If you say so, but I think that's just you emoting, because I know you know exactly what I mean.
I'm not emoting. I guess you can say "I know exactly what you mean," but you can't actually explain it in a way that is convincing.
That's because there's nothing convincing about the theory.
I'd like to see you (or anyone) do a creditable job of explaining this "playing down" theory. So far, I haven't seen any.
The KG/Pierce Celtics used to do it all the time, so either you've got a memory like a sieve or you've intentionally forgotten: when a team thinks they "should" beat another team, they play through the game expecting to win. Often times this is when upsets occur. Many people on this board call them "trap games."
After the Rondo + Green trade, particularly, the C's were viewed around the league as having given up on the season. Teams expected to beat them. Teams played down to them. This is not a particularly controversial fact: you're just being obstinate and/or cognitively disabled.
You can sit there and say "you didn't convince me so you're wrong!" but then I remember that you are the guy who always thinks the Celtics can do no wrong, and that various Celtics are beyond reproach, and I remember that inserting anything like realism in a conversation with you about our shared team is a waste of time because you live in an isolated bubble of idyllic Celtics fandom where the Celtics are just destined for greatness in every aspect of every moment in every season and everyone else is just being debbie downers and haters.
The problem with your theory is that many of our wins came against teams that weren't "playing down" to us. We were playing a bunch of teams that were in a similar boat with us--teams like Miami, Indiana, Brooklyn, and Charlotte.
We also beat a number of teams that were clearly worse like Orlando, Minnesota, Philly and Detroit.
We beat Toronto in a game that they wanted to win. Ditto for Memphis. Maybe we snuck up on a tired Atlanta team, and the last four games were fairly meaningless for the opposition.
Still, we clearly had to earn our way in by winning some very competitive games along the way.
Now, if you were to say that part of the reason for our late season run was because of a relatively easy schedule, that I would agree with, but the "playing down" theory is nonsense as an overall rationale for why this team exceeded expectations and made the playoffs.
The doldrums, or let downs, may affect a game here or there, but it's a lousy excuse for why our Celtics were able to surprise many of the fans who had written them off.
I'll just ignore the rest of your nonsense about my "isolated bubble of idyllic fandom."
I use actual reality to explain my reasoning; like many others, you unfortunately think just calling me a "wild eyed optimist" wins you the argument without you having to back up any of your assertions.
Lame.