Cheap Trick

Happy Humpday.

Amazing

Foil in the Oven: Working For It

When you get to the playoffs, winning is the only thing that matters. And, despite their poor play on the offensive end, the Celtics have something very valuable that they can take away from last night's victory: this was the first playoff win that did not come easily for them. The most disheartening thing about the series with the Hawks was not that it went seven games, not that the Celtics let Joe Johnson run all over them, or that they were unable to win on the road. The most disheartening thing about that series was that the Celtics showed us no evidence that they have what it takes to pull out close games. When everything's clicking for them and baskets are coming easy, they can blow out anybody. But, when things got a little tougher, they seemed like they didn't know what to do. Those games in Atlanta were all there for us to take, and we didn't. Not once.

Now, you can certainly argue that if LeBron James had made a couple of those layups last night and a couple of possessions had gone differently during the games in Atlanta that the results might have been different all across the board. But, again, this is the playoffs. At this point, we are only concerned with results. Great teams know how to win in close games. This Celtics team, and all of us (their fans), have gotten so used to 20 point blowouts that it seems like none of us know what to think when we see some adversity. Well, it's very possible that the Celtics might not win another game by more than 11 or 12 points for the rest of the postseason. We might not see any more games in which the outcome is already in hand during the third quarter. That's not what playoff basketball is about. Playoff basketball is about close games that go down to the wire. The teams that survive are the teams that are able to pull out close wins even when they aren't at their best. I didn't think that this team could do that before. Last night they showed us that they can. The significance of this cannot be understated.


All of that said, they need to play better in game 2. For starters, the pace of that game was WAY too slow. Doc Rivers talked about this when they interviewed him during the second half, and yet they were never able to speed things up. I am the same guy who said last week that they needed to slow the pace against Atlanta, but things are a little different now that we're dealing with Ben Wallace, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, and Wally Szczerbiak. These guys can't run.

Second, I don't know what was going on at the offensive end last night, but it was ugly. Have you ever seen this team look more out of sync than they did in the second and third quarters? The turnover total was absurd. It goes without saying (but I'll say it anyways) that they need to take better care of the ball and shoot better on the offensive end.


Third, they did a great job on LeBron. Paul Pierce and James Posey were in his face all night, and he got very few clean runs at the basket. This needs to happen all series long. LeBron is going to come harder in game 2, you can bet your life on that, and the Celtics need to be ready.

I will state for the record (and my girlfriend can attest to this) that when Sam Cassell came in to the game in the third quarter I said out loud "You know what, this might actually be good. It's not like the offense is clicking. He can't come in and disrupt our rhythm because we don't have any. Maybe he can just hit some shots and help keep us in this." And, he did. He even hit some three pointers, which I wasn't expecting. Last night showed me, once again, that Cassell could prove valuable to us, particularly in games when our starting 5 aren't in sync on offense. Stay tuned for game 3 in Cleveland, when I will most likely flip-flop on him again and call for him to be benched for the rest of the series.


As my last note on this game, I just want to say that the referees have sucked throughout this entire postseason and last night was no exception. The flagrant foul that they called on Sam Cassell was totally absurd. To watch Rajon Rondo get hammered to the deck from behind TWO GAMES IN A ROW (4 and 5) and not have a foul called in the last series, and then to see a flagrant foul called when Cassell hits LeBron on the shoulder, is incredibly frustrating. Things did improve, and I was pleasantly surprised to the officials calling fouls AND traveling on LeBron. Hopefully this will continue.



The Hornets have made a believer out of me. I can't stop watching this team. The performances that they put on in games 1 and 2 were incredible. David West and Tyson Chandler are both better than I thought. All season long, I've heard people say "yeah, Chris Paul is sick, but remember that he has David West." I've kind of shrugged and said "yeah....but, you know man...." Well, fuck that. David West if legit. This team is for real. Watching Chris Paul run that team gives me an excitement that I've only gotten watching MJ and Kobe. He dominates all facets of the game. He makes his teammates shine. He steps up in every key moment. When you see those fans in New Orleans, who almost lost this team to Oklahoma City, totally pumped for playoff basketball and rocking that arena in their yellow playoff shirts, I don't know how you can think that this guy was not the MVP. If you haven't yet had the pleasure of seeing this team, tune in tomorrow night to see them attempt to take one in San Antonio. I think it's safe to say that I'm riding the Hornets bandwagon in the West. And, I'm pretty sure that David Stern is driving.

Kobe

Regardless of how you feel about him, the guy is amazing. I'm a firm believer that Chris Paul should have taken the hardware this season (watch him tomorrow night and try to disagree), but it's hard to argue with this choice. It would have been hard to argue with any of the top four candidates. Bryant absolutely should have been the MVP in 2006. I hate to use a Mike Woodson word, but to this day I still believe that Nash over Kobe was a travesty. And, it seems fitting that Kobe would finally win the award this year, when he seems to have taken great strides as a teammate.

Opening Day

Well folks, the day I have been anxiosuly awaiting has finally arrived. No I'm not talking about the first game of the second round of the NBA playoffs (although that is sick). And I am not talking about the day after cinqo de Mayo either. Tonight at 8 Oclock, under the lights of Historic Cashman Park, Newbuyrport's summer softball league kicks off. I really can't think of anything that a man could look forward to more after a long day at work on a beautiful spring day than a beer league softball game. I hope that you all get to experience the feeling. If you don't, fear not, for I will allow you to live vicariously through me as I enter my second season as a player on the Greenheads.

If you have not seen the following movie, I would suggest it. Yes that is Ralph Machio (The Karate Kid). If you are offended by foul language, or are a pussy, do not watch the following video:



Rock and Roll.

Another NFL Shooting

Marvin Harrison was apparently involved a shooting that occurred outside his bar in Philly. Reports are saying that someone came into Marvin's bar at 5 pm, got into an argument with him, and left the bar; Harrison allegedly followed the guy outside, and then gunfire erupted.

Reports are also saying that someone was hit in the hand, and ESPN's Sal-Pal is reporting that, "six of the bullet casings found after an April 29 shooting near Marvin Harrison's car wash and garage came from a gun that belongs to the Colts wide receiver." Sal-Pal also reports that: "A source told the Philadelphia Daily News that Harrison, during an interview with police, later admitted to being in a fistfight on April 29, but the Colts receiver said he wasn't involved in the shooting."

A few thoughts on this developing nightmare for Indy:

1. I forgot that Marvin Harrison was a Philly guy at heart. He grew up there, played with McNabb in high school, set state records, and lives there in the off season. I guess he owns a bar and car-wash, too (note: if I was a nasty receiver I would definitely name my bar or restaurant Playmakers; car washes are excellent investments, too).

2. We all know Philly is dangerous and it should not surprise you that Marvin owns (or owned) a gun. I'm not commenting on gun ownership, but rather I'm pointing out the fact that store owners in Philly probably own legal guns for crime or robbery prevention. I actually have no problem with merchants owning guns, but considering Marvin is an NFL star, he probably should have used more discretion here.

3. I actually like how Marvin Harrison was tending his bar on a spring afternoon. Was he serving customers behind the bar or was he doing work upstairs like the Sopranos? I'd really like to know.

4. This is really bad news for Indy if it turns out Harrison was breaking the law. Even if he's innocent, it looks terrible and hurts the NFL's image. Conversely, if it turns out that someone was trying to rob Marvin and he fired shots in response, I see no problem. But if this is a vendetta thing, I don't see it turning out well for everyone involved.

5. We know something happened, but so far Marvin is denying "any involvement with the shooting." Does that mean he was involved in a fight, but didn't shoot, or that he wasn't involved with any sort of altercation period? An explanation is probably needed here since he may have admitted to fist fighting with someone that day.

Roomofzen Deportes: Referee

This guy is not helping soccer's image in America

NBA Awesomeness

A few NBA thoughts from this weekend:

1.) Kobe Bryant is going to win the MVP, according to the LA Times. I have mixed emotions about this pick: on the one hand, I understand how KG turned around the Celtics this year, and I also realize how nasty Chris Paul is. But on the other hand, I watched Kobe play about 10 times this year and every time he stepped on the court, he single-handily willed his team to victory.

Bottom-line: the Lakers are a one man show and they won the Western Conference through his leadership. How can you argue with that type of success? The Celtics played in the Eastern Conference and Chris Paul led his team to a lower playoff seeding than the Lakers. I love KG, but I don't think he could have led the Lakers to the one-seed in the West this year.

Bryant basically won every game for them and his nightly performance was Jordan-esque. I know people will say he got it because "it was his turn" but the Lakers won the West with Kobe and Kobe alone. And the West by far the most competitive NBA conference in recent NBA history - no one will debate that. Case closed. (As a sidenote, it's somewhat incredible that a player whose averaging close to a triple double (Lebron) wasn't considered to be the favorite for MVP this year...as we've been saying all along...the NBA is awesome now and well-worth your time).

2.) Lebron James beat the Wizards for the 3rd consecutive year. Sweet. I know most people don't care about the Wizards and I know most people don't like Gilbert Arenas, but I'd still like to comment on this series and team:

a. It was an excellent series to watch on and off the court. Jay Z did a rap about a Wizard's role player, Lebron James showed how much a whiney-girl he is, about 1000 technical and flagrant fouls were called, and every game looked like a fight would break out (or a shooting). Answer me this: why was Deshawn Stevenson fined for a throat slash in Game Four while KG was let off the hook for the same thing after Game 7?

b. I hate to say this, but Gilbert Arenas needs to go. I love the guy to death, but the Wizards just play better basketball without him. For starters, he hogs the ball too much and doesn't pass very well (he averages over 30 shots a game when healthy and doesn't average more than 4 assists). Second of all, he is injury prone and doesn't play very much (2 injuries in the past three seasons). Third of all, he is expensive and counts a lot against the cap (apparently he wants 100 million for 7 years). Fourth of all, he is not a player you build a team around, but rather someone who plays a scoring role for a team with multiple good players (imagine him on the Lakers or Suns). The Wizards essentially played .600 basketball without him and beat a ton of very good teams without his scoring. Key lesson: move on.

c. The Wizards need to release Arenas and use their cap space for a passing point guard who can run and gun; they need to bolster their defense through signing someone like Tyson Chandler or Bruce Bowen; and finally they need to resign Antawn Jamison who is the heart and soul of this team. Last time I checked the Wizards wanted to sign Antawn, so that makes me very happy. He is a total badass.

3.) The Celtics/Hawks series was simply amazing. Joe Johnson is a beast and Babcock is right to point out that this series tempers the Celtics for subsequent "tough times" in the playoffs.

I'm really not sure what to think about the Celtics after this series, though. They really should have crushed this team in four games, and the fact that they lost three times on the road may foreshadow difficult times ahead. For example, will they repeat this road performance against Cleveland? We saw how the Cavs fans destroyed the Wizards on the road, and we also saw how band-wagon fans can be tactically deployed by underdog teams. Another question: how will they guard Lebron or will they just try to ourscore the Cavs and shut down their role players (which the Wizards couldn't do). I am looking forward to this series and I hope the Celtics pull it out since I hate Cleveland. Go Celts!

4.) I actually stayed up every night to watch the Suns-Spurs series and while I got sick from losing sleep that week, it was definately worth my time. The Spurs are easy to hate right now since all they do is complain and whine about calls that don't go their way. Every time Duncan got fouled, for example, he would give the refs that wide-eyed, "I'm shocked" you actually called me on something look. And Manu Ginobili just looked like a fish, flopping around on the court taking all those bogus charges. I really didn't like the way the Spurs played this series and the refs seemed to be favoring them over the Suns at every turn. Making matters worse was the sub-par play from Shaq at the free-throw line and the hot/cold play of Amare.

Bring on the King

Everyone expected the Celtics to totally dominate the Hawks in the first round. And, they did when you really look at how the series played out. The average per-game point differential in this series was 12 in favor of the Celtics (game 1- 23, game 2-19, game 3- minus 9, game 4- minus 5, game 5- 25, game 6- -minus 3, game 7- 34). This was the second highest of any of the first round series (12.5- Lakers, 12- Celtics, 9.4- Hornets), which is particularly impressive when you remember that they lost three of those games. The Lakers had the highest average point discrepancy with 12.5, only slightly higher than the Celtics. However, they won every game in their series. If you only look at the four games that Boston won, the average margin of victory was 25.25 points. Total dominance. The truth is that the Hawks never stood a chance in this series. This begs the question of why we all had to suffer through several sleepless nights as we watched this series play out over 7 games. Furthermore, we have to wonder what the Celtics need to do differently as they advance to face more stiff competition. They took a big step towards answering those questions yesterday afternoon.

First, Doc did a much better job of managing the lineup yesterday. He's been completely erratic with his rotations throughout this series. John Hollinger really hammered it home for me yesterday when he pointed out that the Celtics had already used 12 players by the one-minute mark of the second quarter of game 6. There's two big problems there. One, you can't really establish a rhythm when guys are constantly coming in and out. Two, how can you possibly match up with anyone if you're keeping your best players off the floor? Maybe Doc entered the playoffs with the mentality of "if I keep these rotations constant, then my key guys will be more rested deep into the playoffs because they've played less minutes." In theory, that's fine. But, the best way to rest them is to not play every series to 7 games. Yesterday, Doc had the right mindset. It was a must-win, so he played the starters and the essential bench guys (Posey, Powe, Cassell). Not until the game was in hand did we suddenly see the bench emptied. Every game in the playoffs is a must-win. Hopefully, yesterday will be an indication of the gameplan for the rest of the post-season.

Second, A lot of the guys said it yesterday, this team had not played a meaningful game since they played the Hornets about halfway through March. They needed to be slapped around a little bit by this Hawks team before they could regain that intensity. Yesterday's performance was markedly more intense, particularly on the defensive end, than even the other three home games from this series. The Celtics will need to play with that same cut-throat mentality from yesterday if they want to de-throne King James.


Finally, LeBron James is better than Joe Johnson. Perhaps the biggest concern that Celtics fans had during the first round was "if we can't guard Joe Johnson, how are we going to deal with LeBron or Kobe?" That's a good question. I expect that we'll see Pierce on James when these teams tip off, and I also expect that we'll see Posey and (I hope) Tony Allen on him as the game progresses. One nice thing about being so deep is that we can roll out a lot of guys to take fouls and put James on the line, where he struggles. It's going to take a full team effort to stop LeBron, and I have no doubt that the Celtics are up to it. But, it's going to take that intensity that we saw from them in games 5 and 7. There were several times in that Hawks series, particularly in games 3 and 6, where it seemed like the Cs were coming in with the attitude of "alright, we've got these guys on the ropes. They should go down easy." As we head into this second round, that mentality can never enter their minds for a second. They need to always be on the attack, regardless of the situation. LeBron showed us all how dangerous he can be in last year's playoffs. Yesterday's game was a perfect example of how the Celtics need to play if they want to advance to the Conference Finals. It was reported that during a time out in the third quarter, despite a lead that was right around 30 points, Doc Rivers yelled at his team "DON'T LET UP!" They can't let up for a second in this next round. If they do, this 66-win team could end up being nothing more than the next page in King James' scrapbook.

Message Delivered

Since the highlights of Garnett's hellacious pick on Pachulia-gulia have not surfaced yet on Youtube, this will have to do for now. A couple of notes on this series, and a few looking forward:

1) Things got nasty, and I loved every minute of it. Nothing galvenizes a team like a good old fashioned on-court altercation, and there were several of these to go around against the hawks. The Celtics kept their cool and were ultimately able to deliver the knock-out blow. Whos badass now?

2)Going to seven games is going to help the Celtics down the road: This team faced just about every possible scenario a team can face in a playoff series in the first round. Bench players got good minutes and the Celtics have gained some considerable momentum moving forward.

3)This team doesn't back down. Even with this game well in hand by over 30 points guys were selling out, diving on the floor and staying fired up. You can't tell me that this isn't a good sign. I don't want to hear "ooooh they might get hurt!", that is something that a bitch would say.

4)Of course it would be nice to win a game on the road but the fact of the matter is that they could lose every game on the road until the finals and still get to the finals. The mystique of the Garden is being rebuilt game by game. The Hawks looked utterly hopeless tonight. Call it the 6th man effect. Call it awesome. Call it no ones going to want play the Celtics in Boston with a series on the line. No one.

Bring on the Cavaliers.

Game 7

Thanks to Ferrante again for getting this video. This is what they've been playing before each playoff game (and came after the Rocky montage on Wednesday). At this point, I can't comment on the Game 7 happening today. I'm too anxious to articulate my thoughts.

The montage

Thanks to Ferrante, our agent in the field, for capturing this live footage of the Celtics-Rocky montage put together by the Celtics crew to show before game 5 on Wednesday night. As I described, the crowd was so intense before the game that the building wasn't that loud. Everyone seemed to be sitting, staring at the court very purposefully. This was not one of those nights when you drink 20 beers and come to the game feeling happy with a carefully prepared list of insults for your opponents. Wendesday night was all about taking care of business. Everyone was in a silent rage. But, notice around the 2 minutes mark, after they show the video of Hawks dominance in games 3 and 4 (which I parallel to the memory of Apollo's death). Suddenly, the crowd stands and begins going to work with their cheers. As you saw, the results were perfect. The crowd was nuts all game. We can only hope the team has something similar up their sleeve for tomorrow afternoon.

Game 7

My Feelings about the Celtics loss to the Hawks can best be described by the following Haiku:

So help me god I

cannot handle another

soul crushing defeat

Baroness

Back to Reality

It was nice to see the Boston Celtics out on the floor tonight instead of whatever team that was playing against the Hawks in games 3 and 4. Great ball movement, hard work on the defensive end, clutch shooting. Just a great performance all-around. I'll also take this time to apologize for my harsh comments about Sam Cassell. I think I was a little caught up in the paranoia over the possibility of seeing everything this team has worked so hard for crumble right before my eyes. After seeing someone like Rondo orchestrate the offense so well, it's not easy to get used to watching a shoot-first point guard. But, that's what he is, so it's only natural that when his shooting is off, he's not going to look good. But, Cassell has had many more good games than bad since joining the team, and I think he could be big for us down the stretch.


Line of the night in the stands:

Dick Bavetta called a bullshit 3-second violation on the Celtics for like the fifth time of the night, and a guy three rows above yells "How about a you're too fucking old for your job violation Dick!" It was great because it was true. It was also original (unlike "get off your knees, you're blowing the game!"). Finally, it gave double meaning to the word dick. Maybe you had to be there to appreciate this trifecta so rarely achieved by the drunken heckler, but I don't think so.

Finally, great job by the Celtics tech crew to put together those videos set to the Rocky IV training music. The sequence in the middle that featured a slew of sick Hawks' dunks made me feellike I was Apollo Creed taking the lights-out blow from Drago. The funny thing is that when they showed all the clips from the press conference of Celtics guys saying "we need to get back home. We need a serious lift from that crowd", the training montage started and the crowd was quiet. I looked around. It wasn't that they weren't excited. It was that this video was so intense and everyone was so jacked up and ready for the game to start that, much like KG down on the floor, it was all they could do not to throw up in their food. As I'm sure you saw on TV, the noise picked up. Can any readers please send that montage along should it ever hit youtube.: