With the Doc Rivers coaching watch heating up to a fever pitch in the past few days with a countless number of credible reports, we decided it’s time to get our crew back together and address the speculation. 1. On a scale of 1-10, how confident are you Doc Rivers will coach the Celtics next [...]
Despite all the rehab, Rajon Rondo is finding ways to keep busy this offseason. Just a couple weeks after appearing on E!’s Fashion Police show, the point guard was back on TV last night, in a fun segment on Jimmy Kimmel Live called Mean Tweets. In it, celebrities, or in this case NBA players, read [...]
The whispers around Paul Pierce’s future with the Celtics continue to surface in the fourth week of Boston’s offseason. Unconfirmed report after unconfirmed report has circled in, stating anything from Pierce’s house being on the market, to the team being “likely” to buy him out. Locally, plenty of Celtics fans seem resigned to the fact [...]
It was a tough start to the offseason last week for Terrence Williams. After standing out as one of the bright spots on the Celtics roster late last season, he was taken into custody last week with the disturbing allegation that he pulled a gun during a domestic dispute with his son’s mother and her [...]
What has Rajon Rondo been up to this offseason beyond rehabbing his ACL injury? Rubbing elbows with Joan Rivers, that’s what. Just one summer after spending some time showing off his fashion sense in an internship with GQ, Rondo went one-on-one with Rivers on E’s Fashion Police, since well he has some time on his [...]
Acquiring any player, whether it’s via trade, free agency, or the draft, comes with an air of uncertainty. The NBA has no guaranteed covenant and all sales are final, no matter how talented, proven, or productive the player may have been in year’s past. But these memories—especially recent ones—often clouds the judgment of a [...]
This episode is an hour long, so I’ll link the first two installments here and put the rest up with commentary over the weekend. This episode is as great as all the others, with perhaps its peak arriving at the discussion of Ray’s shooting technique and the feature on Glen Davis. What a consistently involving show this was. All expectations met and exceeded. But don’t let it distract you from the other great stuff that’s gone up today!
FIRST VIDEO
The first five minutes: The tone taken by Doc and the players in discussing the Perk trade is, pardon my language, bananas. They act like it was some kind of inevitable natural disaster that they have to rebound from. Doc: “We traded a player, but we traded one of our family members. You just don’t get by that. You don’t just wipe that away and go play basketball.” Replace the first sentence with “a volcano destroyed our practice facility” or “Von Wafer’s dog was run over” and then it kind of makes sense. But this trade did not just happen to the team out of nowhere! THIS. WAS. VOLUNTARY. What does it say about the trade that nobody has anything to say about how it’s going to help, just how difficult it’s going to be to “get by”? You shouldn’t have to “get by” a thing your basketball operations professionals chose to do!
6:28 – Gotta give it up to Rondo for just talking about two dudes being friends like it’s barely even a thing. He misses going to the mall on road trips with Perkins, and a lesser guy would withhold that information, but not Rajon Rondo. He forces you to confront that and get a little misty over it. He and Perk were FRIENDS, and he wants the world to know. Acknowledge your friends, everyone.
6:55 – This is where Rondo auditions Avery Bradley to be his replacement friend now that Perk is gone. It does not go well. Rondo makes the effort to wear a cotton kimono with breast pockets, but Bradley just throws on a t-shirt and orders up a bunch of Shirley Temps (note the empty husks of Shirley Temps past next to his full one). But that’s not the biggest problem. Avery: posture, dude. Get some. When you have a conversation with your friend who is better than you at your job, don’t sit with your face hovering six inches above your food. The guy chats like he dribbles! Nice of the ESPN editors to not include the part of this scene where Bradley gets Nexted by Rondo.
8:10 – I like this story about the entire locker room going nuts in an emotional chain reaction. That’s one of the fun things about everyone on the team being insane. Cassell and Posey hucking chairs at each other, PJ Brown threatening to tan everyone’s backside, Ray just sitting in front of his locker reading “Life of Pi” and shaking his head…that’s the stuff.
11:00 – Riddle time at the Jeff Green house. Jeff’s girlfriend asks “What do you call a pony with a cough?” Jeff’s mom responds with what sounds like “A pony seven,” which, you know, is not a great guess, but thanks for getting involved. When the answer is revealed to be “a little ho(a)rse),” everyone laughs really hard because they’re nervous about being on camera. Then Jeff talks about how he misses Oklahoma City because it was easy to drive there.
13:35 – Ray, still toned like a dang printer cartridge, says he always knows why he missed a shot. “Short, legs…long, I’m aiming it…” That is so awesome. He knows that he’s “right-eye dominant” and works that into his game. I never want to hear anyone else talk about anything ever again. Everyone else, please stop talking so Ray can talk about shooting threes and his childhood.
SECOND VIDEO
1:55 – Footage from the 1996 NBA Draft. Stern shakes the hands of Kobe, Nash, and Ray in succession, secretly knowing that these are going to one day be one of the ten best players ever, a two-time MVP, and the all-time three-point champion. Seriously, Stern plans all of this stuff.
2:05 - Young Ray Allen looks quite a little like a current Jeff Green. Could that be why Ray took him in as a mentor? I kind of wish Ray would grow his hair out so we could see if it receded.
4:40 – Baby compares his abs, or his absence of abs, to Ray’s 12-pack soda box (the new 12-packs with six rows of two, not that old “three rows of four” nonsense). Then he pretends to eat some salad greens, forgetting that he’s already revealed that he eats spaghetti and pancakes before every game on this very show.
The Davis feature that follows right after that is very sweet, and actually of some value for fans, because lost in the criticisms of Glen Davis’s play is the fact that he is a very good, sensitive guy. I’m not saying anyone should lay off for this reason, but you know, keep it in mind. He really loves being a Celtic.
9:59 – There’s an analogy here about a chicken vs. a pig that is so confusing and illogical that it probably doesn’t bear repeating here. It’s about how pigs sacrifice more than chickens, because chickens just lay eggs but pigs sacrifice “their whole bodies,” so Davis wants to be a pig. Chickens, of course, also sacrifice their whole bodies, but this is the reasoning that led to Glen taking more charges, so just go with it.
12:35 - So if Danny Ainge is willing to appear in this video, why isn’t he talking about the things we want him to talk about?
The Ticker