It is beyond foolish to bury a team like the Celtics before they are lying in the cold, dead ground. They are too tough. Too weather-beaten and battle-scarred to simply call it a day after a couple of losses away from the Garden. They have also rallied too many times before.

In 2008, they were inexplicably unable to win playoff games on the road and they had to hold off Atlanta and Cleveland in Game 7’s, the latter coming amidst a 45-point deluge by LeBron James. In 2010, they lost the first and third games against Cleveland and Los Angeles and battled back to win the first series and play all the way to a Game 7 in the latter.

“I like our chances especially with our backs against the wall,” Paul Pierce said Friday before the team’s practice in Waltham. “We’ve been a team that’s responded well the last few years when we’ve come across adversity. I expect us to respond in a very positive manner.”

Still, down 2-0 for the first time in the Kevin Garnett era, the Celtics have never faced anything like this and Garnett saw no reason to sugarcoat their predicament.

“The urgency is there,” Garnett said. “This is it. We’ve used all of our lifelines. I hate to say it like that but it’s true. This is not a cool keep your composure [situation]. Nah, this is, You got to get the next game.’”

Much has been made of the Celtics’ reaction to their circumstances, as opposed to say the cool detachment of the Lakers to being down two games to none. Perhaps that’s because this Lakers’ run, while just as long and steady as the Celtics, is not in its final days.

There has been a sense of urgency for most of the season around the Celtics. It started in training camp and developed through the first three months of the season when they were arguably the best team in the league. This wasn’t like last season when the Celtics also started fast, but lost their way amid injuries and an inability to beat quality opponents. This season’s crew collected big-game pelts and hung them on the wall: San Antonio, Los Angeles, Orlando, Chicago and Miami (three times).  

The team’s marketing department came up with a slogan: “All about 18,” referring to the next championship to add to the impressive lineage. This was a year for the history books, but it was also the year for Pierce, Garnett, Ray Allen and Doc Rivers to try to claim one more before another offseason of uncertainty begins.

There are no guarantees that they all will be back, nor is it certain that this is the final year. But they all came into it with the knowledge that what they have is fleeting and won’t last forever.

That mission gave way to fatigue, huge transitional change, the unrelenting schedule and no doubt a bit of boredom, as well. They can’t recapture that lost month and a half where they gave away homecourt advantage any more than they can replay everything that transpired in Game 1 or the last seven minutes of Game 2. Most of all they can’t replay what LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and the rest of the Heat were able to impose in the first two games in Miami.

“We’re taking their best shot,” Garnett said. “I still don’t think we’ve played our best basketball and we’ve got to do that. We can’t just come out here and talk about it. We’re not on the white sands of the beach no more. We’re back in the jungle. Hopefully that’ll do some good for us.”

So, here they are backed up against that adverse wall and to top it off they have a plethora of injured bodies that include Rajon Rondo’s bad back, Pierce’s strained Achilles and Allen’s bruised stomach.

It’s tempting to begin writing the obituary and maybe that’s the reality, but bury this team? No way. Not after everything they’ve been through over the last four years. From building their own impromptu super-team and seeing that vision to its completion, to the Garnett injury of 2009 and the soul-crushing loss to the Lakers in Game 7. There is simply too much history behind them, no matter what the objective mind tells you about their chances. 

The Celtics believe they will play better. They believe they will execute their offense more precisely and close down some of the openings on defense that allowed James Jones to go off in Game 1 and Miami to grab 12 offensive rebounds in Game 2.

LeBron and Wade? They will score. They will be great. The Celtics knew that going in, but if those two continue to play at this level then there is zero margin for error in the other aspects of the game. Maybe less.

If there is a danger, it’s that they will try too hard and take too much upon themselves in an effort to reverse their slide. They understand that playing that way is detrimental to their overall scheme, but sometimes the temptation is too great. Even after all these years.

“You’re down 2-0 and you want to look inside yourself first and see what you can do better,” Rivers said. “You do it as a coaching staff, you do it individually as players and then hopefully you do it together as a team. The risk whenever you’re down in anything you tend to want to go inside yourself and do it yourself and that never works.”

Still, the coach remains confident in his team. “I always expect greatness,” he said. “Sometimes you get it, sometimes you don’t. I know the intent will be there, no doubt about that.”

The mood around the team is not quite desperation as much as it is solemn resolve. Pierce said his strained Achilles was feeling better. Shaquille O’Neal appears finally ready to play with his own Achilles injury. They will need all of them and they will need all of them to play better if they are going to get back in this series. 

In another time and another place, Garnett talked about loading up on the weaponry to stoke the passions of metaphorical war. He’s older now. A little less exuberant and a lot more restrained around the daily chroniclers that hang around the team. But he laid it down as only he could.
“We’ll figure it out,” Garnett said. “I told you man, we’re all in. I got two pocket kings and I’m all in. Let’s do it.”