On June 23rd, 2011, Brian Robb and I stood around a high top bar table in Tommy Doyle’s in Kendall Square. Before us lay one of the biggest mounds of buffalo chicken wings I had ever endeavor to make disappear. These 25 cent flappers- one of the few indulgences afforded to the participants of our [...]
There are a number of contextually-appropriate ways to craft this post. One would be to forgo words entirely, and represent Chris Wilcox’s entire season with a series of videos. That would involve one part of this: For every eight parts of this: Note the headline on that second clip. Someone was so amused/enraged by Wilcox’s [...]
Here’s a sweeping general statement involving super specific statistics that may or may not mean anything: In the 1423 minutes Rajon Rondo played this season, the Boston Celtics were outscored by 1.3 points per 100 possessions. When he sat (including all contests after he tore his ACL), Boston was better than their opponents by 1.8 [...]
Avery Bradley has been a standout defender for the past couple seasons…in the regular season anyway. Now he has a trophy to prove it. The NBA announced this afternoon that the third-year guard has been elected by coaches around the league to the second-team all-NBA defensive team for the first time in his career. Bradley [...]
The first domino to fall this offseason is Paul Pierce’s contract. Until Danny Ainge figures out what he’s doing there, little else matters. As we wait for this decision, we also must face the rest of the offseason, which means it is also rumor season. With that time of year, comes plenty of information floating [...]
In his third year in the league, in which promising players often make brash leaps from benchwarmer to starter, from starter to star, Avery Bradley took a big step back. But his regression might be deceptive. When he returned to the Celtics’ lineup on January the 2nd after two in-season months recovering from offseason shoulder [...]
The Celtics easily played the worst game of the season tonight. Wait a second, that’s unfair. The Celtics were present for their worst game of the season. The truth is no one played in this game. No one played defense. No one played offense. No one put in the effort necessary to do anything.
Tonight’s game puts Doc Rivers a giant leap closer to the hot seat. The Celtics were more unresponsive to Doc’s coaching than the Kings were to Paul Westfphal. Furthermore, despite having everyone available except for Sasha Pavlovic, Keyon Dooling, and Jermaine O’Neal who were out with injury, there were two DNPs tonight. If Greg Stiemsma and E’Twaun Moore aren’t good enough to participate in what transpired tonight than they aren’t NBA players. The truth is, they are good enough to play but despite the Celtics’ obvious heavy legs and dearth of desire to play, let alone win, this game neither Celtics’ rookie logged any court time.
This was absolutely Doc’s worst coaching job of the season. The second game of a back to back and the starters play long minutes with Chicago looming on Sunday. Add that to the two DNPs and the failure to motivate his players and I wouldn’t be surprised if he brought his whiteboard tonight. Obviously it’s not all Doc’s fault. He can only do so much and the players have to do what he tells them. All I know it that if the Celtics don’t get destroyed by Chicago, it only further validates how much they didn’t show up tonight.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we hear some news in the next couple hours about injuries or sickness or something that prevented the Celtics from playing the type of basketball they should be capable of playing. The listless demeanor was so uncharacteristic I started to get delusional with my rationalizations. I literally considered that a terrorist plot was afoot and some nefarious characters were releasing some chemical weapon into the arena that made the Celtics so sluggish. Like carbon monoxide poisoning that was only activated by people wearing green. The lack of effort was that ridiculous.
What bothers me the most is the fact that the Celtics weren’t the only ones that were on a back to back. I was at the Garden last night, writing the recap at CelticsHub, writing for the Daily Dime, Tweeting and I’m on recap and highlights tonight. Add working full days at my day job on today and Thursday along with walking, taking the T, and taking the commuter rail to and from the Garden and it just really put me in a foul mood. Why bother? I could have gone out tonight. I could have went to bed early. It’s not covering a loss or a bad team that frustrates me. There’s plenty of merit in blogging about teams that need work. It’s covering a team that had every opportunity to ramp up the effort and beat a bad team and just didn’t. Instead they got frustrated, argued with the refs, got into shoving matches with Raptors’ players, and did all this because they just absolutely sucked.
I really cannot wait to hear the post game comments about this one. If this comes close to gaining any consistency than Danny Ainge needs to blow it up. If he needs anyone to light the fuse I’ll make room in my schedule.
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