Muy Beno: Links of the Day (A new RwH production)

(Muy Beno, you'll recall, is my oh-so-clever homage to Beno Udrih when I write NBA posts that are not directly related to the Celtics.)

I read a lot on the Internet about pro basketball. A lot. I subscribe to well over 100, maybe approaching 200, blogs through RSS, and several hundred blog posts pass through my Google Reader on any given day, and while I read the full text of very few of them, I scan the headlines and read stuff that intrigues me, stuff that pertains to guys on my fantasy team, and stuff that pertains to players I like.

A lot of blogs throw together a daily links post full of essential reading. That's not my goal; if you want a comprehensive compilation of Celtics coverage, check out Celtics Blog, and if you were worried about missing a single bit of vital information from the excellent basketball blogs out there, you'd subscribe to them yourself. But I do think it'd be fun to share a few items -- maybe a handful -- that are informative, entertaining in themselves, or allow me to amuse myself with commentary and/or witticisms.

As the moniker "Links of the Day" suggests, my ultimate goal is to do this daily. Knowing me and my schedule, however, this could quite quickly turn into "Links Whenever I Feel Like It Or Have The Time." But we'll try it out.

• This video of Dwight Howard training with Hakeem Olajuwon was all over the basketball blogosphere today. The stuff at the beginning and the end is entertaining, and it's cool to catch little tips like the one around 2:30 into the clip, when Hakeem teaches Dwight to hop while catching an entry pass in order to catch the defender off-guard for a quick spin to the baseline. But the other stuff is kind of meh. Howard's athleticism has never been in question, so it's not all that surprising to watch him spin and glide and jump. But on the offensive end, Howard's instincts have always been a little off, and workouts like this one will do little to change that. This surely isn't the first time he's been shown a drop step or a spin move or an up and under. He worked with Patrick Ewing for the last couple of years, and I guarantee you that Ewing wasn't pushing him to shoot the running lefty hooks he resorts to so often. My sense is that Howard, at least at the start, will get one move in his head when he makes the catch and see it through no matter what, which is going to make for some tough possessions. Nice to see Dream playing a bit better than he did in that "Pros vs. Joes" episode.
• I link to this other Howard video only to introduce you to NBA Playbook, an excellent blog that also had this post on the Celtics today.
• Via Ball Don't Lie (and RwH reader Dave Roberts, and a ton of other blogs), a complete list of unlockable characters in the new NBA Jam video game.
• The NBA GM survey is out, and just one GM thinks Boston will win the NBA championship (well, one besides Danny, because GMs weren't allowed to vote for their own team). Considering we were a few minutes (and a Kendrick Perkins injury) away from winning the title in June, this seems low, especially given our off-season additions. I wonder if it's all because of what Miami did, or if Perk's injury caused some GMs to shy away from picking the Cs.
• Dime Magazine proposes new team names for all 30 NBA clubs. If you're strapped for time, the write-ups for the Bulls, Cavs, Lakers, and Sixers were particularly clever. The rest vary from mildly funny to pretty stupid.
• This is a not a headline a basketball fan ever wants to see about his team.

Update on the 15th Man

This is why I try not to blog too much about day-to-day events in the offseason.

After reading all camp that it was Tony Gaffney vs. Von Wafer for the 15th spot, Gaffney gets cut (he's off to Turkey), and the current thought is that it's Wafer vs. Mario West for the last roster spot. Read this if you care about such things.

Headlines From Day One Of Camp

I've never intended this space to be a place for Celtics news; it's more of a place for readers to find my analysis and hopefully contribute some of their own. If you're interested in that sort of thing, I invite you to check out -- as I do -- any of the excellent links listed on the right-hand side of this page.

With that said, there are a few things from the first day of training camp that I think are worth mentioning:

First, according to Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe, Kevin Garnett is back in form, looking as healthy as he did before the knee injury that ended his 2008-09 season. According to Washburn, there's no tape on Garnett's knee, and he's not running with the limp in his gait we so often saw last year.

Second, there's a little bit of controversy regarding Glen Davis. During Monday's media day, Big Baby sounded a bit frustrated. Yesterday, Doc and Danny responded.

Personally, I think this is a non-story, and an illustration of the dangers of discussing these sorts of things in the media. The first part of Baby's statement reveals that he thinks he's more valuable than most other people do, but that's hardly a unique attribute among NBA players. With the second part of his statement, Baby seems to acknowledge that he's a role player, and notes that the things he's been asked to do to carry out that role on the basketball court have changed over the years, and may change again this year.

Doc's response seems more focused on the first part of the statement, which is not surprising, because he didn't read or hear Baby's comments (he was told about them by a reporter) and that's the part of the statement that is most controversial and therefore fodder for the media.

Something to keep an eye on, I guess, but this is hardly the first time something like this has happened with Davis and I can't imagine it's suddenly going to blow up.

Finally, in my third offseason review post, I didn't mention Tony Gaffney, mainly because I didn't think he had much of a shot of making the team. However, rumor is that the last roster spot is a tossup between him and Von Wafer, so a few words are called for.

Gaffney is a journeyman out of UMass who the Celtics signed toward the end of last season (you may have noticed him on the bench in civilian clothes during the playoffs). He's long and athletic, a hard worker whose forte is defense. That makes his battle with Wafer an interesting one, since Wafer has been something of a malcontent in his young career and is known for his offense.

To me, Gaffney fills the bigger need. But he's also the unknown quantity, having never played an NBA minute. In theory, at 6-8, he can guard both forward positions -- he's considered a three but unless memory fails me, he played four in college -- and the 6-6 Marquis Daniels is the only guy currently on the bench who can guard small forwards. Additionally, we've got a lot of guards in the bench mix, so Wafer is kind of duplicative (though he's the biggest of the bunch at 6-5). But we don't yet have any indication that Gaffney can play at this level, and we know that Wafer can. Ultimately, particularly with Boston's emphasis on defense, if Gaffney loses out to Wafer, it will be because -- like Darius Miles in camp before the 2008-09 season -- the staff doesn't think the kid can contribute at this level.

Wafer, by the way, hurt his ankle on Tuesday, though it doesn't sound particularly serious.

Offseason Review, Part III: Re-signings

(With camp set to open tomorrow, I'm finally getting around to talking about the Celtics' offseason. Here are my thoughts on the players we lost, and here are my thoughts on the ones we added. In this post, I address the players we re-signed or extended.)

Paul Pierce: The Truth opted out of the last year of his contract and got one for four years in the $15 million per range. The deal will make Pierce a very highly-paid 37-year-old during the 2013-14 season, and one with a lot of miles on him, but really, the Celtics had little choice in the matter. There's too much invested in this team to take such things into consideration, at least when it comes to Pierce, who still can really play and has a couple more years left in him.

Ray Allen: In a word, ditto. Ray's performance was down a little bit from the 2008-09 season and he was pretty brutal in the playoffs, but there weren't a lot of other guys the team could have brought in that would have his impact at the shooting guard position. Two years, $20 million isn't a bad deal for a player of Ray's caliber.

My big concern with Ray is his durability. Including playoffs, he's now played in 1,123 games, averaging 37 minutes per. (Pierce has averaged roughly the same number of minutes per game, but in 985 games including playoffs. By the way, both Allen and Pierce have appeared in exactly 101 playoff contests, a surprising coincidence given that they only joined forces three seasons ago). Yet despite this fact, despite all the warnings about shooting guards breaking down at age 32 (Ray turned 35 this summer), Doc Rivers continues to ride him -- 36 mpg in his first two years with Boston, 35 mpg last year. And with the backup two spot an open question, there's no real indication that Ray will see more of the pine this year. He keeps himself in phenomenal condition, but there's only so much the body can take -- and one can't help but wonder if Ray's uneven performance in the post-season (which happened in 2007-08, too, by the way) is due at least in part to him wearing down.

If you look at his stats, you'll notice that last year, he hit "just" 36.3 percent of his three-pointers, a solid number for a guy who shoots five per game, but below his career average of nearly 40 percent -- and, in fact, the lowest mark of his career. Recognize, though, that for a guy who shoots 400 threes on the season, the difference between 36 percent and 40 percent is 16 makes. To put it in perspective, if every five games last season, Ray had one fewer miss -- one more made triple, one three that dropped instead of going in and out -- he'd be right at 40 percent on the season from deep. Without getting into standard deviation and variance, then, I think this shows that there isn't too much to worry about in this regard.

Marquis Daniels: This one surprised me. After Daniels went out of favor with Doc last year, we brought him back on a one-year contract for about $2.5 million. I like Daniels -- he's a good defender who makes up for his lack of shooting ability by being an excellent cutter and facilitator offensively -- but I was surprised to see money and a roster spot go to a player Doc seemed so reluctant to use in the playoffs. Perhaps the fact that we don't have anyone else on the roster to back up Pierce (Daniels can also play shooting guard) was the deciding factor.

Why Doc lost faith in Daniels is anybody's guess, one of those personnel decisions that have so often mystified me during the coach's tenure. Daniels put up unimpressive stat lines in the first month or so of the season, but was very effective in his role. He missed two months with an injury, then came back and played about the same as he had before the injury. There were high points and low points, but nothing about his performance hinted at what was to come in the postseason, when he had 13 DNP-CDs and played only garbage time minutes in the 11 games in which he did see action.

Nate Robinson: Nate came over at the trade deadline for Eddie House, Bill Walker, and J.R. Giddens, and never really found a rhythm with the Celtics. He had his flashes -- most notably when he wrapped up Game 6 in Orlando in the Eastern Conference finals -- but never really integrated into the offense and was used sparingly. He was the one guy on the bench who could have won Game 7 of the Finals for us; we needed a spark offensively, and I think Doc gave him two possessions in the second half before yanking him. Now that he's on the team to start the season, I'm hoping he finds a more solid role, as it's rare to find his caliber of scoring off the bench.

Offseason Review, Part II: Additions

(In advance of the opening of training camp on Tuesday, RwH is returning from its summer hiatus with a review of the offseason. Yesterday, I reviewed the team's losses from the offseason. In this post, I talk about the new faces we'll see in the green and white this year.)

Jermaine O'Neal: The acquisition of Jermaine was overshadowed by the subsequent signing of the other O'Neal, but he's the most important addition to the Celtics this year. With Kendrick Perkins probably limited even when he returns from his knee injury, JON is probably going to be our starting center for the entire year.

The more casual fans -- the ones who only remember him from the first round of the playoffs, a series in which he averaged just 4.3 points, making just nine of 44 shots over five games -- may be a little freaked out by this scenario. But he actually had a very nice season overall, averaging 13.6 points per game on 53 percent shooting, the latter being a high mark -- by four percentage points -- for his career. He's a bigger offensive threat than Perk, and more efficient than Rasheed Wallace was. He's not exactly a traditional back-to-the-basket center and he is most comfortable on offense doing the things that Kevin Garnett does, but the first unit will benefit from having a fifth offensive threat on the floor.

On the glass, he averaged seven rebounds per game last year. It's an unspectacular total, but it's at least acceptable and, moreover, he did it in fewer than 30 minutes per night. We'll certainly miss Perkins on the glass, but I doubt we're going to be cursing Jermaine for his performance on the glass.

The more important question is how he'll fit in on the defensive end. At 31, he's no longer an elite shotblocker, but he did block one and half shots per night last season, which is enough to qualify him as a suitable fill-in for Perk and a difference maker in that regard. However, Perkins is one of the very best one-on-one post defenders in the league, and Jermaine is not. Nor is he as big or strong as Perk, which means that we'll have more trouble with guys like Dwight Howard this year than we have in the past.

Shaquille O'Neal: It'll be a bit weird to see Shaq wearing Celtics green this season, though seeing Rasheed pull on a Boston jersey last season has surely helped me grow accustomed to see long-time enemies in friendly colors. Regardless of how he plays this season, the Shaq signing was a good one: when Wallace officially called it a career, we needed another center, and the only other option, apparently, was Kwame Brown. We're also not paying him very much, so the consequences of his failing are low.

It's been reported that Shaq is a bit of a locker room cancer, but however true that might have been in Miami or Cleveland, I'm not worried about it here. I don't expect Shaq to necessarily "fall in" behind Paul Pierce, Garnett, and Ray Allen, but in order to cause chemistry problems with this team, he'd have to somehow turn the Big Three against each other, or recruit the rest of the team against them. Given the team's recent success, I can't see that happening.

Shaq's a shadow of the player he once was. He'll spend most of the season horribly out of shape, he's a liability offensively in crunch time because of his free throw shooting, and he's not much of a defender these days. But he's more than just a body; he's a huge body who may even command double teams when going against second-string centers. Boston fell short of a championship in large part due to not being big enough; come the 2011 playoffs, they could well have Perkins, the O'Neals, Garnett, and Glen Davis in their 4/5 rotation. That's a lot of beef up front, enough to reduce the significant advantage Orlando and the Lakers had against us in that department last year.

Delonte West: The former Celtic isn't assured of a roster spot, having signed a non-guaranteed deal for the veteran's minimum. For that reason, I think this was a good signing; West is bipolar and has run into legal troubles as a result, but, as with Shaq, the price of his deal makes him low-risk, high-reward. If West makes the squad, he brings a steady hand to the second team. He's a good shooter who can initiate the offense, and though he's only 6-3, he's a good, smart defender who can probably hold his own against bigger players. This makes him a nice complement to all the other players in our backcourt. If the off the court stuff comes together, he could end up being a steal.

Count me among those rooting for him, by the way, and not just because I naturally wish to see people successful in their battles with mental illness. West was one of my favorite Celtics in his first stint with the team (we traded him to Seattle in the Ray Allen deal, and he played 35 games in the 2007-08 season with the Sonics before they moved him to Cleveland, where he's been since). One time during his years with the Celtics -- a particularly dark period in the franchise's history -- I went to see them play the Wizards in Washington, and found myself sitting directly behind his mother, who spent nearly as much time showing me and my buddy photos of Delonte (at his prom, at his high school graduation, etc.) than she did watching the game (which she only did, by the way, when her son was in). Hardly the most interesting brush with the NBA in real life, but it's always made me pull for him a little bit harder than I normally would.

Von Wafer: This one was a head-scratcher, particularly coming, as it did, at a time when the Celtics were said to be after disgruntled Portland wing Rudy Fernandez. Wafer was a second-round pick in 2005, and although he played here and there for a few years, he only has one season of real NBA experience -- 2008-09 with Houston, when he averaged 9.7 points in about 19 minutes per game for a Rockets team that won 53 games. According to his Wikipedia page, he signed with a Greek club last year, only to be waived four months into a two-year contract, then signed with the Mavs for ten days and didn't play a single minute.

I saw more of Wafer at Florida State than I've seen of him at his various NBA stops, and what I remember from back then is that Wafer is a, um, volume shooter. Ok, fine; as far I know, Wafer's a chucker. He did hit nearly 40 percent of his threes in that one season in Houston, and if he can hit at the kind of rate, he might be useful on the second team, particularly with Shaq drawing some attention.

I'm just skeptical he'll see the court that often. Although Tony Allen's departure leaves us decidedly short of shooting guard-sized guys off the bench, we do have point guard-sized guys who play the two (West, Nate Robinson) and a rookie guard (Avery Bradley, see more below) we're high on. Marquis Daniels is also back. Given Doc's disdain for guys who don't play defense (and I have no reason to believe that Wafer plays defense) I just can't see this guy making much of a difference.

Avery Bradley: Bradley was Boston's first-round pick, selected 19th overall. I did a little bit on the Celtics draft in this post, so I'll try not to repeat myself too much. I like the pick, however, for the same reason I loved the Bill Walker pick a few years ago (and actually wanted Boston to take Billy Sky with the pick it used on J.R. Giddens in that draft). Bradley, like Walker, was extremely highly-rated out of high school (I believe some rankings had him ahead of John Wall at one point). Where Walker's draft stock fell due to injuries, Bradley's dropped due to an uneven performance in his one year at Texas.

What many seem to have overlooked, however, is that everyone at Texas had an uneven season; the Longhorns rose to number one in the national rankings in mid-January, then lost 10 of their last 17 games. Bradley was asked to play point guard -- an unnatural position for him, it seems, despite his 6-2 height -- among a group of veterans.

The point I'm trying to make is that the guy is talented, and there are reasons why those talents maybe weren't on full display last year. He's a great defender with a massive wingspan, so he may be able to defend twos. And to tie it back to Walker, while injuries and circumstances dictated that he never really got a shot in Boston, he did average 12 points a game on 43% three-point shooting in 27 games with the Knicks after going to New York in the trade for Robinson. If Bradley is as good as Danny Ainge thinks he is, then it's on Doc to find a way to get him some opportunities.

Unfortunately, Bradley missed summer league because of ankle surgery, and he won't be ready at the start of camp. Hopefully, the late start won't doom his entire year.

Luke Harangody: I mentioned how much I liked Harangody in that post-draft post I linked to in the write-up about Bradley, above, but his performance in Summer League warrants some additional discussion. In five games in Orlando, he averaged 16.6 points and 6.8 rebounds per game. That wasn't that surprising; he's was a 20/10 guy in college and those guys always perform well in Summer League, since for the most part, they're going up against college players who won't make the pros. What was surprising, however, was that he went nine for 18 from beyond the arc.

Harangody didn't really extend his game to the college-three point line until his junior year, when he took roughly one per game and hit at a 37 percent clip. Last season, he averaged 2.7 attempts per game but hit just 31 percent. Moreover, his form is bizarre; he sort of flings the ball from his midsection whilst jumping backwards. In all the games I saw him play with the Fighting Irish, I never anything that suggested he'd be a threat from the significantly longer NBA line. I'm not convinced he is, but it's worth watching, especially since our frontcourt is a bit crowded while Marquis Daniels is the only backup small forward on the roster. Harangody was most effective in college near the basket, but at only 6-7, he may struggle in the post in the pros. If he sees time this year, it may very well be at the three.

Semih Erden: We took Erden with the 60th overall pick in 2008 with the intention of letting him develop in Europe for a while. He's a seven-footer about whom I frankly don't know much, and his progress in training camp and role on the team, if any, are two things I'll be closely watching over the next month.

He played for his native Turkey in this summer's FIBA world championships, helping his team earn the silver medal in that competition. I didn't watch any of his country's games, but he averaged nine points and 4.5 rebounds off the bench. He shot 62.5 percent over the nine games, and blocked seven shots during the tournament, including three against China (a game in which he scored 18 points on 9-of-11 shooting and had a dozen rebounds). He also had 11 assists in the competition, but those were more than balanced out by his 19 turnovers, an alarming number given that he averaged fewer than 20 minutes per game.

My hunch is that the vast majority of the time we see Erden, it will be when he's wearing a suit.

Offseason Review, Part I: Losses

With training camp opening on Tuesday, it's time to start ramping things back up here at RwH. Over the next couple of days, I'll be giving my opinions of what was actually a pretty busy offseason for the Celtics. And for those of you whose knowledge of the Celtics depends too much on this blog, this will serve to bring you up to speed. I'll tackle personnel losses, gains, and retentions in separate posts. Let's start with losses, roughly in order of importance.

Kendrick Perkins: Don't panic; Perk is still a Celtic. But the torn right ACL he suffered in the opening minutes of Game 6 of the Finals will keep him out until roughly the All-Star break in February -- and after that, it'll naturally take him quite some time to get himself into game shape. Given that most players don't fully recover from an ACL tear until the second season back, the best-case scenario seems like it'd be 15 minutes per game or so in the playoffs.

Perkins is the lowest-profile member of Boston's starting five, but his importance should not be overlooked. Although his offensive limitations occasionally forced him to the bench in crunch time, Perk anchors Boston's defense, allowing Rajon Rondo to gamble on the perimeter and Kevin Garnett to roam around in the back.

Tom Thibodeau: It may seem like a stretch to say that an assistant coach could be the second-most important loss of an offseason, but I believe it's true. Thibodeau was the defensive guru on the coaching staff over the past three seasons, during which time the Celtics were arguably the best in the league on that end.

Thibodeau moved on to become the head coach of the Chicago Bulls, a great opportunity for him on a team with a lot of young talent. There was talk this summer of Doc Rivers forgoing the final year of his contract, and because of that, it seems likely that this will be Doc's last year at the helm. I remember hearing the rumor that the Boston front office wouldn't guarantee Thibs that he'd be Doc's successor. I imagine that NBA hiring rules would have something to say about that, but to the extent that the front office anticipates a head coaching vacancy after this year and didn't do everything possible to keep Thibodeau around, it was a mistake.

Tony Allen: Readers who have spent any time talking with me about the Celtics will be surprised to see me lament the loss of Tony Allen. Believe me, it feels just as strange writing it. Tony tantalized some with his potential and athleticism, but I never bought into it; I always saw a physically gifted individual with a seemingly negative basketball IQ.

This past season, however, Tony turned into a pretty valuable player off the bench. Relieved of any ballhandling and offense-initiating responsibilities, he eventually settled into a nice role playing off the ball and driving to the basket, while providing his normal tenacious defense. It wasn't that he finally "got it" -- to my eye, actually, his improvement was as fortunate as it was anything else; layups fell in instead of off and mishandled basketballs somehow found their way back to him -- but I no longer rolled my eyes when he entered the game, something I had always done previously.

Now he's gone, off to Memphis on a three-year deal that will pay him roughly $9.5 million over the course of the contract. It's possible that Tony simply wanted to go somewhere else, but I also remember hearing that Danny didn't want to give him the third year. If that's true, I think it's another mis-step. I know that the team has been doing contracts for the last three years with an eye towards maximizing cap room when KG's deal is up after the 2011-2012 season, but Tony will almost certainly be movable in the third season of his deal, at $3.3 million. And in the interim, he would have been very valuable to the team. We're going to miss his perimeter defense, and his absence leaves us with very few players to backup Paul Pierce.

Rasheed Wallace: My opinion of 'Sheed has fluctuated greatly over the past year or so. I couldn't stand him when he was with the Pistons, but I allowed myself to be excited once Boston signed him and I started paying attention to the stories of him being a great teammate with an exceptional intelligence for the game. I grew more excited during his early performances in green and white, when it looked like he was going to be a nice weapon off the bench.

Like most, however, I grew tired of him during the regular season: tired of his antics with the officials, tired of him not being in shape, tired of his refusal to do anything offensively other than hoist three-pointers. That opinion started to change once the playoffs started, however, and his final performance, a strong first half that helped Boston open a nine-point lead at halftime of Game 7 in LA. He was borderline heroic for those 24 minutes, and even as the season ended in disappointment, I felt reasonably satisfied with him.

A few months of reflection, however, have me changing the opinion once again. Word after Game 7 is that we got tired in the second half, and here I hold Wallace responsible for not being in better shape. It's not his fault that Perkins got hurt, forcing him into a bigger role, but it is his fault for not being prepared for that contingency.

At any rate, Wallace's retirement would be a bigger deal had we not been able to bring in some fairly capable re-enforcements at center during the offseason. Still, I don't expect Shaquille O'Neal to be in any better shape to start the season than Rasheed was, and as a backup center, Wallace's defensive impact is far greater than Shaq's.

Brian Scalabrine: Boston's long-time victory cigar recently signed a non-guaranteed deal to join Thibodeau with the Bulls. I'm fine with Scal -- it's not his fault we gave him a ridiculous contract. At the same time, he was merely adequate in his best moments when called into duty, and there just weren't roster spots available for him.

Shelden Williams: After a decent start to the season during which he got regular playing time in the absence of Glen Davis, Williams regressed throughout the year and was a negative influence when he stepped on the court in the playoffs. He's with Denver now.

Getting His Due

Regular followers of these pages may have noted that it's been nearly two months since I've posted. The reason for that is twofold. One is that the NBA offseason is full of rumors and scenarios, the majority of which don't pan out, and it's exhausting to keep up with. I've been paying attention, but not enough to really analyze them in depth, and I figured it'd be better to wait until next year's team was pretty much set before I provided my thoughts on it.

The second reason is that losing to the Lakers still stings. Even now, two months later, I'm still bummed that we couldn't hold on to a 13-point third quarter lead. Being so close to our eighteenth and most improbable banner, and not being able to hang on is tough; that it came against the hated Lakers, the favorite team of the city in which I live, makes it even tougher. Celtics fans are not used to their team not coming through in those situations. Perhaps one day I'll be able to exorcise those demons, but for now, I've said what I'm going to say about the Finals.

I'm breaking my silence for a different reason: Dennis Johnson, the man who probably had a bigger influence on my love for basketball than anyone other than my father, was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame this weekend.

I was very young during DJ's career, and so I'll leave it to others to supplement what you may recall of the Celtics' point guard during the 80s. But I was old enough to have a favorite player, and DJ was it. And I was old enough to understand what DJ meant to those teams, the role he played on one of the best collections of basketball players ever assembled. And I was at just the right age for that role to shape my understanding and philosophy of basketball, forever.

DJ was extremely talented, the kind of guy who could have dominated the ball and scored a bunch of points the way he had in Seattle prior to coming over to the Celtics in a trade for Rick Robey. But those Sonics teams didn't have Larry Bird and Kevin McHale and Robert Parish, and the Celtics did, and DJ understood that that meant that his job was to defend, to make sure the ball got to where it needed to get, and to make the other team pay for ignoring him if they chose to do so. DJ taught me that you don't necessarily have to score to contribute, that assisting on a basket or making a steal can be as satisfying as scoring a bucket yourself. (Indeed, I found that there is no feeling on a basketball court more exhilarating than changing the natural momentum and flow of the game by poking the ball away from the opposition as they rushed upcourt.)

Bird always said DJ was the best player he'd ever played with, and that, too, helped shape my basketball philosophy. If you were eight or nine years and a Celtics fan in the 80s, and Bird spoke, you listened, and those comments made me think about basketball and DJ in a way I might not have otherwise. I tried to be like DJ as much as I could. His uniform number, 3, became mine, and it remains my favorite number, my "lucky" number, to this day. I enjoyed a very modest basketball career in high school, and I always did my best to play the role of "system" point guard to perfection: Protect the ball, try to be a game-changer on defense, make just enough shots so that the other team couldn't forget about you.

Bringing it back to these current Celtics, what I want most for Rajon Rondo, certainly my current favorite Celtic and probably second only to DJ all-time, is for him to be a little more like DJ. They have vastly different games: DJ could shoot and Rondo can't, Rondo's flashy where DJ was solid, DJ was burly and strong where Rondo is wispy and quick. Two years ago, Rondo did exactly as DJ would have done, deferring to his veteran teammates in most instances. But now, with age and wear and tear taking its toll on the Big Three, DJ would have been quicker to take what is now the next step for Rondo: Recognize that he is fully capable of carrying his team offensively, and doing so when the situation deems it necessary. Drop an in-his-prime DJ into the third quarter of Game 7 in June, and there's no way Boston wastes possession after possession isolating its obviously exhausted top offensive options. That's when DJ would have gone to work.

As many of you know, DJ was inducted posthumously; many consider it an injustice that the selection committee didn't choose him immediately and a tragedy that he wasn't around to receive the honor himself. Myself, I'll never forget where I was when I found out DJ had died of a heart attack. I was in Las Vegas for work, and my best friend, Joel, called me to break the news, understanding that it was not the kind of thing I'd want to find out from ESPN. I called home to tell my parents about it, and found myself choked up while on the phone with my mother. I remember being surprised, at the time, that a man in his 20s could get that emotional about a basketball player he had never met.

Later, I decided it was a good thing, that I was glad that we never get too old to have heroes.

Dennis Johnson was my hero. And now he's a Hall of Famer.