Celtics Leave It to Kids to Beat Lakers in Game 4

This wasn't streetball.

This was 10-year-old-kids-in-the-driveway-at-dusk ball.

You might as well have just taken the Lakers and Celtics down to any old subdivision, showed them a basket hanging above a garage and told them to get on with it.

The Celtics won Game 4 of the NBA Finals because their kids were better than the Lakers' kids.

In a game in which everyone rushed around after the ball as if possession was nine-tenths of the show, the Celtics relied on that big kid from down south and the tiny kid who moved here from New York.

Glen "Big Baby" Davis, formerly of LSU, screamed like a mama's boy and boarded like Big Daddy.

Introduced for an extended spell after the regular boys proved that they couldn't make a layup even when it was contested only by air, Davis barged around as if he needed to avenge his Momma for some serious neighborhood slight.

His 7 for 10 shooting, his 18 points and his winningly child-like demeanor drove the Celtics forward when it seemed that they would become the first team in NBA history to lose by a poorer percentage than the fans who shoot from halfcourt in the hope of winning a few thousand dollars.

Davis is not a baby for understatement.

"This is what legends are made of, this is where you grasp the moment,' he humbled.

But the long of it needed the short of it.

Nate Robinson, who must only be 5 feet 7 tall (official stats always lie and officially he's 5' 9"), wandered off the grass verge into the driveway like the little kid that everyone laughs at.

You know, the little kid whose shorts are too big and who's determined to show the big kids that size matters, but Spud Webb once won the Slam Dunk Contest at the All-Star Game.

Robinson got a technical for taunting a Laker's hip.

As tall as a squatting Cossack, he spun around in so many semi-circles that he described at least half the routines of your average fur-hatted dance troupe.

His 12 points were worth 20, because he made such a presence of himself in the fourth quarter that it was hard to take him out.

"We knew we had to show our energy," said Robinson after the game.

The kids from Laker Street weren't quite prepared for this level of Gatorade.

They kept themselves in the game because Kobe, Joe Bryant's kid, thrust up enough gutsy shots with multiple Celtics surrounding him.

But when it came to the fourth quarter, with Andrew Bynum sidelined by knee trouble, they had nowhere to turn, no one to turn to and no legs on which to turn defeat into victory.

There was such a contrast between the benches. Though Lamar Odom did manage to lead the Lakers with a mere seven rebounds, Los Angeles offered three timid guards in Shannon Brown, Jordan Farmar and Maria Sharapova's love interest, Sasha Vujacic.

These are kids from a nice neighborhood who aren't remotely ready for driveway ball. With Derek Fisher and Ron Artest displaying their limitations like Jerry Springer attempting the tango, the Lakers had to hope that the Celtics would lay down because they couldn't lay up.

But Boston went on a 13-2 run in the fourth quarter-- a quarter in which they shot 62%-- when the five kids on the floor were Davis, Robinson, Tony Allen, Rasheed Wallace (who suffered one of the worst foul calls this decade when Pau Gasol fell over entirely untouched) and the lone starter, Ray Allen.

Game 5 Sunday will probably be played in the same driveway, with the same hopeful abandon, and the same number of hopelessly wayward shots.

Even the refs seem to be tired. They only blew for 44 fouls, 14 fewer than Game 2. Perhaps they just wanted to let the kids play.

Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing, and an avid sports fan. He is also the author of the popular CNET blog Technically Incorrect.