Did anyone really think the Celtics would make things easy on themselves? It’s a maddeningly endearing trait they’ve developed over the last five years, and it cost them dearly on Tuesday night.

You can go back and look at a handful of plays and blame Rajon Rondo for dribbling into the sideline without a plan. Or single out Paul Pierce for his rushed jumper that came up empty. You can question why the Celtics were out of timeouts, or why they wasted eight seconds to commit a foul when they had to give two.

You can go back to the third quarter when they allowed the Hawks to build a 12-point lead, or even all the way back to the beginning when they failed to take advantage of Atlanta’s lethargy in the first quarter and only came away with six-point lead.

Mixed in with those moments of fail was some vintage brilliance. Rondo’s steal at the end of the regulation was Bird-esque. With the C's down seven with four minutes to play, Kevin Garnett, Pierce and Ray Allen scored in succession to tie the game at 83 in what was essentially a Big Three time capsule. So many times, they have pulled games out that seemed lost. This was not one of them. 

No matter how you look at it, the Celtics wasted a prime opportunity to advance and, just as importantly, to rest and heal. Now they have a pivotal Game 6 back at the Garden less than 48 hours away after an 87-86 loss to the Hawks.

“I thought when you look at the last couple of games, we had great motion and movement offensively. I didn’t think we had any of that tonight,” Doc Rivers said. “I thought we were a stagnant basketball team. I thought in the first quarter, it was terrific. The movement was great. We missed a lot of open shots. We had the lead, but I told our coaches they had a lot of open shots they missed, and then they started making them and got their confidence up. Listen, this is the team they thought they were going to start the season with, now they have it and we’re going to have to deal with it.”

Most of all the Celtics will have to deal with Al Horford. The All-Star center needed one game to knock the rust off, and while there’s no telling how his body will react to playing 41 minutes, Horford was a monster with 19 points and 11 rebounds. That’s quite a jump considering he expected to play 15-25 minutes. He also made the key defensive play of the game when he trapped Rondo on the sideline.

“I tried to make a play but got caught on the baseline,” Rondo said. “Give Al credit.”

Give Rondo some credit as well for getting the Celtics back in the game with a flurry of points late in the third quarter, but his 6-for-17 shooting performance with five turnovers was emblematic of the C's offensive struggles. They got almost nothing in transition and remained a team that lives and dies with its perimeter shooting.  

This is how the series has gone. Forget Game 4, an offensive anomaly in a series that has been defined by grind-it-out tactics, defensive stops and the occasional hero moment. The other four games have been decided by a total of three points and the Celtics shouldn’t expect anything less than a bar fight on Thursday -- to steal one of Garnett’s lines.

If Horford is able to maintain his strong play, the complexion of the series moves in another direction. Ever since it began, the Celtics have been concerned about Atlanta’s lineup when the Hawks move Joe Johnson to the off-guard position opposite Avery Bradley. The second-year guard will scratch and claw to knock Johnson out of position, but height is height and with Johnson playing most of his night at guard, Bradley spent most of his on the bench. The Celtics are not nearly as dynamic without him on the floor.

All series long, the C's have done a solid job on the defensive glass, but that was against the likes of Jason Collins and Ivan Johnson -- Horford and Josh Smith are a different matter entirely. They had eight of Atlanta’s 13 offensive rebounds. That was 13 possessions when the Celtics could have run but had to defend instead.

Then there’s the issue of Pierce. The captain seemed to be laboring for much of the night on his injured knee. He started off hot, making four of his six shots in the first quarter, but hit only 3-of-11 after that and didn’t have the same lift when he drove to the basket. The Celtics were actually better with him off the court -- Pierce was a minus-13, while Mickael Pietrus was plus-11 -- and that was primarily on the defensive end (see: Marvin Williams knocking down wide open 3-pointers in the corner).

There’s a sense that this was Atlanta’s best shot, that everything will be fine once the Celtics return to the Garden, but this isn’t 2008 and the Hawks have grown up over the last few years. Regardless of whether Atlanta comes to play or not, the C’s have more work to do to continue their race against their biological clock, and it’s never easy.