Boston Sports Then and Now

While most of Boston was focusing on the Red Sox’ jayvee team trying to mount a comeback against the suddenly devilish Rays, something happened on Wednesday night. Danny Ainge and Ray Allen quietly finished dinner, folded their napkins and walked into the still searing Boston night. Ainge picked up the check for dinner, of course, because the third wheel of his basketball masterpiece had just taken a healthy pay cut to come back for one more run at the Larry O’Brien trophy.

The Sweetest Shot in the game will be wearing green for the next two years.

In a summer jazzed with LeBrons and Wades, not to mention the local nine’s impressive investment in Massachusetts General plaster-of-Paris and any local 7/11’s ice supply, something happened over on Causeway street that can do little more than make fans of the Green easily contented. Paul Pierce – in a moment that nearly caused a cardiac collapse – opted out of the final year of his contract, prompting bigwigs and ballyhoos all over the airwaves of ESPN for about thirty-four minutes before Pierce re-upped for four years at a substantially discounted rate. Four years, $62 million – which, for the record, he could have made more than a third of had he stuck with his option. Allen followed this gracious gesture by taking nearly a 50% pay cut and re-upping for two years at $10 million a year.

The Celtics – assuming Rasheed Wallace retiring is truth and not a stunt – now have roughly $9 million in cap room to play with. And they have needs they’ll use that room to address.

Read the rest of this entry →

WEEI.com's Jessica Camerato

It’s not every year that your chronically underachieving legacy franchise weasels its way to a 7^th game in the NBA Finals against its hated rival. Fortunately, the Celtics got there this year. Unfortunately they didn’t make it against the Lakers. But there’s no time to dwell on lost opportunities. The NBA Draft is this Thursday, and the sure-to-be tumultuous free agent season starts just a week later.

I was fortunate enough to get a few minutes of WEEI.com’s esteemed Celtics beat writer Jessica Camerato’s time recently, and we discussed the season that was and what’s ahead, not only this summer, but next fall and into the future as well.

Ryan Durling: To begin, while we can agree that this was a memorable season, it was definitely an unexpected one. In what areas did this team overachieve?

Jessica Camerato (WEEI): What could seem like an overachievement to some came as no surprise to the players themselves. The Celtics went from an inconsistent 50-win team to a streaking club one-win shy of a championship. The C’s said the entire season that they could turn the corner, but there were many people who did not think it would be possible in the playoffs.

RD: Where did they underachieve?

JC: The Celtics underachieved by struggling to put together 48 minutes of basketball throughout the regular season and the playoffs. The problem was magnified when they blew a double-digit lead in the third quarter of Game 7 before falling to the Lakers.

Read the rest of this entry →

The epitmoe of the Celtics' 2006-07 season. Tony Allen's show off, after the whistle dunk resulted in a torn ACL.

The low point of the Celtics franchise: 2006-07.

Just as the season kicked off, the matriarch of the organization, Red Auerbach passed away at the age of 89. On the heels of his death, the Celtics had one of their worst seasons in franchise history as they finished with the leagues second worst record at 24-58. This horrific record included a Celtics worst 0-18 stretch.

To add injury to insult, Paul Pierce missed a chunk of the season with a foot injury, and replacement third year guard Tony Allen tore his ACL on an after-the-whistle showoff dunk. The Celtics ran youngsters Rajon Rondo, Al Jefferson, Kendrick Perkins, and Gerald Green out there as they attempted to build toward their future.

Danny Ainge had his hands full, but with the second best chance in the draft lottery, the Celtics were primed for building blocks Greg Oden or Kevin Durant. Both were considered can’t miss prospects, and Celtics fans believed luck was on their side this time after the misfortune of missing out on Tim Duncan nearly a decade earlier.

The ping pong balls did not fall the Celtics way and despite nearly a 40% chance of getting a top two selection, the Celtics fell all the way to fifth selection. Another sign of bad luck for the Celtics, who had aspirations of Greg Oden as a centerpiece of the franchise.

Read the rest of this entry →

The best days are way behind these three now.

This was supposed to be a very easy recap to write.

Headlines abounded: “Sheed steps up,” “Kobe loses the Magic, Wilts down the stretch,” “Like Christina sang, Can’t Hold them down.” And then it happened. The Celtics finally did in the playoffs what they’d been doing since October – buckled in the fourth quarter.

You’d forgotten what it felt like. I know you had, because I had, too. They handled Wade, LeBron and Howard, turning 3/5 of the All-NBA team into afterthoughts.

And they were poised to do the same to Kobe, too. They weathered one Kobe storm after another. They shut him down. They shut everyone else down. They went down, 1-0. They went down, 2-1. Then they went up, 3-2. And then they quit.

History will show that the Celtics had a big lead in game 7 and just got too tired to hold it, got a little lost without their defensive stopper, and will surely make quite a few more excuses. But the fact is the Celtics lost this series between the 6-minute mark of the first quarter of game 6 and halftime.

It was at that point that the Lakers did what the Celtics couldn’t. They remained composed – owing in large part to their coach – when the chips were down and when they were nearly out, both going into Game 6 and late into Game 7. When Kobe struggled in game 7, Gasol and…yes, Ron Artest…came to his aid. Bynum gave the most that he could, and Odom filled in admirably. Fisher hit clutch shots when clutch shots were needed and stood up for his team, especially in game 3. With the exception of Game 4, the Lakers bench outplayed the Celtics bench, even though the depth on the Green side was far greater than that of the Purple and Gold.

Read the rest of this entry →

It was a big night for the Big Ticket.

It took me a long time to figure out what to write about this team and this series. I watched highlights, I looked at stats, I looked at more stats, I stopped looking at stats for a few minutes to stare at the pictures of Mary-Kate and Ashley that popped up on Google when I searched “cavs-celtics,” and then I watched Doc sit down for the postgame presser. He just looked around for a few seconds, seemingly completely relieved, relaxed, contented, then broke out in a big laugh. Then something popped into my head.

So often during a baseball season, we’re reminded that it’s not a sprint, but a marathon. We don’t hear that as often during basketball, but it couldn’t be more true to this Celtics season. They took their time with injuries. They put up with chemistry problems. They took bad losses and lucky wins, knowing what their goal was: win the division, get a top-4 seed and get healthy in time for April. Then win. And don’t stop winning.

Now, the team is healthy. The team is clicking. Wade has been vanquished. The LeBron James Sweepstakes have begun, prematurely. There are more dragons – and probably the most powerful – ahead, but suddenly nobody’s doubting this team’s ability to slay them.

There were moments during the game that merit mentioning, probably most notable among them the very end of the first half where Rondo attempted to corral Shaq, was called for his third foul and Doc sent Michael Finley to the scorer’s table to replace him with under 30 seconds to go. Rondo waved him back. Garnett may still be the spiritual leader, and Pierce may be the team’s rock, but the Celtics are Rondo’s now.

Read the rest of this entry →

There's no cure for this. Not even old-school penicillin.

I didn’t watch the Celtics get completely outplayed by the Wizards in another home loss on a Friday night against a supposedly  much-inferior team. I didn’t watch them get polished off by the Knicks on Tuesday, either. For someone who writes about the Celtics, I admit that I don’t watch them much. It’s not because I didn’t pay my cable bill. It’s not because I’d rather watch the Sox – although I would, and I did. It’s because I can’t take it anymore.

As human beings, we develop (sometimes) meaningful and lasting relationships with other people throughout the course of our lives. Some of them last, some of them don’t, c’est la vie. As fans, we develop meaningful and lasting relationships with our favorite teams, and they almost always last – through relocation, through bad ownership, through strikes and lockouts and through quarter-, mid- and three-quarter-life crises. Some of those relationships are thrust on us, usually due to family tradition or geographic proximity – I grew up in Syracuse, and the SU men’s basketball team will always be my favorite team in any sport, ever. Some of them are misinformed decisions we make on our own, like when someone opts to root for a hockey team in Phoenix or baseball team in Toronto.

Here’s the problem. If we’re friends with a person and they change, we can walk away. If we’re dating someone and they do something we don’t like, we can leave them behind. That isn’t really a luxury we reserve with our favorite teams. If they change, we have to roll with it. If they grow a tumor (or sign one in free agency), we have to believe the rest of the team can pull through it. If ownership make a decision we don’t like, we can complain about it on message boards, call-in radio shows or Twitter, but we generally go back and root for the same team. And even if that team chronically underperforms, every time they suit up to play another game, we’re left thinking, “this is gonna be the one that turns it all around.” It’s an inherent truth in sports. It’s written in stone. It’s unchanging. No matter how bad a team is, fans will always approach a new game thinking “this is the one.”

Read the rest of this entry →