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I would say it's possible. Never underestimate the power of accumulative mental advantage. You could say that today's game was decided in the first half when Utah choked on those wide open shots. Now I'm just going to focus on game 2, because it's going to be the much tougher game, due to the crowd and officiating. Obviously, whatever works in game 2, we could just apply that to game 1, because all we're looking for is one game.
From what I've seen, from our side, we need to: be perfect with our shot selections, played with our best intensity, dig a little deep on those "bad" possessions, i.e those possessions where we're forced to run the offense through someone else because Kobe needs a break, and really, just "dig" on whatever contested shots that you can, because the more you do, the more you can afford the opponent to be open, obviously.
Assuming we did the above, and let's assume that the officiating in game 2 against the Celtics will be as bad as in today's game, then I think we'll need the Celtics to miss about a couple of less open shots than the Jazz did in the first half in today's game to win it. In other words, about 3 or 4 wide open shots(of course, it could be less, it could be more, how the hell would I know really, the idea is that we need to use to apply everything we've learned in the past to get those little advantages.)
How can we get them to do this? If we used past experience, a team does not feel quite enough pressure when they're down 0-1 at home(unless you managed to stay close to them late in the game), as when they're down 0-2 and just came back home, for us to rely on them to choke on wide open shots. However, they WILL miss a couple of shots due to overenergy, and that is when you have to remember to REBOUND(most likely, they'll still end up with it though, it's just extremely hard to match that kind of energy, because you're just not used to it.)
What other situations are they likely to miss? As stated, if we can manage to stay close to them late, then I think they'll start to miss. However, the officiating will still be very tough.
Finally, the strategy of leaving the cold guy, the guy struggling defensively, having confidence issues, etc. will work very well here. Boston hasn't been in these situations so they've got a lot to learn. However, once again, we MUST remember to rebound, which of course is easier said than done.
So it seems to me that, not only do we have to "bait" them into those shots(it would be nice if we didn't have to and force them to shoot with a hand in their face most of the times, but let's face it, our physical defense just isn't that good, so you have to rely on those mental tricks), we must also train ourselves to expect those misses and rebound the ball, which I'm not sure if we can do, in such a short timeframe.
IF we can manage to do the above, we should be able to get it into a very tight game down the stretch. The important thing here is not to get too giddy or tight and just execute as usual. It may even take a last second shot to win it, and that's when you have to embrace it, and not be afraid that the Celtics might steal one back, because you played perfect and couldn't pull it off. In other words, don't let what may happen in the future affect you, unless it's positive(for example, like in the 2000 Finals, where Shaq fouled out and Kobe took over, the reason he was "clutch" was because he could fall back on the fact that his team was superior and up 2-1, that really, took away a lot of the pressure. In this case, you can't really fool yourselves, if let's say Boston was playing stifling D, and the only reason it got this close was because of all the tricks that you used to "cause" them to miss that many wide open shots, and you're afraid that they won't miss that many again. You have to ignore this type of thinking. Otherwise, it'd just put pressure on yourself unnecessarily.)
It may look like I'm trying to play prophet here, but it seems to me that these games follow a very distinct pattern. The officiating will be bad, but it's only bad to a certain point. If you can manage to dig deep enough to overcome that, then the numbers will all add up very nicely.
