending a great scorer with the burden of fouls — he fouled out at 4:27 of regulation in the Celts’ 97-90 overtime victory. “It’s tough when you have no fouls, so you know when you have fouls … I just wanted to give my best effort and see what happened. I tried to make him work.”</p>
<p>The attempts were successful.</p>
<p>“Brandon was the star of the game, as far as I’m concerned. He just defended, and did it over and over and over again,” Rivers said. “There’s a lot of guys that you want to defend: I don’t know if Carmelo would be the one you would pick. And for Brandon to do that, basically the entire game until he fouled out was terrific. We needed that one guy to be able to do that.”</p>
<p>And that one guy was Bass.</p>
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