For the third straight season, the Detroit Pistons will not advance to the NBA Finals. And, though I am a Celtics fan, this truth is a result not of Boston’s strength, but of Detroit’s weaknesses. That assertion sounds crazy, I know. The Pistons have become, along with the Spurs, the league’s standard for consistency since [...]
Entries from May 2008
May 20, 2008
Never Underestimate Cancer
This summer, my two best friends and I were talking about the Red Sox and the possibility of a Johan Santana trade. They both agreed that giving up Buchholz and Ellsbury was a little too much. They were fine with giving up Lester though. “He’s just going to be a seven inning, four or five [...]
May 19, 2008
Welcome Back Paul Pierce
For the first eleven years of my life, the Celtics were a joke. A perennial loser, the franchise was still crushed from the Len Bias and Reggie Lewis tragedies–two events that I was too young to remember. Cheapskate Owner Paul Gaston ignored the fans, Coach Rick Pitino ran [...]
May 16, 2008
You Can’t Choke with Reggie
Nastiness and killer instinct. Say what you want about coaching, playoff experience, Lebron. The reasons the Celtics are where they are right now, losers of five (going on six) straight road games, all but two of the defeats close, are as simple as nastiness and killer instinct. The Celtics lack both. And there’s only one [...]
May 14, 2008
Who Can Guarantee a Win
Muhammad Ali once said, “I’m not the greatest; I’m the double greatest. Not only do I knock ‘em out, I pick the round.” Before his second fight against Sonny Liston, Ali told reporters he had dreamed he would knock Liston out in the first round. He did.
In 1969, Joe Namath’s New York Jets [...]
May 13, 2008
Time for Celtics to Grow Up
During the regular season, the Boston Celtics went 31-10 on the road, the best away record in the league. During the postseason, the Celtics are 0-4 on the road. Perhaps the losing wasn’t as troubling in the first round, when none of the Celtics’ away games were lost by double digits. But then the team [...]
May 10, 2008
The Case for the Olympics
Since the Olympic committee announced Beijing as the host city for the 2008 Summer Olympics, human rights activists, celebrities, politicians, and athletes have been critical of the city and its home country for everything from its aggression towards Taiwan, to its presence in the Sudan, to its poor air quality. The disquiet recently turned into [...]
May 6, 2008
Why Melvin Ely is so Valuable and Thoughts on Spurs-Hornets
– Melvin Ely is one of the most valuable players in the NBA right now. He has career averages of 5.8 points per game and 3.8 rebounds per game. This season he averaged 3.9 points and 2.8 rebounds. Last season, Ely played in only six games for his new team after a [...]
May 6, 2008
Thoughts on Magic-Pistons
Last night I was able to catch the end of the Magic-Pistons game. Some thoughts:
–How many games have the Pistons won in the last five years with clutch free throws? They’re one of the only teams that, when they have a two possession lead with anywhere under two minutes, make you feel like [...]
May 5, 2008
Confessions of a Fan
When a fan’s team is in the playoffs, he or she builds a list of reasons for hating the other team. It’s an organic catalog that starts with stereotypes about the other team’s city (ex: Detroit’s a run-down city) and ends with the annoying and meaningless physical features of the opposing players (ex: Rasheed Wallace’s [...]
