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Marc Spears of Yahoo.com caught up with Doc Rivers while traveling with his son Austin.  Spears happened to ask Rivers about the Celtics’ final game of the season:

“It still hurts the same,” Rivers said. “That won’t go away. I had dinner with [Rajon] Rondo and ‘Baby’ [Glen Davis] in Vegas and they were talking about how much it hurts. I said, ‘I hope it hurts you for the rest of your life. It should.’ ”

Those are some harsh words.  Harsh, but all too true and important.  It’s nice to know that professional athletes have the capacity to care about their craft as much as fans do.  All too often there are stories about athletes not caring or purposely not giving everything they have (see Vince Carter).

Rivers knows all too well about life long regrets.  In 1994, Rivers was on the New York Knicks team that lost the NBA Finals to the Houston Rockets after being up 3-2.  Eeeshhh.  Remind you of anything?

At any rate, this type of tough love is yet another example of why I wish Doc Rivers were my Dad.

Two weeks ago, Glen “Big Baby” Davis was asked to comment on the Celtics’ offseason.  Specifically, these topics included the addition of Shaquille O’Neal, playing with future Hall of Famers, and being in a contract year.  Perhaps the comment that should have resonated the deepest with Celtics fans is Davis’ feelings on himself.

When asked by the Boston Globe about the team’s high expectations of Davis, he responded by saying all the right things:

“This is the year of finally hitting that line of maturity of finally becoming that player that I knew I could be. This is the year of just all-around. Throughout my career, my three years being here, it’s been up and down. When I play, you’ve seen glimpses, like, ‘Wow, this guy could start. Or come off the bench.’ Glimpses up and down. But this is the year of Glen becoming that whole player that 10 years down the road, eight years down the road will hopefully be an all-star.”

» More: Do You Believe The Baby?

…or should I say “Fors-cast”?  Our friend Chris Forsberg over at ESPN Boston has been collaborating with the local blog writer’s to come up with some answers to this offseason’s most poignant questions.

Brian Robb has already prognosticated the Celtics total number of wins, the East’s playoff seeding, and how the season ends for the C’s.   Yesterday, BRobb lent his expertise to the starting center conundrum:

“This topic shouldn’t even be a debate. The Celtics pride themselves on their defense, and, at this stage of his career, Shaquille O’Neal is a flat-out defensive liability on the perimeter. You don’t get to start for the Celtics when Doc Rivers is trying to figure out how to account for your lack of mobility within the team’s defensive scheme. On the other hand, Jermaine O’Neal is no world beater, but he can still hold his own on the defensive edge at this stage of his career, and he is a capable shot blocker. Offensively, both guys are upgrades over Perkins, but Jermaine’s shooting ability also plays into the Celtics’ offensive goal of keeping the floor spread. Put it all together and Jermaine O’Neal is the guy in the middle on opening night.”

» More: The Forecast Continues…

Today…is a slow Celtics news day.  Rajon Rondo is no longer on Team USA, Shaquille O’Neal is eating hot dogs, beating Charles Barkely in golf and playing hilariously absurd interviewee on SportsCenter yesterday (seriously, he refers to Brian Kenny as “Steve” and “Tom”.  Priceless.).

I could spend a few hundred meaningless words stirring up fake controversy about how O’Neal should spend more time getting ready for the season instead of doing a lame faux-competition TeeVee show.  Or I could pull a Stan Van Gundy meets Rodney Dangerfield about how Rondo not playing for team USA is somehow an attack on his reputation.  Of course, I would be wrong to do so.  Shaq is a bench player who, much like Rasheed Wallace of yester-year, needs to be in shape and effective for the playoffs.  I do not really care what he does during the offseason.  Besides, do you think last night documented the only time Shaq has eaten a gluttonous amount of hot dogs in the 18 seasons?  As for Rondo, wasn’t it about a week ago when we linked to a “Ball Don’t Lie” blog post about Rondo being the third best point guard in the NBA?

I know it’s the offseason and everyone is just itching for something, anything to occupy their minds until training camp.  Instead of speculating in a TMZesque way, I would rather speculate in basketball way.  All that said, I bring you the first installment of the new CelticsHub.com offseason filler collection entitled, “You Know What Would Be Cool?”

» More: YKWWBC: If Von Wafer Played Like It Was 2009