Celtics Drop Two to Start Season

I've been in DC since last week, spending time with friends and family over the holidays. I've been too busy to blog, but I haven't been too busy to catch Boston in their season-opening games -- a 106-104 loss in New York on Christmas Day, and a 115-107 defeat in Miami Tuesday night.

In both games, Boston started out very slowly, digging a double-digit hole for themselves in the first half. In both games they clawed back to have a realistic shot at winning, taking the lead into the fourth quarter against the Knicks and getting to within three of the Heat late in the fourth.

It's a disappointing start to the season, and yet we should take it with a grain of salt -- the same grain of salt, I should point out, that would accompany our gloating over a 2-0 start, had the ball bounced that way.

The first way to put these losses in perspective is to remember that Paul Pierce hasn't seen the floor yet due to a sore heel. Boston badly missed his offense in a stagnant fourth quarter against the Knicks, and his presence on the defensive end of the floor could have meant a Boston win in either game (or perhaps in both).

The second is to remember that we just played the Knicks and the Heat, two of the better teams in the league. Miami is the odds-on favorite to win the title this year and are in great form (they absolutely took apart Dallas in a Finals rematch on Christmas Day) and New York just might be the third-best team in the East. Even if the Knicks aren't quite as good as some think they are, it's indisputable that Boston's first two opponents are two of the tougher teams in the league to guard. So the fact that we've surrendered 110.5 points per game -- normally a very alarming number -- is tempered by the fact that we've done so against two of the league's best offensive outfits (teams that play at a fast pace, to boot). If New Orleans lights us up Wednesday night, then I'll start to worry about the D.

Honestly, we're not that far from 2-0. We didn't deserve to win either game, really, not with the way we played in the first half, but we hung around, like we always seem to. Carmelo Anthony got hot in the fourth quarter in New York and a rookie named Norris Cole beat our zone (!) in the fourth quarter in Miami -- if not for those guys, we really could have opened with two wins. Two road wins, without the Captain.

That's probably stretching it. My point is, I'm not too concerned. The season ahead is lockout-shortened, but it's still long. Losing on the road to the Knicks and Heat was likely to happen.

Here's what I do hate: Ray Allen has played 38 and 40 minutes, respectively, in the first two games. Allen is, as always, in outstanding physical condition, but that's just too many minutes. Way too many. I'm going to give Doc a little bit of a pass because of the bodies he's missing (Pierce and the newly-signed Mickael Pietrus play the wing), but given Doc's tendencies, I'm expecting that I'll be complaining about the minutes situation all year. Doc did do a nice job limiting Kevin Garnett to 33 minutes Tuesday after KG played 37 in the opener, and this despite the fact that Chris Wilcox sat the whole second half with some sort of (hopefully minor) injury. But Rajon R-ndo can't play 40-plus minutes a game, either, if we're going to make a deep playoff run after what will be a very grueling season.

Save for one absolutely critical turnover in the waning moments against Miami, by the way, R-ndo has been almost flawless. He followed up a 31/5/13 performance against New York with a 22/8/12. Even better: He hit nine of 12 free throws against New York and seven of 11 against Miami. Seventy percent from the line from your point guard isn't normally something to get excited about, but normally your point guard didn't shoot under 60 percent from the stripe last season. What's more, I think this improvement could be permanent; he's slowed his pace at the line way down and everything about the shot looks smoother. A somewhat reliable free throw stroke should give him the confidence to go to the bucket more this year, which we're going to need.

Another bright spot, offensively, has been the bench. Brandon Bass had 20 points and 11 rebounds against the Knicks, while Keyon Dooling did the heavy lifting with 18 off the bench against the Heat. I'm more confident in Bass' ability to contribute regularly than Dooling's; Dooling will rarely shoot as well as he did Tuesday night, and the confidence these strong evenings brings may end up doing more harm than good if it convinces him to play outside his rather modest offensive abilities. Put another way, I'm going to need to see several more games of solid shooting from Dooling before I get comfortable watching him cock the ball way back -- behind his shoulder, to the side of his head -- truly one of the more bizarre shooting strokes in the NBA.

A lot to improve on, but no need to panic just yet.

Jeff Green Out for Season

Jeff Green will not play basketball this season, due to an aortic aneurysm. He's having heart surgery next month.

This certainly comes as a surprise, though we've known for a little while now that Green was having some sort of health issue. He had been held out of the team's early practices because he hadn't yet passed his physical.

The temptation is to tack this on to the list of reasons that the Green-for-Kendrick-Perkins trade last February was a disaster, but that's not fair to Danny and it distracts from the more important issue, Green's health. While heart surgery is a serious matter, it sounds like Green's long-term outlook is good and that the condition, when treated, doesn't even threaten his career, let alone his life.

From a basketball perspective, this obviously puts the Celtics in a tough spot. When action is taken to try and replace Green in the rotation, I'll let you know.

Catching Up On The Preseason Moves

I generally don't like to post about rumored moves, because I can't keep up with the news and you're better off getting your information somewhere else. This year, especially, has been difficult to follow, with the whole offseason and preseason condensed into like three weeks. I think the below information is accurate, but I'm seeing all sorts of conflicting reports and can't be sure.

Let me start with the moves we didn't make:

We didn't trade for Chris Paul. I laid out how I felt about trading Rajon Rondo for Paul in this post, but it really turned out to be a moot point: If what the Lakers and Clippers were willing to give up wasn't enough to satisfy David Stern, then no package the Celtics put together would have. Rondo reportedly has been upbeat at camp thus far, so it appears we've avoided the whole mess and kept everyone reasonably happy.

We didn't trade for David West. Before he signed with the Pacers, we were rumored to be sending Jermaine O'Neal and an unnamed player to the Hornets in a sign-and-trade for West. It ultimately fell through, and I know a few people are a little bummed out that it did. I'm glad we couldn't get it to work, though. I've always liked West, but he's 31 and had ACL surgery in April, and his preferred mid-range game doesn't make him a good fit alongside Kevin Garnett. That meant that at best, we would have been getting a sixth-starter type who poses some lineup challenges for Doc. At worst, we'd have been getting a veteran who needed more than eight months to recover from a knee injury and was more or less useless in perhaps our last push for a championship. Not the kind of guy you want to throw $20 million at, especially at the expense of the only decent center on our roster, as unreliable as his health may be.

We didn't sign Delonte West. This is the one that bugs me a little bit. A wrist injury derailed his return to Boston last season, but the guy is a proven combo guard who can help at both ends of the floor. I don't exactly know what went down, but I'm guessing Delonte wanted more money or more years than we were willing to give him. I'll be interested to see, when he does sign (the Lakers are a possibility, by the way), how much it's for, because I think we're going to regret not ponying up for him.

Rajon Rondo, Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Jermaine O'Neal were under contract and are back, as is Avery Bradley. We also signed our two draft picks, JaJuan Johnson and E'Twaun Moore. Here's how we've filled out the rest of the roster:

We traded Glen Davis to Orlando for Brandon Bass. I like this move. Baby is a likable guy and a serviceable player, but his love affair with his inconsistent jumper was infuriating. In Bass, the Celtics get a similar player (Bass loves the mid-range game, too), but one who shoots a bit better and can score at the rim -- where Baby would get his shot blocked inside because he lacked the athleticism to get off the ground and explode through defenders, Bass should be able to finish those plays. Bass is also a more consistent offensive rebounder than Davis, and better on the defensive glass, as well. If I have one reservation about this trade, it's that Bass was highly-coveted by the Magic, who signed him to a four-year, $18 million contract in 2009, then almost immediately soured on him. He averaged just 13 minutes per game in his first year in Orlando, averaging twice that last year when the Magic shook up their team with various trades. Magic coach Stan Van Gundy is a defense-oriented guy, and so it's hard for me to imagine that he'd sign off on this swap if unless he thought he was getting an upgrade on that end of the floor. The defensive metrics seem to point to Bass being a downgrade from Davis, whose major contribution on defense was taking charges in help defense situations. So I guess we'll see how Bass holds up on D, though a good scheme can do a lot to hide deficiencies in that area.

We signed Jeff Green to a one-year deal. Jeff Clark over at Celtics Blog has some good insight as to what this specific contract means for Boston's financial future (though I don't know where he gets the $9 million figure -- I haven't seen it confirmed anywhere), but here's what it means to me: Danny blew up the core of the 2008 title team, the team with the best record in the East at the time, for a guy who is going to be an unrestricted free agent after this season. I know I shouldn't live in the past and that you shouldn't throw good money after bad, but it just doesn't make sense to me. What could Danny have seen during Green's three-month tenure with Boston last season that made him second-guess his opinion? Don't get me wrong; I'm not a huge fan of Green's. But it's unreasonable to expect a guy to come to Doc River's Celtics in the middle of the season and expect him to integrate in right away. It hasn't happened at all in the past four seasons. Either you believe in the guy or you don't. To me, this contract is just another sign of how bad the Perk trade was, even if the contract is actually fine for the Celtics.

We signed Chris Wilcox, Marquis Daniels, Sasha Pavlovic, Keyon Dooling, and Greg Stiemsma. Along with Bass and Green, this is the crew that's going to make up the second unit. Wilcox is a journeyman center who is capable of decent numbers when he's healthy, but his 57 games with Detroit last year were the most he's played in a season since 2007-08. In his prime, he was putting up like a 13/7, but it's unlikely he's capable of that now. Daniels was finding his rhythm as a Celtic last year before a spine injury in early February ended his season and led to a trade to Sacramento. Especially with Delonte gone, it'll be good to have him back to spell Ray Allen. Pavlovic signed at the trade deadline last year to fill one of the roster spots left open by Daniels' move to the Kings. He played 17 games for the Celtics last year, and through the first 16, he made exactly four shots. In the 17th, the regular season finale against the Knicks, with all of Boston's starters resting, he came off the bench to make seven of ten shots (including four of five threes). I wouldn't expect him to play a lot of minutes, but he's the best shooter on the bench. Dooling is another journeyman, a point guard who excels on the defensive end but shoots too much, given how bad he is at it. His career three-point percentage is decent (35 percent), but his overall shooting percentage has been below 40 in each of the last two seasons. He's also the one new guy I know I'm going to have trouble rooting for, and that's especially true since we apparently chose him over Delonte. Stiemsma is a big body who was the D League defensive player of the year last season. I saw him on the USA team that won a bronze medal at the Pan-Am Games in October, and he did little to stand out.

A Few Thoughts on the Schedule

The lockout-shortened NBA schedule was announced yesterday, with the league trying to cram 66 games for each team into a time period stretching from Christmas Day to April 26. The result of the labor dispute from a scheduling standpoint is a lot of stuff we're not used to seeing, from back-to-back-to-backs (each team has at least one) and ridiculous stretches like the Hawks playing nine games in the season's first 12 nights.

My first thought when I heard about all of this is that there's going to be some bad basketball played this year in the NBA. While I wasn't a night-to-night fan of the whole league in 1999, the last time a labor dispute shortened the season, I can't imagine that the product that season was up to our usual NBA standard.

I'm not going to spend much energy talking about the Celtics' schedule as compared to the rest of the league's, save a point I heard Jackie MacMullan make on "Around the Horn" this afternoon, which is that, because of TV, the marquee teams (like the Celtics) end up with tougher relative schedules than normal due to the league not wanting to lose premier matchups. Thus, while each team plays only 18 non-conference games (and therefore twice against only three non-conference opponents, Boston's home-and-home Western Conference foes are Dallas, Oklahoma City, and, of course, the Lakers.

Other than that, I'm not going to spend time arguing the league screwed Boston by giving them their back-to-back-to-back on the road in the middle of April during the season's stretch run, or analyzing whether we have more tough Western opponents on the road or at home. I abhor this phrase, but the schedule "is what it is," it sucks for everybody, and nothing can be done about it.

I'm also not going to go through the schedule and highlight the key games and stretches -- you can do that yourself by looking here. But there are a few things the schedule affects that I do want to discuss. (Good thing I have a blog, then!)

I have very low expectations for the regular season. Another point I heard MacMullan make today is that the shortened schedule favors veteran teams -- I have no way of verifying this, but she asserted that the top four teams in 1999 were also the four oldest. Boston certainly qualifies as one of the oldest. In some ways, this makes sense -- the lockout means a very abbreviated training camp and preseason schedule, which benefits veteran teams that have a lot of experience playing with each other. And, as MacMullan pointed out, older players tend to take better care of themselves in the offseason (out of necessity).

On the other hand, it's hard to imagine that playing 17 games a month for four month's is going to be easy on the Boston veterans' legs, well-conditioned though they may be. So as long as we're safely in the playoffs, I'm not going to start freaking out if we don't show up on random nights throughout the season.

Doc's most important job is managing minutes. There's a caveat to my above promise, and that is if that we lose games in March and April while Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and Kevin Garnett are playing 38 minutes per. Most of the things I criticized Doc for in past years have gotten a lot better, but he still rides the horses too hard. Allen is 36 and played 36 minutes per game last year (just one off his career average); Pierce is 34 and played 34 per last season; KG is 35 and played 31. I don't have a number in mind for each of these guys; I just know it needs to be lower. Playing 66 games instead of 82 theoretically means fresher legs in the postseason, a good thing for an older team like ours, but Boston's legs won't be fresh if the studs are playing huge minutes night after night after night, with fewer days off in between.

The rookies better be ready. To that end, there's some opportunity here for Boston's two draft picks, JaJuan Johnson and E'Twaun Moore. It depends on what Boston does in free agency, but it's quite possible that the former Purdue teammates will be asked to play significant minutes during the regular season. (The same goes for second-year point guard Avery Bradley.) I'm excited by this prospect -- Doc hasn't done a great job breaking in rookies over the last four years, and so this is a good opportunity to get them some playing time in advance of the rebuilding period that will follow the Big Three era in Boston. The abbreviated preseason makes it harder on these guys because they won't have as much time to prepare, but Johnson and Moore are probably better-prepared to handle it then some other members of their draft class, because they -- unlike their peers -- have four years of college playing experience.

Why the Trade Rumors Don't Worry Me

As I'm sure you've heard, the NBA is back, baby, with the season set to open on Christmas Day. And no sooner than we digested that news along with our Thanksgiving leftovers did we receive the first real indication of basketball season: The annual Rajon Rondo trade rumor mill.

This year's iteration is Rondo for New Orleans' Chris Paul, a free agent next summer who is looking to join his own super-team to compete with the Unholy Trinity in Miami. And although those talks seem more or less dead as of this writing (Paul reportedly won't agree to sign an extension with the Celtics), enough has been made of it over the past 24 hours that it's worth a discussion.

Given my overall opinion of the guy, what I'm about to say borders on heresy, but here goes: Rondo for Paul is a no-brainer, slam dunk for the Cs. This isn't a novel statement -- you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who disagrees. As much as I love Rondo and think Paul is kind of a punk, there's no question that CP3 opens up more possibilities for a franchise, both this year and moving forward, than #9 does.

Danny Ainge knows this. That's why he proposed the deal. And whoever the hell is running things for the Hornets (the franchise is owned by the NBA) knows it, too. That's why he declined it.

I heard these trade rumors last night and thought little of them, but awoke this morning to a couple of semi-hysterical emails and texts messages. I started searching the deep recesses of my brain to try to retrieve who the past Rondo trade rumors had swirled around. Finding nothing there, I turned to the Internet, and quickly came across this article by Sean Deveney of The Sporting News. It's not Deveney's main thesis, but the below quote from that article illustrates the point I want to make rather nicely:

After having spent the Celtics’ ’08 title march in the background, you might say Rondo’s star was born in those playoffs. And yet, a month later, Rondo was one of the most prominent names on the trading block. He was going to Detroit with Ray Allen in a package for the Pistons’ three best players—Tayshaun Prince, Richard Hamilton and Rodney Stuckey. Or he was going to Memphis with Brian Scalabrine for Rudy Gay, Mike Conley and the No. 2 pick in the draft. No, he was off to Phoenix with Allen for Amare Stoudemire, Leandro Barbosa and the No. 14 pick.

None of that came to pass. In fact, none of it even came close to happening. Each scenario, at the time, was considered ridiculously in favor of the Celtics (though that Pistons deal would have been a good one for Detroit) and served as little more than grist for the rumor mill.

I don't necessarily agree with Deveny's main argument, that Ainge throws Rondo's name out in trade rumors as a motivational tactic. (It's certainly a possibility, but I think it's more likely that Ainge simply thinks that it's possible that one day, an opposing NBA GM will make a dumb decision and overpay for Rondo. It certainly wouldn't be the first time an NBA GM made such a decision.) But Deveney is right when he says that the vast majority of rumored trades involving Rondo would have been seen as major coups for the Celtics.

(I would have to agree with that assessment, with the possible exception of a proposal that Ainge is rumored to have proposed after the playoffs last year, a proposal that just became public knowledge yesterday: Rondo and Jeff Green to Oklahoma City for Russell Westbrook and Kendrick Perkins. I wonder how that conversation went: "Hi Sam, it's Danny. Remember when we had the best team in the East and then traded you our center and defensive anchor for your overrated combo forward? Yeah, I can't believe Shaq and Jermaine got injured, either! Anyway, Sam, we screwed up, and we'd like our center back. Can we swap again? No? What if we gave you Rondo, too, and you gave us that athletic kid who can't shoot, either -- Westbrook, I think his name is. No? But Sam ... Wait, hello? Sam????" In seriousness, I probably reacted as poorly as I did to hearing that proposal because it would have been a sneaky admission by Ainge that he messed up by dealing Perkins for Green in the first place, instead of an outright one, and because it would make me sad to have the band back together, sans Rondo, knowing that we easily could have kept all five together and not thrown away a chance at last season's title. I'm also not that high on Westbrook, though a lot of people are and would rather have him than Rondo.)

The point is that at least while our team is built to win now, any Rondo trade is very likely to overwhelmingly benefit us. It'd be something to be nostalgic over -- I'd probably even shed a few tears -- but our favorite franchise would almost certainly be in better shape because of it.

That caveat -- at least while our team is built to win now -- is important, though. Because, as fun as these last four seasons have been, we have to remember what we've gotten ourselves into. When we traded the 5th pick in the 2007 draft to Seattle for Ray Allen and Al Jefferson and a couple of future firsts to Minnesota for Kevin Garnett, we did so with an eye to a three-, maybe four-year championship window. Rondo's excellence and the surprising relative longevity of Paul Pierce and Allen have extended that window somewhat, but we're in year five now. It's going to end soon, my brothers and sisters in green, and when it does, it's going to end ugly.

Not necessarily ugly on the court or for the health of the franchise, in a basketball sense. When their run as alpha dogs is over, the veterans could bring in draft picks or promising players from franchises looking for something extra to put them over the top. Or Boston could use their cap room to sign a free agent stud. Rondo could be turned into a couple of pieces around which a playoff -- if not a championship -- squad could be built. The Celtics could be postseason mainstays again.

But emotionally, it's probably going to get ugly. The contract extension that Pierce signed in the summer of 2010 makes it likely that the Captain and the Truth retires a lifelong Celtic, and that's one drama-bomb I'll be happy to avoid. But Ray and KG are up after this year, and in all likelihood, they'll want to stay. And Pierce will want them to stay, and so will Rondo, and so will Doc Rivers, and so will I. So will you, and so will all the other Celtics fans in the world. And at some point -- maybe not this offseason, but sometime soon, and possibly even before this offseason -- Ainge is going to have to step in and be the bad guy, tell everyone it's over, and remind everyone of the Window and that it was fun while it lasted.

And then there's Rondo.

Rondo is the most unique player in the league today, if not in history. His peculiar blend of talent, athleticism, and disposition make him a once-in-a-lifetime performer on the basketball court. No player has brought me greater joy than he; it is likely that none ever will.

But Rondo is not, in all probability, a franchise point guard. He has more value to us than any NBA team, but the factors that make that true -- his chemistry with the Big Three and his ability and willingness to manage the three of them on the court -- dissipate when those guys are gone. I'm not interested in debating the degree to which he makes his teammates better and vice versa, but it's virtually uncontroverted that his effectiveness will be reduced when he suits up alongside lesser players and the opponent can focus their energies on stopping him. It is very likely that one winter night in the near future, Rondo will pull a jersey over that tiny head and onto those broad shoulders, and it won't say "Celtics" on the front. It will say "Hornets" or "Pacers" or, God forbid -- no, I don't want to even mention the unpleasant possibilities.

And to me, that's really what this play for CP3 is all about: the future. To sell Paul on signing long-term with Boston, Ainge has to sell him on the possibility of winning right away, going for a ring alongside Pierce, Garnett, and Allen. But from the very day that Ainge brought this team together, he's had at least one eye on the future. He structured the Big Three's contracts so that they would expire in staggered fashion; year-by-year, not all at once. The goal was to contend for championships during the Window, then slowly trade older pieces for younger ones, building the foundation so that the next title team can start from a much more solid base than this one did. Paul would be the bridge from the Big Three era to whatever era is next in Boston.

I say all this not to temper excitement for the season that is unexpectedly just a few weeks away, nor to cause you to monitor the upcoming campaign pensively, waiting for the hammer to drop. Rather, I say it to encourage you to appreciate what is immediately in front of us. As recently as last week, I was convinced that the labor dispute would claim the entire 2011-2012 season. I was faced not only with the loss of a prime season of my favorite player, but the likely closing of the Window and the end of the Big Three era.

And so, while the lockout made me as angry as it made any of you, it also made me appreciate the past and the newly-saved future that much more. On Christmas Day, when we rip the bow off the NBA season, I'll watch with a renewed sense of appreciation. I hope that when I flip on the TV at my grandmother's house, I'll see a familiar face playing point guard for the Celtics, zipping around the court, shooting passing lanes and dazzling the crowd with often spectacular assists.

But if he isn't, I'll know why. And I'll be okay with it.

I think.

A Semi-Interesting Read About Big Baby

Glen Davis is something of a polarizing figure among Celtics fans, a real love-hate guy. I love his willingness to take charges on defense. I hate his refusal to work on his post game. I love that he's worked hard enough on his jumper to make it a decent weapon. I hate how often he takes it (and so does Shaq, apparently). I love that he cares enough that Kevin Garnett can bring him to tears in the middle of the game. I hate that he's so sensitive that he would actually cry in frustration while sitting on an NBA bench.

You get the picture.

Some people are fond of saying that as fans, we're rooting for laundry. That may be true in certain respects, but it can be easy to lose sight of the fact that there are real human beings wearing that laundry -- and that those human beings are often just kids trying to become men in a setting that isn't exactly conducive to it. Now that a significant percentage of the NBA is younger than I am, I look at players differently than I did five or ten years ago -- not as heroes, but as talented individuals who have flaws, the same kinds of flaws that some of the equally talented (but lower-profile and less well-paid) individuals I'm fortunate to call my friends have.

So I like reading stories like this one from CSNNE's Jessica Camerato that looks at how Davis is dealing with the NBA lockout. Take a look, and maybe gain a little better appreciation for what young NBA players go through in the early years of their development -- as basketball players, yes, but also as adults.

A Reminder of What We're Missing Out On

Saw this clip a bunch of different places today and had to pass it along.

I agree with Matt Moore (as I often do) in that exhibition highlights are not all that impressive. At the same time, I love that these exhibitions exist; that a bunch of NBA players decide to get together for a little run from time to time. Brings basketball back to its roots.

Something to Read While You're Not Watching NBA Basketball

By now, you've probably heard that NBA has officially cancelled the first two weeks of the regular season.

I promise not to cross-post every new entry I make on my new blog, but I figured I'd link to it again just in case people missed it the first time. I wrote a post today about my favorite college players of all-time. It features a jump break!

New blog

Reader(s) --

I've started a new blog. The first post is up, and references no fewer than two Kardashians.

This does not mean the end of RwH. The objectives for the new blog do not include appearing to the outside world to be a huge Boston fanboy, and so I don't want those pages to be overrun with Celtics stuff, which they would be, because I still plan on watching every Cs game. (Assuming, of course, that there are any games to watch.) Additionally, I like what this site has become and it would feel weird to make big changes to its content.

So, moving forward, Boston stuff here, everything else (including Metal Monday and Jonny Flynn obsession) at the new site. Which site, I should add, is still very much a work in progress, and will focus on college ball and non-Celtics NBA. As such, it probably won't kick into high gear until either the lockout ends or the college season starts in earnest. Until then, I'll be tweaking the layout and design, adding and deleting links, and making the occasional post.

:(

Yes, we knew this was coming.

But still.

Sad face.

Metal Monday: Awesome Internet Gadgets Edition

Two toys from the interwebs:

1. The first is a flowchart useful for determining what genre of metal you are listening to. Spend some time on the "Discussion" page for the heavy metal genre entry on Wikipedia and you'll find that this chart is both under- and over-inclusive, and a more expansive version, done properly, could be even more hilarious, but "Are the lyrics about dragons?" still makes me chuckle after about a week.

(a/s to my buddy Chris for passing that along.)

2. I came across the second one on a wonderful site called Chart Porn, which is a great resource for fun stuff like this: a widget that evaluates and compares the "evilness" of Slayer albums based on the frequency of terms like "kill" and "Satan". 1985's "Hell Awaits" turns out to be the most sinister album, at 27% evil. And the most evil song? "Blood Red" off of Seasons in the Abyss, which contains one of the seven "evil" words in a whopping 54% of the song's lines.

Lyrics here. Relatively-tame-by-Slayer's-standards thrash metal in the video below.

Celtics Add Pair of Former Boilermakers

Boston didn't have a lot to work with in Thursday night's NBA Draft, but they made the most of the two picks they did have.

First, they traded the 25th pick to New Jersey for the 27th and a future second-rounder. They used #27 to draft JaJuan Johnson, a 6'10" power forward out of Purdue.

When I jotted down some thoughts on Johnson after watching him against Northwestern in December, I wasn't terribly high on him. He's a big guy who likes to play 17 feet from the basket, and I just don't think he's good at shooting those jumpers to justify taking them rather than going into the post, especially in college. He was passive on defense, also, though that may have been because he has a history of foul trouble and Northwestern's Luka Mirkovic isn't worth worrying too much about. (Though Mirkovic did burn Johnson a few times in the second half.)

My evaluation of Johnson hasn't really changed since then, but I do think Boston is a great spot for him. Mainly, I think Kevin Garnett is the perfect mentor. They play the same position and have the same type of offensive game. There's a good defensive player lurking inside Johnson -- I believe he was the Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year last season -- and KG's intensity is contagious.

Johnson spent four years in college, so he should be mature enough to handle the pressure of playing with an intense, veteran group like the one in Boston. And with Shaquille O'Neal retiring and Nenad Krstic off to play in Russia, the Celtics need someone to step into backup minutes in the pivot right away. That may have tipped the scales to Johnson from young Jeremy Tyler.

Johnson is far from a sure thing. There are plenty of rangy, athletic bigs who prefer the perimeter who haven't made it in the league, and it's unclear to me that Johnson will ever be comfortable in the post. He weighs just 220 pounds and isn't likely to get much bigger -- he has long arms but not a particularly broad frame, and he's already put on 40 pounds since his freshman year in college. But he's a great upside pick at the end of the first round.

Boston might've rolled the dice with dynamic scoring wing MarShon Brooks from Providence (the player they originally took for Jersey with the 25th pick) or Texas' Jordan Hamilton (the player other than Chris Singleton -- who is going to be really good, by the way -- who dropped the most in the first round) instead of Johnson. But given the team's needs, and given the guy they got with the 55th overall pick -- Johnson's classmate at Purdue, E'Twaun Moore -- Johnson was probably the right call.

Moore is a 6'4" shooting guard with a good floor game and solid leadership skills. He's a streak shooter -- that same game against Northwestern, he hit a bunch of threes on his way to 31 points -- and a good defender. I like him a touch more than guys like David Lighty and Ben Hansbrough, because I think he's more dynamic offensively.

There are a bunch of guys every year who have his skills, and most of them don't have NBA careers that amount to much. But every so often, a guy like Wes Matthews ends up exceeding everyone's expectations. I'm not saying Moore will be that kind of guy, but the possibility that he could be is all we could ask for out of this pick in this draft, a draft in which most of the last several selections were used on foreign players who can only be defined as prospects in the loosest sense of the term.

BGWG: Los Angeles Really Hates Boston

As many of you know, the Bruins won the Stanley Cup earlier this week. I'm not a Bruins fan (though I was ecstatic for goalie Tim Thomas, the MVP of the playoffs and a former Vermont Catamount), but Game 7 is a must-watch just about any sport, and I allowed myself the luxury of having the game on in the background as I made some Remedies flashcards.

Well after the Bruins' 4-0 victory, once all the pageantry had ended, the local NBC affiliate switched over to the local news. In teasing the top story (the game), the anchors spent a solid half-minute bemoaning the fact that Boston, and not Vancouver, had won.

Now, it's true that Southern California does have hockey. LA's Kings were a marginal playoff outfit this season; Orange County's Ducks were the fourth seed in the West. (I had to look all this stuff up.) But as far as I can tell, no one really cares about hockey here -- certainly not the way folks do in the Northeast and Midwest. And I'm pretty sure there's no on-ice Kings-Bruins or Ducks-Bruins rivalry to speak of. I suppose Angels-Red Sox contributes some, but it's interesting how history on a basketball court can define a relationship between two cities in so many other aspects.

Metal Monday: A Message For LeBron James

(It's a bit of a cheap shot, and I'm sure it's very unoriginal, but it's just too perfect. I mean, really, read the lyrics; it's like Hetfield wrote this song just for this occasion. Besides, I've been planning on doing this since I dreamed up "Metal Monday," and I plan on making it an annual tradition to post this song on the occasion of LeBron's exit from the playoffs. At least until he gets a ring. My real advice for LeBron and the rest of the Heat, as well as my long absence from these pages explained, after the song.)

First things first, congratulations to the Mavericks. There isn't an NBA team, other than the Lakers, that I wouldn't have been cheering for against Miami in the Finals, but they quickly became a team worth cheering for. I've been a Jason Kidd fan since his days at Cal, and so it's great to see him get a ring, but it wasn't until this postseason that I developed the proper appreciation for Dirk Nowitzki. The Mavericks play team basketball, are humble and business-like, and are worthy champions. Sure, they have DeShawn Stevenson, but no team is perfect.

So, I said I had some advice for the Heat. It's probably not really correct to call it advice -- I'm not sure it can be advice, anyway, if they'll never read it. But I'm among the few who isn't surprised that Dallas beat Miami in this series, and, especially amid all the post-Finals chatter from the talking heads, I want to take a minute to explain why.

So much of the discussion surrounding the Heat this season focused on whose team this was. Is it Dwyane Wade's team? Is it LeBron's team? To their credit, there was never any real fighting about it, though there was never a resolution, either. Moreover, they never embraced the idea that it whose team it was is irrelevant when it comes to putting the ball in the hole. A discussion of who a team belongs to is relevant for leadership purposes only. You win basketball games as a team. It's a lot subtler than saying "Wade is selfish" or "LeBron is selfish." To me, the Heat just don't yet "get" what it takes to beat an excellent basketball team in a championship series, the same way Kobe Bryant didn't "get it" until the fourth quarter of Game 7 in the 2010 Finals.

In the Eastern Conference playoffs, particularly the Chicago series, LeBron seemed to take over at the end of games. Then the Finals started, and after Wade turned in two outstanding performances in Games Two and Three, talk started shifting to how Wade was taking over, since he had succeeded in the Finals before.

That mentality, even if it's not motivated by selfishness, is destructive. When everyone one is so focused on who is getting the ball, the guy who gets it has a tendency to keep it. And if Wade has the ball and LeBron is just standing around, or vice versa, then there's no Big Three to speak of. Putting the ball in one guy's hands -- putting the responsibility of winning on one guy's shoulders -- minimizes the impact of his teammates, and when one of those teammates is one of the five best players in the league, that's a serious problem.

I'll never forget an interview that Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Ray Allen did early in the 2007-2008 season (it may even have been before the season). The ESPN interviewer asked the newly-formed Big Three who would get the ball in a final shot situation. Pierce, the career Celtic, and Garnett, the much ballyhooed new arrival, both answered "Ray." And Allen said, simply, "the open man."

I recognize that the Heat don't have the luxury of turning the keys to the car over to someone like Rajon Rondo, and that the ball necessarily must more often than not be in the hands of James or Wade. And I recognize that early-season injuries to Udonis Haslem and Mike Miller prevented what could have been Miami's most effective five-man unit from ever jelling. But if you watched and listened to the Heat all season, you never would have gotten the impression that "the open man" was an answer James or Wade would ever give.

I'm not going to delve into any specific post-game comments that the Heat players made. But Magic Johnson talked after the game about how the Heat needed to get into the gym over the summer. To me, that misses the point. Miami didn't lose this championship because their stars didn't shoot well enough. Teams have won championships with less than what the Heat have. But it won't be until how they figure out to play together that they'll get their ring. And the first step is a culture shift. Until they truly embrace basketball as a team game, I predict I'll be posting "King Nothing" more or less the same time every year.

***

Hey Doc, where you been?

Nearly two months without a post, which means I missed the entire playoffs. My apologies. I got busy with graduation, and, frankly, I think the Perk trade broke my spirit a bit. I was absolutely convinced, before the Perkins deal, that we were going to win the championship, and I believe in my heart that without the trade, we would've.

I had written, in my head, an end-of-the-season, "this is a dark chapter in Celtics history" post, but it didn't feel right to post it. I considered ceasing this blog altogether, letting its lifespan last as long as Boston's real championship window. But then Doc re-signed, and quitting didn't seem appropriate. But now that I'm studying for the California bar exam, I haven't had a lot of time -- or any time -- to blog.

I don't really know where I'm headed in life at the moment. I'm taking the bar in July, but I don't have a job lined up yet. Assuming I get one, I may very well have to stop blogging, or severely cut back on my game-watching and writing frequency. If I can't find one right away, on the other hand, I may try to create a more comprehensive basketball site and fold this one into that one. And, of course, there's a real chance of a shortened season, or even no season, next year. We'll just have to see.

In the meantime, I'll probably check in with a post or two before and/or after the NBA Draft, since I'm such a sucker for it. Other than that, barring big news, I probably won't update this site, at least not until August, when the bar is over. Thanks for following me this season.

"Bad Guys Wear Green"

Thoughts on Games 1 and 2 coming later on Thursday, when I need a break from my Securities Regulation casebook.

Living in Los Angeles, as I do, I get my fair share of negative comments when I wear any Celtics gear around town. I have not, as of yet, been spat at, as my friend Phil was during last year's playoffs when he wore an Antoine Walker jersey to the mid-city bar we were watching a game at. (Who would expectorate on Employee Number Eight?!?) But I get plenty of dirty looks, plenty of "Go Lakers!" and plenty of "Celtics fucking suck!"

It's become common enough that I don't really think twice when it happens. Wednesday, though, was a story I thought worth sharing.

I was lounging on a couch in the law school lobby, waiting for class to start in a well-worn green t-shirt with the number 9 on the front and the word "Rondo" on the back. A middle-aged black man, unknown to me but apparently a professor at the school, exited his office and began to walk directly toward where I was sitting. He walks in a slow, painful shuffle, and he was able to catch my eye and deliver the following words, or something to their effect, on his way across the room:

"Twenty-five years ago," he said, "my son was two years old. We were walking through a department store and saw a bunch of green jerseys for sale. I pointed to them and said 'Son, bad guys wear green.'"

Viewing Alert

Hey gang --

I know it's been a couple of weeks since I last posted. Once the regular season ends, I'll have a post explaining why.

In the meantime, you can catch the Celtics on Sunday at 3:30 p.m. Eastern on ABC. The game is in Miami against the Heat, and could be the difference between a second-round playoff series in Boston and a second-round playoff series on the road in South Beach. By virtue of its three wins over Miami earlier in the season, Boston has the tiebreaker between the two teams. Both sit at 55-24. A win for the Cs would put their magic number at one -- meaning that either a Boston win or a Miami loss in the season's final two games would give Boston the second seed in the East and home-court advantage over the Heat if the teams were to meet in the Eastern semis. A Heat victory means that they control their own destiny, in terms of playoff seeding, with a magic number of two.

Boston 96, New York 86

For the second straight game, the Celtics came back from a double-digit second half deficit to win a game on the road and keep pace with the Chicago Bulls atop the East.

[recap] [box score]

I wasn't able to watch Saturday's game, but Monday's game -- the fourth quarter, at least -- was all about "want to." Word is that Doc Rivers called the team's first half play "soft" in the locker room at halftime, and that inspired them, but this game didn't turn around until 7:26 remained in the fourth quarter. The Knicks' Chauncey Billups had just hit a three-pointer and Rajon Rondo, stumbling over a Ronny Turiaf screen, had crashed into him. Billups' four-point play gave the Knicks a nine-point lead. Boston, which had been struggling to keep pace with New York all game, could have given up at that moment.

Instead -- with all the momentum heading the other way, with a blood-soaked bandage struggling to contain a cut over Ray Allen's right eye, with the Madison Square Garden crowd periodically into chants of "Paul Pierce sucks!" -- the Celtics scored the game's next 13 points. New York came back briefly to tie it, but Boston got the last ten points of the game for the final margin of victory.

I wish I had been writing down the sequence of plays, because it was full of defensive deflections, diving for loose balls, and stalwart defense. Two hustle plays come to mind, though: Rajon Rondo covering more than half the court, width-wise, to chase down a Ray Allen miss and throw it out of bounds off of Amare' Stoudemire; and Kevin Garnett diving for a loose ball near midcourt, his long arm tying up Stoudemire even as the ball rested squarely in Stoudemire's lap. The former play led to a Pierce bucket that brought Boston within two; the latter led to a KG jumper after he won the tip that completed the 13-0 run and put the Celtics up four.

This game was a battle. Troy Murphy was the first of three players to shed blood on the night, suffering a superficial cut in the first half that resulted in a trickle of red down the bridge of his nose. Allen was the second, falling victim to a stray Jared Jeffries elbow while contesting a rebound -- an inadvertent elbow, it appeared, but a reckless one. New York's Carmelo Anthony was the third, colliding with Rondo's elbow while going for a steal and opening a small cut over his eye. And the most blatant hit didn't even draw blood -- after grabbing a first half rebound, Anthony barely missed Glen Davis with one elbow before connecting with the side of Baby's head with the second.

Not one of these plays, by the way, drew a foul call from the officials.

In the end, Boston snatched this victory from the jaws of defeat. But the Knicks were complicit. Quite frankly, they panicked. They're 7-9 since trading for Anthony, and the frustration of unmet expectations on the league's biggest stage are starting to boil over. A win over the Celtics could have done a lot to buoy their sinking ship, and as that win slipped away, they sped up the process with bad shots and tentative offense, looking to the officials for help that wouldn't come.

To their credit, though, the Knicks are certainly relevant, especially if relevance is measured by how much I dislike them. In past years, I've gotten fired up in games against New York due to some lingering chippiness between Pierce and Quentin Richardson, and the presence of Turiaf, whose reckless disregard for his fellow players' welfare has led me to believe for some years now that he's one of the dirtiest players in the game. But this season it's different, the vitriol the Knicks have for the Celtics encouraged by the team's first meeting in New York this season, which Pierce punctuated by bowing to the crowd after his game-winner. There's a chance we see these guys in the playoffs -- the Knicks are currently the seven seed -- and while they don't seem like a threat to win a seven-game series against us, it'd certainly be a hell of a fight.

Houston 93, Boston 77

[recap] [box score]

I was watching the tournament, so I don't know what the hell is going on, either. From following the score, though, I can tell you that it was never really a game. For the first time all year, really, the Celtics got blown out.

Framed that way -- "for the first time all year, the Celtics got blown out" -- it doesn't seem that bad. But consider: We're 7-5 since we traded Kendrick Perkins; we've scored more than 87 points once in the last six games; we're on the verge of losing home-court advantage in the East; and we have to play in New Orleans Saturday night. We haven't been healthy, so I know it's not time to panic, but it's a little weird that we're playing worse as we're getting guys back. And I know that Shaq's still out, but Nenad Krstic hasn't been the problem -- or he hasn't been the problem that Shaq is capable of fixing.

On the bright side, the Bulls lost in overtime to Indiana Friday night, so we're technically still atop the East. Even that silver lining comes with a gray cloud, though; Derrick Rose nearly willed the Bulls to victory after coming back from a big deficit. That guy is terrifying right now.

Boston 92, Indiana 80

Boston's season is (hopefully) back on track, but not without a few "here we go again" moments early against the Pacers.

[recap] [box score]

Thanks to Monday's loss to the Nets, the Celtics found themselves in need of a win over the Pacers just to keep pace with the Bulls atop the Eastern Conference. And despite a fierce Paul Pierce dunk for the game's first bucket that I hoped would set the tone, Boston reverted back to the uninspired offensive ball it had played in the last several games, trailing by as many as seven points.

Enter Jeff Green and Glen Davis, who injected energy and, more importantly, offense into Boston. In his finest game in his short Celtics career, Green had 17 first-half points, keeping the home team a few points ahead of the visitors throughout much of the second quarter.

And then, the key sequence, the one that gave the Cs a comfortable lead: two Ray Allen threes sandwiched around a Paul Pierce triple, extending the Boston advantage from four points to eleven in less than a minute. The Garden crowd went crazy; timeout, Indy; but the Pacers wouldn't get closer than five the rest of the way.

Granted, the offense didn't keep rolling that way all night -- in fact, it was a fairly middling offensive performance, aside from that one minute. But that one minute is the kind of minute we'd gotten used to this season, a stretch where Boston's starters played with energy and purpose and rhythm and knocked down some shots as a result. Those are things that have been missing from Boston's offense lately, and hopefully it's back to stay.

Notable

• The Celtics organization honored Mike Gorman and Tommy Heinsohn before the game. They've been talking about "30 years of Mike & Tommy" on all the broadcasts this season, but this was the big evening, so to speak, as far as I could tell. A nice simple ceremony for a couple of guys who I think would rather not have had one at all.
• Perhaps as part of the festivities, Celtics "celebrity" fan Donnie Wahlberg joined them at the broadcast table for most of the second quarter. I was actually pretty impressed with his basketball knowledge; he seemed to understand the game, rather than just know it as a fan. One exception: He kept mentioning that he liked the Perkins trade because Andrew Bynum was the difference-maker in last year's Finals. Ignoring the fact, first of all, that Boston was ahead three games to two before Perk got hurt, it makes no sense at all to say that replacing Perkins with Shaquille O'Neal or Nenad Krstic is going to help Boston handle Bynum.
• Delonte West returned after missing eight games or so with a sprained ankle. Forced to sit the majority of the season due to a couple of injuries, West hopefully can find his rhythm before the postseason. It occurs to me, however, that his role maybe has changed somewhat. In training camp, which is really when he was able to get the majority of his work in, he was handling second-team point guard duties alongside Nate Robinson. Now, Robinson is gone, and West's likely backcourt partner is Carlos Arroyo, a true point guard who isn't suited to play the two. That means that West will probably slide over to shooting guard. On the one hand, it's his more natural position. On the other, it's another adjustment to be made in a season in which he probably hasn't yet felt comfortable.
• Troy Murphy had a two-handed reverse dunk in this basketball game. I can't find video of it, but I promise you that it happened.

I'll probably be tweeting a lot over the next few days, about the NCAA Tournament. My handle there is, of course, @HSSlamPhD.

Week in Review

First order of business is to explain the radio silence over the past week. Mostly, it's due to the fact that Championship Week is my favorite time of year, and I've been obsessed with college ball for the last six days or so. It'll continue through the NCAA Tournament -- and I'll probably post some tourney thoughts throughout on my basically-idle college hoops blog -- but I do pledge to pay the Celtics a little bit more attention here.

Since the last time I posted, after the Golden State win, Boston has gone 1-2, with losses to the Clippers on Wednesday and the Sixers on Friday, and a win over the Bucks on Sunday afternoon.

I never enjoy watching a Celtics loss, but dropping the game in Philly wasn't too upsetting -- nor surprising. Doug Collins has those guys playing really well after a tough start to his first season on the sidelines. Philly had played us very tough twice in December, the first matchup coming down to a Paul Pierce buzzer-beater. Collins also seems to have a particular reverence for the Boston organization and Doc Rivers, and I figured he'd get his team to play hard for him, which they did. (That they came out flat the next night against Milwaukee in a 102-74 loss to the same Bucks team that Boston held to 56 points on Sunday is perhaps the best evidence of that.) Boston hung tough, but couldn't break through and Andre Iguodala put the game away with a very difficult drive that was reminiscent of the shot that appeared to have won the game for Philly back in December (which Pierce ended up winning for the Celtics).

The Philly loss was only annoying because it came on the heels of an awful performance against the Clips at home, a game in which Boston dug itself an early hole that it couldn't quite climb out of. DeAndre Jordan had an unusually good game inside for LA, and they hit like half their three-point attempts, many by Mo Williams.

Those losses really only matter because the top seed in the East is still very much an open question. We're just one game ahead of surprising Chicago, with Miami lingering very much in striking distance. Moreover, Boston's in the midst of a stretch of winnable games, before finishing with some tougher teams and quite a few games on the road. Therefore, any loss, but particularly one at home to a sub-.500 club, matters. Boston showed last year that you don't necessarily need home court advantage to be successful, but from where I'm sitting, a path to the Finals that goes through Orlando and either Chicago or Miami looks a lot better than one that has both the Bulls and Heat as opponents.

Sunday's game against Milwaukee was something of a joke, with the tired Bucks managing just nine first-quarter points before getting only marginally better after that. Keyon Dooling's two missed free throws in the final seconds ensured that this would be a historic evening for the Celtics: a franchise low for points allowed in the shot clock era. The total would have been even lower if not for Earl Barron, a journeyman center who is on his second ten-day contract with the Bucks. Barron, playing hard in the fourth quarter to try and earn a spot on Milwaukee's roster for the rest of the season (believe it or not, despite a 26-39 record, the Bucks are only a couple of games out of the East's final playoff spot), scored ten points, the only Buck to score in double figures.

It was far from a cohesive performance offensively, however, and with three consecutive such performances under the team's belt, fans can only hope that the switch turns back on quickly. Boston is back in action Monday against New Jersey.

Quick bullets about some personnel:

• If you don't follow the team too closely, but peruse the box scores, you may have noticed a new name: Carlos Arroyo. Arroyo started the season as Miami's starting point guard, but subsequently lost that job to Mario Chalmers and was released by the Heat when they signed Mike Bibby. For the first time in this era, Boston has a true, somewhat reliable point guard behind Rajon Rondo. Arroyo's nothing special, but he's not erratic (like Sam Cassell, Stephon Marbury, and Nate Robinson) nor inexperienced (like Gabe Pruitt, Lester Hudson, and Avery Bradley). He's solid with the ball and can make the occasional jumpshot. He's good insurance if the oft-injured Delonte West can't stay healthy, and could see the court alongside West depending on Von Wafer's play and recovery from injury.
• Nenad Krstic has continued to surprise. He posted two double-doubles this week, averaging nearly 16 points and 13 rebounds in the three games. When he traded Kendrick Perkins, Danny Ainge made the point that Boston had gotten off to its fast start and beaten good teams with Shaquille O'Neal starting in the middle while Perk was out. Presumably, this meant that when Shaq came back, he'd take his starting job back. It will be interesting to see which way Doc decides to go when the Big Shamrock does get healthy.
• Glen Davis returned after ten or so days off while he rehabbed a sprained tendon in his knee. He looked good. When he went down with the injury, I remember reading something that indicated he'd been hurting all season. On Sunday, he moved around the court better than he had all year. Perhaps the time off did him some good.

Boston 107, Golden State 103

For the second straight game, Boston let most of a big lead slip away before hanging on for a win.

[recap] [box score]

The situation on Friday night was actually more dire than the one against Phoenix on Wednesday, when the Celtics gave up 18 straight points but still had a 10-point cushion. This time, Boston held an 84-67 lead, but Golden State scored 32 of the next 48 points -- 22 of those by Monta Ellis -- to pull within 100-99 with 3:30 to go. Paul Pierce then went to work, scoring a three-point play by hitting a jumper while being fouled by Reggie Williams. The defense also dug in, with Jeff Green and Rajon Rondo securing steals. The game wasn't won, however, until Boston, leading by two, got a crucial offensive rebound from Ray Allen off a Kevin Garnett miss with 12 seconds left. Allen hit two free throws to provide the final margin.

Lost in all the talk of the trade and the new guys is how well the old guys are playing. Garnett didn't have a great game Friday night, but he's had an excellent season and is close to being at 2007-08 form. Paul Pierce has been taking over games less than he has in the past, which is terrific; he's having the most effiicient season of his career from the field and is still there, as he was on Friday, for a key bucket when you absolutely need it. Rondo's assist numbers aren't quite as gaudy as they were to start the season (he did, however, have 16 against the Warriors), but he still has the ability to control the game on each end of the court like few, if any, of his peers.

Then there's Allen. He's been in the headlines relatively recently due to becoming the all-time three-point king, but such milestones overshadow his general excellence. At 35, he's shooting significantly better than he ever has from the field (50.5 percent) and the three-point line (46.5 percent). He's having the best season of his Celtic tenure, and the best season ever by a shooting guard at his age. He's just a marvel. On Friday, he hit his first seven shots, and his first five triples, on his way to 27 points. Ray has faded a bit in the playoffs since his arrival in Boston, not playing poorly so much as shooting inconsistently. He's shown no signs of slowing down this season, however.

As for the new guys, Jeff Green broke through with 21 point, getting extra minutes in the absence of Glen Davis, who will miss a week or so. Nine of those points came when he was playing with Boston's starters in place of Nenad Krstic, and while he did hit a couple of long twos, it's clear that he's most effective well inside the three-point arc. Reactions to his offensive performance should be tempered somewhat simply because it came against defense-allergic Golden State, but it was still an encouraging step forward. He did have just one rebound, however.

Krstic may be reviving his career in Boston. He had 11 points and six rebounds, with most of his damage coming in a very active first quarter. He's going to move to the bench eventually, when Shaq comes back (which could be Wednesday), but I hope he won't be forgotten once he does. The ball doesn't stop in his hands the way it does with O'Neal, and while defense is not his strong suit, he doesn't indiscriminately foul penetrators the way Shaq does.

Troy Murphy went 0-4 from the field, missing both of his shots from deep, and has yet to make a field goal as a Boston Celtic. Here's hoping it's due to his being rusty, and not that he did really lose his shooting touch overnight in the offseason.

Sasha Pavlovic, signed Thursday off the waiver wire, didn't play. He's a good three-point shooter who was almost certainly signed just in case disaster hits the backcourt in terms of injuries. It's hard to see him having much of an impact.

And, catching up with a few old friends: Kendrick Perkins is slated to miss another week or two with his knee injury; Nate Robinson will miss four to six weeks with a knee injury of his own, and Semih Erden continues to sit for the Cavs with injuries that were bugging him as a Celtic. Seems like the injury bug stays with the Celtics this season, no matter where they go.

On the bright side, Luke Harangody had a career-high 18 points Friday night in Cleveland's shocking win at Madison Square Garden, and Leon Powe signed with Memphis for its playoff run. That last one isn't exactly the "bright side," as I had hoped Powe would re-sign with Boston, but I'm definitely happy that Leon caught on with a playoff contender.

Boston 115, Phoenix 103

Strange, strange night at the Garden.

[recap] [box score]

The Celtics were killing the visiting Suns, up 28 in the third quarter, looking ready to run the visitors out of the gym and threatening to turn the fourth period into a formality. But a funny thing happened on the way to the locker room...

To its credit, Phoenix's bench was excellent, going on an improbable 18-0 run that made the final few minutes interesting. I thought Jared Dudley was the catalyst, making a couple steals and hitting a couple of threes, never giving up despite the fact that his team seemed hopeless out of it. Newly-acquired point guard Aaron Brooks took it from there, putting on a dazzling scoring display that reminded viewers -- particularly those that picked him in the third round of their fantasy league -- of the offensive force he seemed poised to become in Houston, before an ankle injury early in the season set him back.

To their discredit, the Celtics -- mostly the bench, but also the starters for a stretch when they came back in -- really let the Suns back into it. I thought the second unit really suffered from the absence of Delonte West, who missed his second straight game with an ankle injury. Rookie Avery Bradley is running the point in his stead, and he lacks the experience to organize the offense. He's also recently developed a habit of having a little bit of a quick trigger, which is problematic for a guy whose jumper is, by all accounts, a major question mark.

Standard NBA comeback, you say? Everybody makes a run, right? Perhaps. But things started to get a little strange around the 2:16 mark, with Boston by nine and the ball. Phoenix chose to lengthen the game by intentionally fouling. They put Paul Pierce on the line, who made the first and missed the second; Glen Davis got the rebound. They quickly then put Rajon Rondo on the line, who made the first and missed the second; Kevin Garnett got the rebound. Davis went to the line after that, missing the first and making the second, breaking the pattern of offensive rebounds but also sealing the game for all intents and purposes.

But Phoenix kept fouling, which is fine, I guess, even though they weren't scoring enough to make any real progress. A minute later, with Boston up 11, Pierce broke a double team near midcourt, found Rondo on the wing, and Rondo slipped his 15th assist to Davis cutting baseline for a dunk. Davis, however, either went up wrong or came down wrong, and hobbled off with what the team called a strained patella tendon; he'll have an MRI on Thurday.

After a Suns timeout, Mickael Pietrus missed a three, Boston got the rebound and dribbled out the next shot clock. Garnett then picked up a technical, apparently for verbally jousting with Phoenix coach Alvin Gentry, whose role in the incident didn't seem to sit well with Doc Rivers. Phoenix made the ensuing free throw and another bucket, and that should have been that.

But Rondo, for whatever reason Rondo has for doing these sorts of things, decided that playfully dribbling out the clock a foot in front of the Phoenix bench wasn't enough. He launched a three-pointer as the clock expired, and Dudley, challenging the shot, put him on his ass for this breach of etiquette. The play triggered an official review to determine that there were four-tenths of a second left. Rondo hit two of the three free throws an the game was finally over.

Boston-Phoenix is one of the more unlikely chippy rivalries, taken up a notch by the incident between Garnett and Channing Frye earlier in the season. After the game, Doc made a comment about a lot of talk coming from the Phoenix bench, which may have led to the Garnett tech (and, for all I know, could be what baited Rondo into shooting that three at the end of the game). Doc had less-than-positive words to say about Gentry after the first matchup. I can't help but wonder if it goes deeper, because my impression is that Doc isn't that kind of guy an Gentry seems so mild-mannered.

Speaking of Garnett-Frye, KG destroyed him tonight, getting off to a hot start on his way to 28 points on 12-for-14 shooting. He didn't score in the fourth quarter, and when he got to 28 in the third, I started to wonder what his high as a Celtic was. The answer is 33 in Game 5 of the Eastern finals against the Pistons, one of four 30-point games he had in his first season in green. He hasn't had any since. I'm not sure why I find this interesting, but I do.

It was the home debut for the new guys, by the way. Brief evaluations:

• Nenad Krstic again looked great; active on offense with good range and a nice scoring touch inside. He's really going to benefit playing with Rondo, too; it appeared to me on a couple of occasions tonight that Krstic was slow going up for a shot because he was so surprised at how the ball had arrived at the perfect time in the perfect spot.
• Jeff Green had some nice moments in the first half, draining a couple of mid-range jumpers an gliding end-to-end for a layup after a steal. Still, he uncorked a horrific looking three-pointer from the left corner and missed at least one other jumper pretty badly. His shooting in his first three games has been very erratic, which suggests to me that he really doesn't have a consistent shooting stroke. It's hard to tell from watching on TV, but his release looks a little funky to me, like he's got a little bit too much of his left hand on the ball.
• Based on the amount of playing time he got in New Jersey this season, I wouldn't have been too surprise if Troy Murphy showed up in Boston with only one leg. He didn't have any obvious physical problems, but he wasn't much better than he would be if he were missing a limb. He barely got off the ground on a couple of second-half layups that were blocked by Marcin Gortat. His one three-point attempt -- his first shot of the game -- did rattle in and out, so he was just an inch or so away from bringing the house down. The good news is that he didn't appear to be grossly out of shape the way Rasheed Wallace was last year, so hopefully he'll get his legs back under him soon enough. After all, he hadn't played in a game since November 9th.

Celtics to Add Troy Murphy

Buyout season is upon us, which means high-priced vets on bad teams agree to take less money than they'd earn over the course of their contracts in order to sign for the minimum with a contender for a shot at a ring. Tuesday was a big deadline; if a player hadn't hit waivers by then, he's ineligible to play for a team other than his current one in the playoffs.

Everyone knew that the Golden State Warriors were going to buy out Murphy, but whether he was going to sign with Boston or Miami was an open question Monday night. But I woke up Tuesday to the news that Murphy had chosen the Cs, filling one of three roster spots opened up by the trades that sent Marquis Daniels to the Kings and Semih Erden and Luke Harangody to the Cavs.

It's hard to know what to expect out of Murphy. It wasn't always that way; in each of the last two seasons, with the Pacers, he was good for a double-double every time out. But he's been a non-factor in 2010-2011, moving from the Pacers to the Nets in an four-team trade this offseason in which Jersey gave up Courtney Lee to Houston and Indy got Darren Collison and James Posey from the Hornets. He was injured in the preseason, came back to play very limited minutes in 18 games, then got a string of DNP-CDs; I think eventually the organization just told him to stay home. The Nets dealt him to the Warriors at the deadline.

If Murphy can get back to last season's form -- if his lack of PT in NJ is unrelated to injury or significant decline in skills -- than Boston will have a pretty good player on its hands. Murphy is a terrific three-point shooter and excellent rebounder and, at 6'11", can play up front alongside Kevin Garnett if Boston's centers are unavailable due to foul trouble or injury, or Doc wants to keep them on the bench for some reason. Murphy not agile enough defensively to play the James Posey role in the small lineup that Doc's been pining for, but if he's not too rusty, it's easy to see Murphy on the floor more often and in more crucial situations than Jeff Green.

Whether expecting the Murphy of seasons past is reasonable is up in the air, though. The Nets hardly paid a king's ransom for him, but they did give up a solid young player in Lee for him. And while it's understandable that Murphy's not in the Nets' long-term plans, it seems to me that sitting him as they did only hurts his trade value -- unless, of course, he's so bad that being on the court would make him completely untradeable. There's enough weird stuff going on in New Jersey -- Russian billionaire owner, new head coach, mortgaging the future for Deron Williams -- that the possibility of this simply being bad business on the part of the Nets is strong, strong enough that I'm only slightly concerned that Murphy has morphed, Sam Cassell-like, from a very good player to a useless one in one offseason.

Any positive contributions Murphy does make to the Celtics will be compounded by the fact that he's not making them to the Heat, who trail Boston by just two games in the loss column for first place in the East. Miami is expected to fill one of the holes in its starting lineup once Mike Bibby clears waivers; Bibby gave up his entire salary next year in order to get the Washington Wizards to agree to a buyout. Murphy's long-distance shooting, both spotting up and in the pick-and-pop, could have been a pretty formidable weapon on Miami.

As mentioned above, Boston still has a couple of roster spots left to add bought out players. Among the possibilities are Leon Powe, who of course was a great role player on the championship team, and Corey Brewer, a strong defensive wing whose decision-making on offense makes Tony Allen look under control. As more of these guys sign, with Boston and other teams, the playoff picture will start to get a bit clearer.

Boston 107, Utah 102

Deron Williams or no Deron Williams -- he was traded to New Jersey right before the deadline for Devin Harris and Derrick Favors -- beating the Jazz in Utah is always good.

[recap] [box score]

Feeling like some bullets tonight:

• The biggest shot of the night came from Ray Allen, who hit a 23-foot fadeaway over Andrei Kirilenko to put Boston up 103-99 with 53 seconds left. But the second-biggest shot came from Rajon Rondo, who hit a pullup 15-footer on the next Boston possession, answering an Al Jefferson bucket. Sure, there was no Jazz defender in sight, but that's the point. If he hits a few more of those in crunch time, teams might re-think their defensive strategy. Sagging off of him would almost certainly still be the correct play, but there aren't too many NBA coaches who are going to be comfortable letting an All-Star point guard shoot wide-open jumpers inside the three-point arc with a playoff game or series on the line. And that, in turn, will open things up for the rest of the Celtics.
• I have to assume that part of the reason Danny Ainge was willing to trade Kendrick Perkins is that Glen Davis had been playing the crunch-time minutes at the power forward position, with Kevin Garnett sliding over to center. But Davis has been so bad offensively lately -- missing open jumpers, taking impossible shots in the post, committing turnovers -- that he isn't an upgrade over Perk at that end, at least not right now. All the chatter lately has been about Nenad Krstic and Jeff Green and the (hopefully) eventual return to health of Shaquille O'Neal, but the real key come playoff time is who is on the floor at the end of the game. And right now Davis is a liability on both ends; offensively for the reasons just mentioned, defensive if for no other reason that he forces Garnett to guard the opposing team's 5.
• "The opposing team's 5" tonight was old friend Al Jefferson, jettisoned to Minnesota in the Kevin Garnett deal, then shipped to Utah this past offseason to make room for ... Darko Milicic. (Really.) Big Al J had a monster game, with 28 points and 19 rebounds, drawing fourth-quarter doubles that created open three-point looks, which -- thankfully for the Cs -- his teammates couldn't knock down. I love watching Al play well. He's really become the focus of the offense in Utah, and it's good to see him in a situation where he can succeed.
• Boston isn't going to run into Jefferson and the Jazz in the playoffs, but they could very well see Orlando's Dwight Howard and the Lakers' Andrew Bynum. And watching Jefferson go to work on Boston tonight was cause for concern. Shaq and Krstic can't guard elite centers. Jermaine O'Neal might be able to, but his health is no sure thing. Garnett can do it for stretches, but it's hard to imagine it working for a full series, at least not without serious adverse effects to Garnett's offense. A recurring theme among the things I don't like about the Perkins trade will be how Danny and Doc have really gambled on not having to deal with those two teams during the playoffs.
• Speaking of The Trade That Shall Live In Infamy, Krstic impressed me, again. He's got a nice little offensive game and is much more active on the boards that I thought he'd be. He's not very good defensively, but considering I wasn't expecting anything out of him when we got him, he's been a pleasant surprise.
• Green, on the other hand, struggled, again. He's obviously (and understandably) still very uncomfortable in his new surroundings, but he put up a couple bad- to atrocious-looking shots -- jump hooks jumpers, stuff that should come naturally and not be affected due to lack of familiarity with the offense. Defensively, he had a nice block (his second in two games) but he also was taken to school by Kirilenko. Again, there's time, but it's only about a month.
• Delonte West didn't play after spraining his ankle in a light workout on Sunday. (Can the guy please get a break?) Rookie Avery Bradley came in and did a nice job backing up Rondo, including a made jumper and a nice and-one drawing contact from Favors on a drive (he missed the free throw). Six shots in six minutes is probably a few too many for a guy who struggles with his J, but it was a good performance.

Back home Wednesday night against Phoenix. The next national TV game is Sunday afternoon against Milwaukee, and if you don't have League Pass, it's one you'll want to catch. Boston doesn't play on national TV again until the end of the month.

Boston 99, Los Angeles Clippers 92

[recap] [box score]

Boston won in LA against the Clippers for the first time in three seasons, in large part due to a terrific defensive effort in the second half. Of course, that's not something to crow too much about, given that the Clippers are a) the Clippers, and b) without either part of their starting backcourt. So I'm going to limit my discussion of this game to the first impression of the new guys.

I should stress first impression, because it'd be unfair to judge them based on one game 48 hours after being traded.

Jeff Green looked lost, which is understandable, given the circumstances. Most of his touches on offense came in the post, as Doc tried to get him comfortable despite his unfamiliarity with Boston's sets. He didn't do too much to impress me down there, but again, it's one game. His ability to operate down there will come in handy, and it's better than him shooting threes at a 30 percent clip, but it's imperative that he get integrated into the offense quickly. Between him and Glen Davis, the ball stopped an awful lot. Green's effectiveness for the rest of the year will depend on how quickly he can get comfortable, so that Boston doesn't have to run specific plays for him.

Nenad Krstic made the bigger impression. He had nine points and six rebounds, with all of his boards coming on the offensive end. He was much more active and agile then I thought he'd be, and though he did all of his scoring around the rim, I know he's got range out to 15 feet or so. He had a nice-looking turnaround J from the baseline from about ten feet that didn't drop, but it's a shot I'm comfortable with him taking.

I remember liking Krstic early in his career, when he averaged 10 points and 5.4 boards per game as a rookie in New Jersey, then 13.5 and 6.4 in his sophomore campaign. His third year got off to a great start; he scored in double figures in all but three of the Nets' first 26 games in 2006-07, averaging better than 16 points along the way. But he tore his ACL against the Lakers that year, and he only played a combined 91 games the next two seasons. He did get manage 76 games last season with the Thunder, posting averages of 8.4 points and five rebounds per game.

The point is, maybe Krstic isn't just a throw-in. He's still youngish (he's had that same thinning hair since he's been in the league), his injury problems may be behind him, and he's much more skilled offensively than Kendrick Perkins was. His rebounding and especially his defense are going to be an issue, particularly against teams like Orlando and Chicago and the Lakers, but he's an offensive upgrade. So, while the expected payoff of the trade was that the Celtics could go small at crunch time, Krstic's presence means that they can go big, too, without having to worry about Shaquille O'Neal's free throw shooting.

Goodbye, Perk

Last night, a make-shift Boston Celtics team went scoreless in the final six minutes, ceding the final 16 points in an 89-75 loss to the revamped Denver Nuggets.

Why make-shift? Boston only had nine active players, including D-League call-up Chris Johnson, who scored six points and blocked three shots after being signed to a ten-day contract earlier in the day. And why were the Celtics so depleted? Thursday was the league's trade deadline, and the Celtics were unexpectedly active. The carnage:

• Marquis Daniels, who reportedly was going to miss the rest of the season, was sent to Sacramento, along with cash considerations, for a protected second-round pick in 2017.
• Semih Erden and Luke Harangody were shipped to Cleveland for a second-round pick in 2013.
• Kendrick Perkins and Nate Robinson were traded to Oklahoma City for Jeff Green and Nenad Krstic.

Giving Celtics GM Danny Ainge the benefit of the doubt (something I'm having a hard time doing right now) requires that we recognize that the picture is not yet complete. A bunch of guys are about to have their contracts bought out by their teams, and some of them may show up in Boston. That possibility explains away the trade of Erden and Harangody, promising rookies who were each worth at least a second-rounder themselves.

But this post is not about Erden and Harangody. It's not about Troy Murphy or Rip Hamilton or anybody else who may become a Celtic in the coming days. And be warned: It's not entirely about basketball, either.

***

We'll start with basketball, though, because when all is said and done, there's still a season to be played, a championship to be won, redemption to be earned. Green is the big piece coming to Boston. He's a three who's played the whole of his four-year career out of position as a four, because the Thunder already have a pretty good small forward. I liked him a lot when he was at Georgetown, because of his terrific passing in John Thompson's Princeton offense. I'm less bullish on him as a pro, not so much due to what I've seen (I don't watch OKC very much), but from what I've read and heard from people whose basketball opinions I trust. SI.com's Zach Lowe:

Green is not as good as most folks believe he is ... [He] grabs a lower percentage of defensive rebounds than [Paul] Pierce, and [his] presence on the court has consistently turned the Thunder into a porous defensive team.

My buddy Colin:

Jeff Green 100% sucks.

To be fair, not everyone shares these views. As Lowe himself points out, respected veteran writers Peter May, Ian Thomsen, and Bob Ryan all have higher opinions of Green. But the defensive and rebounding numbers don't lie. His scoring average in OKC (15.2 this season, 14.2 in three-plus career seasons) does lie, however, at least a little bit: He's shooting just 43.7 percent from the floor and around 30 percent from three-point land for the season, despite playing with supremely talented offensive players Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook.

Of course, the system in which you play means something. So it's possible that Green won't be a defensive liability in Boston, and that his offensive efficiency will improve in his new environment. I have more confidence in the latter than in the former; the Thunder have been a good defensive outfit with Green off the floor, but Boston's got some pretty good offensive players of their own and from what I've seen OKC does a fair amount of standing around shooting jumpers.

Krstic is okay; a decent shooter for his size, but below average on defense and on the glass.

***

The stated rationale for the trade is that with Daniels out (and possibly even if Daniels were healthy), the Celtics desperately needed wing help. In addition to now having someone to spell Pierce, Doc Rivers pointed out that the addition of Green allows him to go "go small" the way he did in the championship year, with Green taking the place of James Posey.

That's true, but the key to that lineup in 2007-08 was James Posey's defense. Offensively, Posey did little more than stretch the floor with his three-point shooting. Green has a more diverse offensive game, but his three-ball is suspect. But more importantly, there's little evidence that Green can have anywhere near the defensive impact that Posey had.

Relatedly, ESPN's John Hollinger and others have theorized that this move was made with the Miami Heat and San Antonio Spurs in mind, which is noteworthy for the reverse implication that it means that Boston is no longer concerned with the Orlando Magic or Los Angeles Lakers. The Heat and Spurs are perimeter-oriented, and the thought is that Kevin Garnett can handle Chris Bosh and Tim Duncan in a small lineup that would allow Boston to match up better 1 through 4.

Whether that's true, it's not as if having an elite defensive center like Perkins is a liability. And what happens if Boston does have to deal with Orlando and Dwight Howard, or the Lakers -- the two-time defending champions, after all, with Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum inside -- wake up in the playoffs? And, for that matter, what about Chicago's formidable tandem of Carlos Boozer and Joakim Noah?

We don't know who is going to be bought out just yet, but we do know the rumors, and the rumors say that there are a lot more wing players about to become available than there are true centers. I've got to think we'd have been better off with adding a wing that way (or via trade -- we really couldn't get anybody for Semih and some draft pick?) and keeping Perk.

Ainge also defended the trade thusly:

The numbers show that he's been better with our starters. We beat all the good teams in the league while Kendrick was out, and that gives you a little more comfort.

I'm not sure exactly what numbers he's talking about, but I have the following problems with this argument:

• The regular season and the playoffs are different animals. Doc and Danny should know this. Beating Miami and Chicago and the Spurs in October, December, or January is a hell of a lot different than being them in best-of-seven series' in May and June.
• We beat the Lakers, Heat, and Magic with Perkins in the lineup.
• We won a championship with Perk in 2007-08, and probably lost one in 2009-10 because we didn't have him for Games 6 and 7.
• Whatever comfort Danny takes in how the team has played with Shaq should be tempered by the fact that Shaq's availability is hardly a sure thing. Right now, he's sitting out with injuries more or less related to being nearly 39 and in his 20th NBA season. He's not hurt so much as he's hurting. And the odometer isn't running backwards. If Danny and Doc have taken his availability for granted, then they've made a grave mistake.
• Some of Danny's comments seem to suggest that at least some of the motivation was that Shaq is better with the starters than he is with the second unit. I have my doubts about the truth of that statement, as Shaq's inability to play help defense without fouling is exacerbated when he's on the floor against the opposition's elite scorers, but even if it's true, trading your starting center is a weird way to solve the problem of your backup center being ill-suited to being a backup center.

***

This isn't a move for the long-term, either. It's true that Boston was likely to lose Perkins to free agency in the offseason. He had previously turned down Boston's offer of a contract extension worth $22 million over four years, which is basically the limit of what Boston could offer him under current rules. He was likely to be overvalued in the offseason, and someone else was going to pay him more than we could.

But Green doesn't necessarily fit into Boston's long-term plans, either. Green has always been a favorite of Doc's and Danny's, but his contract extension talks with the Thunder broke down in October and he'll be a restricted free agent after this season. Assuming some team will want to give Green starter's money, the Celtics will have to give Green something similar to what they offered Perk if they want to keep him, and at the expense of re-signing someone like Glen Davis. It's a high price to pay for someone who plays Paul Pierce's position. And while Green may provide more sign-and-trade options than Perkins would have, there's also less chance that Green takes a discount to re-sign with Boston, whereas Perk at least theoretically could have changed his mind.

Also, while Boston did receive a first-round pick in the trade, it's the Clippers', and it's top-ten protected through 2016. The Clips are on the way up, but the franchise has a history of mismanagement and it may be a long time before we see any payoff from that pick. We've spent so much to win as many championships as possible in this window. I don't care, and neither should anyone else, who we might get with that first a few years from now.

***

That leads us to a discussion of the collateral damage from the trade. From a pure basketball standpoint, it puts home court advantage in the East in real jeopardy. Boston's depleted roster lost to the Nuggets Thursday night, but Chicago's loss to Toronto on Wednesday and subsequent defeat of Miami preserves the status quo atop the East. For now. Boston has two more games on this road trip without Shaq, meaning that they must play the Clippers and Jazz with Krstic as their only center. Hopefully Shaq will be back after that, but who knows. Additionally, Boston will be shorthanded until the buyouts happen. And then those players, along with Green and Krstic, will have to be integrated into our system. (Let me point out, to those who think Green will provide a nice offensive boost, that Doc couldn't get Robinson integrated into the offense last year, and while some of this has to do with Robinson's negative basketball IQ, I'm not at all convinced that Green is going to blend in well any time soon.)

Secondly, this rips the heart out of so many of Boston's key players. Pierce, KG, Allen, and Rondo may be Boston's Big Four to the rest of the basketball world, but those aren't terms they use internally. Perk and Rondo were extremely close friends. Garnett spoke of it being like losing a family member, not a teammate. This was probably the closest starting five in the NBA, and now its gone.

Boston's vets, as professionals, will no doubt regroup and give it their all the rest of the way. Green and Krstic are teammates now, and no one is going to hold the loss of Perkins against them. But even so, there's very little chance that either will truly succeed this year. The prevailing attitude of almost every Boston fan I know was that the Celtics were going to win the title. Whether that was a reasonable expectation, as it now stands, if Boston fails in that goal, in everyone's mind it will be because of this trade.

***

Many times over the past few seasons, the tiny microphone Rivers wears during nationally-televised games has picked up him urging his charges to trust each other. That trust, which won Boston a ring and got them an injury or two away from perhaps two more, was built up over the course of an intense 2007-08 campaign. Upon what basis can the veteran Celtics be reasonably expected to trust Green and Krstic? And should they trust Doc and Danny that this move is in their best interest, after they more or less stabbed their friend Perk in the back?

Because that, truly, is what they did. After Perk signed a hometown-discounted exception four seasons ago, after Ubuntu and "Boston is a brotherhood" and "We not me,"after all the talk about Boston's starting lineup having never lost a playoff series together and them coming back for one more shot at a title, they traded Perk out of the blue.

Here's the brutal irony. Perkins, as you know, tore his ACL in Game 6 of the Finals last year. He had surgery in early July. The very optimistic target for his return to the floor was after the All-Star Break this year.

But that wasn't good enough for Perkins. He worked his ass off rehabbing his knee and came back even earlier than that original optimistic target, making his season debut on January 25 against Cleveland. His reward for all the hard work? Being traded away from his brothers at the deadline. Had Perk not worked so hard and returned after a more reasonable amount of time, Oklahoma City never would have had enough confidence in his health to pull the trigger on this trade. Perk's loyalty to the franchise paved the way for the franchise to betray him.

I've long understood, or thought I had, that basketball is a business. There's been a lot of hand-wringing recently over how LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony, among others, have manipulated which team they play for. I never liked it, either -- I guess I was latching onto whatever ideals I held about how professional sports should work. But this trade is a poignant example of why they do. If the Boston Celtics can break up this core, this way, in the middle of this season, then I'm not sure that loyalty from a team to a player does exist. And if there's no loyalty there, then I see no reason to hold the players to a higher standard.

***

I'm a relatively recent Perkins convert. Even during the championship run, his offensive ineptitude and occasional on-court petulance drove me crazy, to the point were I distinctly remember typing in an email or instant message to someone during that season: "If Kendrick Perkins were in front of me right now, I would punch him in the face."

But he improved and matured, and I started watching more closely and digesting more and more information about the team once I started writing this blog. And I came to appreciate not only his hard work and terrific defense, but his deceptively bright personality, his loyalty, and his value as a teammate.

It's taken me a day of reflection and four hours of typing to write this post. I've been fluctuating among hopeful optimism that I'm wrong, anger, and acute sadness. I still love the Celtics, individually and as a whole, even though my perception of the tradition of the franchise has been tarnished somewhat. I still love this year's team. I just love it a little bit less than I did yesterday morning.

Goodbye and good luck, Perk. We'll miss you.