Yeah, I haven't updated in over a week. So I am a bad blogger and a catastrophic failure as a human being. I have come to accept that about myself, which puts me on the path to enlightenment. The next step is to care that I am a bad person, and after that comes the actual process of doing something about my flaws. Of course now that I've done all that heavy-duty self-awareness type stuff, I might have to slow down and rest, lest I have too little energy to continue on the path to enlightenment as I get older.

So the Celtics won it all. Big effing deal. It's nice, I suppose, for the 8 people who stuck with the team through all the lean years. And it must be a great time to be an orthopedic surgeon or an acupuncturist in New England these days. God knows that 99.999999999% of those who defined themselves as Celtic fans as of this winter must have hurt themselves jumping on the bandwagon.

Or perhaps they have sufficient practice in discovering new found ancient allegiances to the local teams over the past several years that they can spring from bandwagon to bandwagon like Batman traversing the rooftops of Gotham City. And let's not kid ourselves, I am old enough to remember that prior to Bill Parcells coming to coach the Pats, games at Foxboro were routinely unavailable on local TV because the team had failed to sell a sufficient number of tickets and the NFL blacked the game out.

And Fenway is as much a place to be seen as it is to see an actual ball game. Can you honestly tell me that there aren't at least 15,000 people in those stands on a given night that haven't given more thought to what they might look like in high def on NESN or to what exact stupid, insipid and cloying effort to get some dap from the Rem Dawg they're going to put on some poster board and hold up like a meathead than they've given to who is pitching for the opponent and when Papelbon will finally join the ranks of the literate?

I'm not really a stranger to jumping on bandwagons, but I like to start early and I like to get in on the ground floor. And I don't have the facility of intellectual dishonesty or simple inability to appreciate irony that one must show to jump on a Boston bandwagon. Because no one here can ever admit that they jumped on the bandwagon.

Boston fans must instead prove that not only have they been fans for their entire lives, but every single last descendant of theirs down through the first to set foot on Ellis Island all the way down to the first homo sapiens in their family tree to hit the European continent in the last Ice Age rooted for every Boston team despite the notable handicap that Boston itself was a millennium or twenty away from being settled.

I've mentioned this before, every Red Sox fan who discovered the team right around the 1998 divisional series with the Indians will tell you that their fathers, grandfathers, greatgrandfathers and the missing link (since Red Sox fans represent a lower order of our species, they can trace themselves back only so far) all were die-hard Sox fans. And yet, somehow, when every American knew it was Ted Williams final game at Fenway (it was so clear that the writer John Updike who grew up in Pennsylvania and lived in New York came to Fenway specifically to see Ted's last game in that lyric little bandbox), only 10,000 and change were on hand to see his final at bat culminate in a home run.

Funny how that works for generations of die hard Red Sox fans. Hell, If Detective John MacLaine of the NYPD held himself to that standard in the film Die Hard, Die Hard's sequels would have revolved around Hans sitting on the beach drinking cocktails and earning 20% on the money he stole from Nakatomi while the feds sifted through the building's wreckage looking for him.

To make a long story short, I hate bandwagon jumpers who try to pass themselves off as legitimate fans. I haven't forgotten that Ainge, while he backed his way into a title thanks to Kevin McHale's turning the Minnesota Timberwolves into a China Syndrome instead of a basketball team, is still the same man who traded one of his best players for magic beans because of a petty, personal argument and, in so doing, turned a playoff team into a shit show. I just can't find it in my heart to be cool with that. Sorry.

That said, the NBA Finals blew. The games were on way too late, as everybody and their brother said. The officiating sucked. I don't know that a single player set a legal screen in the entire series. I could understand when Jordan got away with palming the ball the way he did, I wasn't crazy about it, but he was Jordan. Now the ball is palmed and carried and players take an obscene number of steps and get away with using multiple pivot feet to the point where you wonder why a rule book is even printed any more. But David Stern runs a tight ship, and the league is in great shape.

And in case you haven't heard, the NBA is trying to extract $1.4 million from Tim Donaghy, the ref who admitted to gambling on games he worked. Thanks for the smoke screen, Commissioner Stern. Because it all goes back to that situation, not the fundamental problems with games that start so late and last so long that even unemployed insomniacs start thinking twice about watching them and the fact that the one thing that keeps every fan from being fully convinced that the fix is in is that the officiating is so wildly inconsistent that no one could possibly have rigged it.

In spite of all that, the NBA makes money. I guess it goes to show you, the average American is a complete moron. And they trust these people to elect their own leaders...

In other news, there was a baseball game played tonight, and the Red Sox lost. At least that's the way the outcome stands at the moment. Rumors have it that the league will set aside the outcome, award the victory to the Red Sox and suspend Dan Harren for two months for the heinous offense of making the Red Sox lineup look ridiculous while simultaneously looking like a stunt double for one of the guys from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia."


Alas, the Red Sox are still in first place in the AL East. And there is a large portion of the season left to be played. But there are some encouraging signs. For instance, Papelbon has already blown more saves than he did in all of last year. Good thing for him he has his keen intellect and stunning good looks to fall back on should his arm burn out on him... Too bad he's a total meathead with an IQ that rivals that of a cinderblock and he looks like a lizardman from one of the old cartoons.

And then there is David Aardsma. So he pitched himself out of trouble in the top of the 9th this evening. Awesome. You did your job. But I think the fist pump he gave walking off the mound was a little excessive. First, it's not as though you somehow reversed the rotation of the earth and altered the fact that the D-backs were up a run. And perhaps more importantly, you pitched yourself into the trouble in the first place, letting up a hit and walking a guy (not counting the intentional walk).

Then there was Youke, his freak accident this evening had to be somehow related to his squabble with Manny Ramirez earlier. After all, Ramirez had to have been in the wrong, a veteran of his caliber and with his achievements daring to question Youke, who is the baddest badass on the planet, just ask him and he'll tell you in agonizing detail. I'm just amazed that Manny is still alive. In case you don't know all the real Chuck Norris facts are doubly true for Youkilis.

That said, as much as I think Manny can effect players like Youke and warmup throws from Mike Lowell with the Shining-esque powers of his mind, I have to think Youke got hurt because he's bald. My sources in the medical profession tell me that bald people, and in particular bald men, have tremendous difficulty with idea retention. The ideas simply waft into the ether because there is no hair to hold them in the skull. In extreme cases, it can also impact the portions of the brain that manage common sense, motor coordination and the section that governs the ability not to look like a total dumbass. And that is why Youke took a routine warmup toss off the noggin tonight.

Finally, Varitek got a hit to end his 0-24 slump tonight. Not only that, but it was an extra base hit as well. Unfortunately, his spot in the order came up at the end of the seventh, with the tying and go-ahead runs in scoring position with two outs. Even though Harren looked tired and the game was on the line, Varitek found a way to do what he does best, and the rally died in his arms. And so I dedicate this song to Varitek in memory of the rally he killed tonight and in the hope that he can find the magic to go 0-his next 24 or so ABs.

I'm sorry I haven't been more diligent about posting new material lately. What do you want from me? I've been more than a little disappointed by the recent run of success for the Boston teams that I hate. And the more I post to complain about them, the better they seem to do. It's just some sort of terrible nightmare, although admittedly of very minor proportions.

I have decided to take a new tack in dealing with the Celtics. Even though Ainge's panic moves seem, for the moment, to have worked out as well as could be expected, my distaste for the current regime still lingers from the Antoine situation. I also have serious qualms about jumping on a bandwagon, so I'm not rooting for the Cs. I have, after about 14 seconds of intense thought on the matter, decided to root against the Celtics a little less aggressively than I've rooted against the Pats, the Sox and BC.

Either way, it should be win win for me. If I am somehow bringing good karma to the Red Sox, Patriots and other teams/causes I root against, then maybe by taking a low key approach I might somehow reverse that trend. And if the Cs should stay healthy and stay selfless long enough to go deep into the playoffs, at least I won't have a seven month body of work to show how short-sighted and wrong I can be at my worst.

And so it appears that the Patriots are on the verge of another blowout victory. At this point, I have given up on watching the game. It is now to the point of turning my stomach to see them do what they're doing. Running up the score is not tremendously cool to begin with, but to go for it on fourth down inside the ten yard line when you're up by four touchdowns is just a bit too excessive.

I know I quote and refer to Jimmy Johnson's maxim that one ought to get better players if one has a problem with being blown out by one's opponents. And in the main I agree with the saying. The rest of the NFL teams had their chances to acquire the players who now make up this team. They also had their chances to get better players than the ones who can't stand up to the Patriots. So it's their fault that the Pats kick their asses, and kick them hard week in and week out as though they were General Sherman marching through Georgia.

But it's gone on long enough. Bill Belichick, and to a lesser extent his players, are emulating two of the more admired figures in the pantheon of dbags - the petulant child and the bully. Perhaps the NFL overreacted in their sanctions following the scandal in the Meadowlands. Maybe every single other owner, player, front office functionary and concession stand worker in the NFL failed miserably to do their moral duty and come to Bill Belichick's defense. After all, the man is the heart and soul not only of the NFL but of the American Republic as a whole. Just ask him, and if he's not too vexed by the weight of the world on his shoulders, he'll tell you.

Maybe it will be a sublime comeuppance should the Patriots march to 19-0 and net a top three pick in the upcoming NFL draft thanks to the 49ers finding new and different ways to get worse from week to week. Is that really the object of the exercise, or should it be? For five years now, I've had to sit and listen to every talking head even peripherally associated with the industry that is American professional football tell the world that the New England Patriots are the model for the way the game ought to be played. For five years we were told that the Patriots won with class and dignity, with an overall team concept and without the trappings of ego that seem to turn off so many fans.

Now, for the sake of avenging a slight in the form of an official overreaction to what was a moderately dirty deed, the Patriots have essentially taken that notion out back and put a bullet in its brain. There was nothing classy, dignified or admirable about the manner in which the Patriots defeated the Bills. Even worse, it's unsound business, or it will be after a certain point. I am a huge football fan, and I'm not watching the only football game on the air at the moment because it's not that entertaining to see a team be destroyed for 60 minutes of football.

I'm also tired of the whole get-up that Belichick rocks on the sidelines. Yeah, we get the point, it's the whole ironic commentary on the NFL deal with Reebok to provide coaches apparel and the foolish consistencies which are the hobgoblins of little minds. Unfortunately a fifty year old dude doesn't wear the shallow teen-aged rebellion particularly well.

I wonder if and/or when more people will start to feel that the Patriots have ceased doing the right thing for some time now. I know that there are Patriots fans who see this as payback for all those blissful years when the Patriots were so bad for so long and so often on the receiving end of lopsided scores. Maybe they're right. I just know I'm becoming less interested in watching this team play. And I'm a guy that has been known to make time to watch the Senior Bowl practice sessions.

As this season gets closer to the end, I have my own version of the perfect ending to this storybook season. I would like to see the Patriots go 16-0 in the regular season and then lose in the divisional round of the playoffs on the hallowed 13 month old field turf at Gillette Stadium. Perhaps a more conventional ending might have them make it all the way to the Super Bowl before they finally lost, but I like my scenario better. It would hurt Pats fans more, I think, if they lost out of the blue in their house right off that coveted first round bye.

If a few other wrinkles were added to the story line, such as a visiting player grabbing that ridiculous cut-off hoodie and pulling it over Belichick's head as though it were a hockey fight, that would put a smile on my face. I try, for the most part, not to condone violence in this space, but I am an imperfect man in many respects. I think it would be too much to ask to have some concerned citizen hurl a football into his groin to reenact the George C. Scott in Man Being Hit By Football bit from the Simpsons of yesteryear. But that would be damn funny also.

And so, Notre Dame finally won a home game. Yes, it was against Duke which just might be the worst team in the Bowl Subdivision series. But Robert Hughes looked very good. If they could ever sort out the abysmal play of the offensive line and the young backs can build on the strides they've made this season, perhaps James Aldridge and Robert Hughes can form a 1-2 punch in the backfield sort of like Cadillac Williams and Ronnie Brown at Auburn. But that's probably too optimistic an outlook to take.

I don't have too much more to say at this point, though I will be posting more material over the next couple of days. I'm going to see Springsteen tomorrow night, so I'm taking it easy tonight. I'll have a lot to say about his show, I'm sure.

Today brought good news and bad news to the loyal subjects of Red Sox Nation. The good news - Wily Mo Pena cleared waivers so he can be traded up until August 31st. I didn't expect a donnybrook involving all the teams that surely want a player of his caliber, but a mild scuffle should have been in the works, right? Which brings us to the bad news - Wily Mo still sucks.

Of course, as a resident of New England, it is my solemn duty to gloss over his abysmal performance since he joined the Red Sox by attributing said sucking to his overall lack of playing time. The prevailing theory there is Wily Mo would suck less if he played more and got into a groove. Of course this leads to a chicken vs. egg debate with more rational people who attribute Wily Mo's lack of playing time to the fact that he has shown no capacity to justify more ABs or starts because he sucks.

The trade that brought Wily Mo to our little corner of paradise has inherent value for the Red Sox organization, even if the on-field performance has been atrocious. It got Bronson Arroyo out of town. First, Arroyo had to go because I couldn't help but think of the Simpsons' episode where Homer, Marge, Lisa and Maggie end up in Bronson, Missouri on their way to Branson. I just didn't need to visualize a town full of people saying things like: "No, palie, this is Bronson, Missouri" in a Charles Bronson voice every time he took the mound or played a gig.

But the main reason Arroyo had to go is that he didn't know his place. He dared to outshine Theo at the Foundation to Be Named Later's Hot Stove Cool Music Festival. Granted common sense and rational thinking were never chief among Arroyo's virtues, but if you're a no-talent fraud with musical pretensions, and your boss is also a no-talent fraud with musical pretensions, the smart play is to let the guy who signs the checks rock the house. But what do I know?

To be fair to Theo, at least he wasn't the guy who signed Scott Pollard. It's always good to have a backup center who managed to play in only 21 games last year and is know more for his idiosyncrasies than his on the court play. But on the plus side, the Celtics are now dangerously close to having the number of players under contract required by the NBA. So they have that going for them, which is nice.

I haven't posted much about it, but I find myself hooked on episodes of The Bronx is Burning. And I'm not very pleased with myself for it. The show is good, or at the very least it's better than most of the sorry drivel that is on TV these days. But it's main problem is that it tries to set the turbulent Yankees season against the backdrop of Son of Sam, the big blackout, the 1977 NYC mayoral election, the general decline of American society and the inevitable collapse of a Red Sox team lacking pitching and moral character. That's just too much for a one hour show on once a week.

It got me thinking, though, what would happen if some producer thirty years from now were to do a similar show about the 2007 Red Sox who seem poised to vomit up their lead in the AL East as their predecessors did back in '77. Will we be asked to look back and laugh as Tom Warner very nearly made the last mistake of his life when he dressed in the Wally Suit to pull a prank on Larry Lucchino? Will the silly little debate on whether Youkilis was in fact faster than Dustin Pedroia seem even sillier? Will we be expected to burn with righteous indignation that no action was taken against the Mariner Moose when he made his cowardly and dastardly attempt to injure Coco Crisp? Or will we merely think how did we not see it coming?

It's not every day that one gets a chance to witness sublime, transcendent courage on a playing field. Tonight, for those lucky few who subscribe to the New England Sports Network, we had that chance. Josh Beckett pitched what can fairly be described as the best game since Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series. Hell, he only allowed five runs to the mighty Orioles. And in the process, he managed to confine himself to one hissy fit.

I sincerely hope Major League Baseball is going to launch an investigation of tonight's proceedings. I simply am not prepared to live in a world where Brian Roberts dares to swing at the first pitch of the game and drive said pitch into the seats. If only responsible agencies had sent out memos to remind the rest of the league that Josh Beckett is not to be defeated, tragedies like this could be averted.

Beckett should be entitled to special treatment. He's obviously lacking in intelligence. If he weren't he wouldn't be sporting that ridiculous growth on his face and trying to pass it off as a beard. I suspect, however, that his silly facial hair comes in handy. I imagine a good number of hitters have been so amused by his ridiculous appearance that they find themselves distracted when it comes time to bat against Beckett.

But I am getting to far away from the main point of tonight's post. I need to thank Theo Epstein for his marvellous performance at this year's trade deadline. What this team desperately needed was bullpen help. Forget the fact that JD Drew is making an awful lot of money to be hitting less than .250 and Julio Lugo makes a fair bit to hit less than .230. Why would an American League team need consistent offensive production?

Eric Gagne is the pickup of the century, even if they couldn't get Jermaine Dye. Of course, if a team should score more runs than the mighty Red Sox, having the best bullpen in recorded human history might just end up being a cold comfort to the citizens of Red Sox Nation if the end up listening to Crowded House sing Don't Dream It's Over while a team like the Tigers or the Angels plays in the Fall Classic. I doubt they'll be much joy in Mudville should the team need a pinch hitter and find themselves forced to rely on Wily Mo or Hinske or Alex Cora.

I think they brought in Gagne as a scare tactic for Papelbon. That's what's in store for Papelbon if he doesn't take care of his fragile arm now. He's two years away from being a journeyman trying to claw his way back from injuries. Of course, Papelbon needn't worry too much, as he can always fall back on his stellar Mississippi State education and his native intelligence. But it wouldn't hurt to have an investment guru try to turn that $450,000 a year salary into a tidy little nest egg.

At the end of the day, perhaps Theo wanted to do Danny Ainge a favor. Maybe he didn't want to take any of the luster away from the closest thing to a good move that has come to light in Ainge's Celtics tenure. If that is the case, then it's awfully decent of Theo. I hope Ainge buys a bunch of Theo's CDs and a slate of tickets to that Hot Stove Cool Music hootenanny in August.

I realize now that my intial reservations about this trade were ill-advised. Bill Simmons has shown me the error of my ways. This trade is awesome. All that remains is for the Celtics to make some nice moves picking up a role player or two and Banner 17 becomes more a fait accompli than a faint hope. After all, when a roster is supposed to have 12 players, it makes sense to commit more than the salary cap to three guys, right? Between Pierce, Allen and Garnett that has to add up to somewhere very close to $60 million. The cap is $57 million, if I remember correctly. I might not have my MBA, but I'm thinking that's not good business.

Of course, it's tragic that the team had to give up on Al Jefferson, right? According to Simmons, he's the best young post player in the game. I don't see it, myself. I think Jefferson is slow. He's also a terrible defender and his range isn't great. So it's good to unload him for any kind of value and watch the next ten years of his career turn into a long march toward mediocrity. I'd be willing to bet money (if there were a place that you could make these type of bets) that he'll never be appreciably better than he was this season.

I think when this trade is all said and done, it will end up being Ryan Gomes that the Celtics miss the most. I am not crazy about Gomes as a player, but I think he'll have a more successful NBA career than Al Jefferson. I have a habit of being wrong, so feel free to dismiss that statement. But just remember, I am due. One of these days, based on the law of averages, I'm bound to be right about something.

Before I wrap up this post, I want to pass on two final thoughts. Never in NBA history up until now has a team given up so much to bring in one player. Celtic fans better hope there wasn't a good reason for that trend. Considering the previous record return for a single player came in the deal that brought Scottie Pippen from Portland to Houston, I wouldn't be too optimistic. And finally, could this Garnett deal be a mere diversion so that Danny Ainge can sign his son Austin without taking too much heat?

It was good that the Red Sox didn't have to play a game today. That way they had plenty of down time to wrestle with the fact that Scott Kazmir seems to be able to humiliate them at will. And they don't have to think too hard about the back-to-back home runs the invincible closer allowed to the lowly Devil Rays on Saturday.

It also enables me to talk about Danny Ainge and the no good, terrible, horrible, very bad trade rumors circulating about the Celtics. Perhaps some kind soul in contact with the brains that run Banner 17 can tell them they could save money by not even having a general manager. If Paul Pierce is running this team, why pay Ainge?

Admittedly, I don't think he should be paid a salary at all, based on his performance to date. But the Cs could cut some fat from the payroll at his expense, nevertheless. And it looks like they just might need that cash to pay Garnett, Pierce and Allen to play for the brand new contender in the Eastern Conference.

If this deal goes through, it will bother me on a number of levels. First, it will generate enough interest and ticket sales to preserve the current reign of terror for at least one more season. All the Whos here in Whoville will like Kevin Garnett a lot, at first. By the time the fans grasp the significance of this deal in the long term, he'll probably have moved on or retired. But the team will make some dough for a month, a year or two.

Another reason it will bother me is that the current management team will have changed horses in midstream once again. When they took over, the team was aging too fast, they said. Its window was closing, so they slammed it shut. So the team got younger and then younger and still younger. The losses mounted, but the region was told that this process takes time. But of course, the affront against the sport that was last season alerted the powers that be that the wheels had come of the youth movement.

So the natural move is to send all of your young players to teams in the Western Conference and import players of a certain age and experience. Because we all know that basketball players get better with age. Running up and down a wooden floor at top speed for 30-40 minutes a night strengthens joints, right? It doesn't wear on cartilage, ligaments and tendons, does it?

Sticking with Bird, McHale and Parrish for as long as the Cs did put the team in jail in the mid 90s. I know why they did it, and I stuck with the team because those three guys gave the team everything they had. Yeah, they won titles, but the Bird and McHale killed the last few productive seasons they may have had by playing hurt. Granted, Len Bias and Reggie Lewis dying tragically didn't help and the team should have drafted better players than Lohaus, Michael Smith and the rest but life is often cruel.

This time, the team went out and imported guys who may have a few good seasons left in them, but could also fall apart in an awful hurry. But this is smart basketball, right? It's not like Red Auerbach kept his teams going through blending young players in with his aging stars, right?

But this trade will really bother me because the Celtics have now reverted back to being essentially what they were when Ainge blew up the team in the first place. They have more star power, but they're older and probably (I don't have the time or desire to do the math myself, so if I'm wrong on this I'll apologize) even further over the cap than they were. Four years of this nonsense and we're back to square one.

With Allen, Garnett and Pierce, this team should contend in the East. It's not very likely that they could beat one of the better Western Conference teams in a seven game series, however. When Ainge made his moves to get rid of Walker, Delk and the rest, his rationale was that contending in the conference wasn't enough. The Celtics needed to contend for the NBA championship.

As you may have noticed, the Celtics have come no closer to contending for an NBA championship in the Ainge era than I have to travelling through time. But now that the team may have collected three stars who might be reaching the point of no return in their careers but have not managed to show any signs of pushing a team to the next level, every little thing will be just fine.

On the plus side, since this is the NBA, it's likely that this trade will help neither team in the long run. The Celitcs now have a 3 man rotation in a five man sport. Rondo doesn't look like he's the answer, unless the question is: "The Celtics gave up a pick that could have been Randy Foye or Brandon Roy to draft whom?" Kendrick Perkins could be this generation's Stanley Roberts only without the potential. But there's always Leon Powe. And I think Oliwikandi is still on the roster...

But the Timberwolves could get Al Jefferson at the absolute apex of his value. Too bad he's destined to be the best player on a bad team for the rest of his career. I suppose that there's a chance that he could progress into a 20 point a night guy since there's no one else to score in Minnesota now. But I just don't see him making that team anything but a blip on the radar in the West.

With any luck, Gerald Green will be gone as well. He can play above the rim, provided that he's in a dunk contest. Too bad that he's looking like the second coming of Kenny "Sky" Walker. If only he had more skills that translated into effective play on the court, maybe Cs fans would miss him. As for Sebastian Telfair, at least Fabulus can sleep nights knowing that Bassy's 1200 miles away now.

But Cs fans, take comfort in the fact that Tony Allen will be coming back. At least until the next time he gets fouled 25 feet from the basket.

Well, the Major League Baseball All Star game was held this evening in San Francisco, and I watched maybe 1/2 hour of it. And I barely paid attention to the brief portion of the game that I watched. I don't know who won, and quite frankly, I don't care. It matters little to me what league wins.

Of course it matters to Red Sox fans because they know that the Sox are all but in the Fall Classic as we speak, so they need to plan for the possibility of four home Series games. They needn't even worry that their two big boppers have combined for fewer home runs than Alex Rodriguez, whose numbers are comparable to JD Drew's. They needn't even worry that Mike Lowell could have an anxiety attack if he's expected to get a clutch hit on the road. This season is over.

Today was all about learning things that I already knew over again in painful fashion. As a general rule, I never go to Cambridge. The city is overrated. The bars and restaurants are no better than what you find on the good side of the Charles River. The people are more arrogant with less justification than Bostonians, and if they knew 1/3 about anything of what they profess to know about everything, then truly each and every one of them would be a Socrates. And to borrow a line from James Madison, Cambridge would still be a madhouse.

I have a corollary to that rule which states that if you must go to Cambridge, never have a specific time at which you must arrive at your destination. Tonight, as I attempted to get from point A to Cambridge, I found myself stuck behind several morons. As you who read this space should know by now, I have a series of tests to tell who is and who is not a moron.

One way to tell who is a moron is to see if they have a radio station sticker on their car. Any person who does is likely to be a moron. If they have a WBCN sticker the odds go up. If they have two WBCN stickers, the odds go through the roof. And if one of the two BCN stickers commemorates the fact that said station broadcasts the New England Patriots, one would need multiple advanced degrees, a Nobel or a Pulitzer or corresponding award for academic or creative eminence to escape the status of moron.

Another way to tell who is a moron is to be stuck behind a column of people who are yielding to Canada Geese on the damn Riverway. I do not endorse cruelty to animals, but if I have a choice between scattering a gaggle of geese and getting rear-ended by some nitwit in a work truck who's been drinking since 3 PM, let's just say I'm going through the geese. Letting them cross the street only encourages them to keep doing it. Canada Geese aren't cute. They're filthy, belligerent and a public health menace. The people ahead of me should have ran them down and dealt with the moral, legal and automotive consequences, leaving me free to go about my business.

And another variety of moron is the Red Sox fan. I was stuck behind a BMW with a Red Sox license plate bracket as I tried to make my way down Broadway in Cambridge. THis person was hell bent on missing every single light possible. The ultimate driving machine was not being driven very well in that instance. And then the last type of moron is yours truly for breaking sensible rules.

And as if Cambridge weren't bad enough, then there is Brookline. After my business among the Cantabrigians was concluded, I went looking for a place to eat in Brookline. Alas, for me, it happened to be 10:00, and one cannot allow restaurants to serve food to customers after 10:00 whilst preserving the curious blend of urban and suburban, academic and blue-collar atmospheres that make up the rich pastiche that is Brookline.

Give me a break. Of course it's my fault for going to Brookline and for being too lazy to get back into my whip and drive to a saner community for a better, cheaper meal. That said, don't go to the Beacon Street Tavern. I spent a week there tonight. First, the kitchen closes at 10, so one must eat off of the late night menu or else go hungry. I wish I had gone hungry.

The sliders weren't bad, but they weren't $14 good either. The service wasn't bad, but the place was beat. First, 3/4 of the menu was inedible, at least from my point of view. They had a lot of appetizers with things I just won't eat. Like beets and goat cheese. I ate more beets as a child than I really needed to, and I only ate the ones my parents forced me to eat. With God as my witness, I will never eat beets again. And if goat cheese were really so great, why would people go to cows for their milk and cheese needs?

But the real problem was the clientele. There was the dude in a Bud Light shirt and a throwback Red Sox hat, drinking white wine and chatting up a blond at the bar while he scratched his back. I'm guessing he didn't get the signal to swing away tonight. Then there was the guy talking about how he did yoga and meditated before he came out for a beer. I want to party with him.

But this is supposed to be a sports related blog, so I thought I would pass on this link sent to me by my man up on the frozen tundra in Maine. It's a freelance piece comparing the most recent edition of the Boston Celtics with the 2002 conference finalist. It basically makes different points to argue that Ainge bites as a GM and ought to be removed from office. It's nice to see someone else feels that way too.

And then, I have to pass this on. Antoine Walker was robbed at gunpoint, again. This time it was in his house, as opposed to on a street in Chicago's South Side at 4 in the morning. No word yet as to whether Danny Ainge and Banner 17 were involved. After all, it does seem like the only way they'll get their hands on a championship ring. Of course I'm kidding about that last part, I just don't see why people can't leave my man alone.

And when the going gets tough in NASCAR, guess whose drivers can't share the limelight as teammates? Would you believe it was Roush Fenway Racing? Apparently, Kyle Bush was edged out of his win by his own teammate, Jamie McMurray. Just one of my many problems with NASCAR is that a sport must either be an individual sport or a team sport. It can't be both. So I don't care what the drivers do to their teammates except for when it gives me a chance to run down one of John Henry's business ventures.

Right up until the moment the Celtics drafted "Big Baby" Davis, I was quite happy with the way the draft process shook out this year. Landing Ray Allen should turn out to be an unmitigated disaster for a team that already had an aging, overrated swing player wearing number 34. Not only that, but Ray Allen gets paid quite a bit of money, and the salary cap situation in Boston is dreadful.

I would, I must confess, rather have seen them draft Joakim Noah. I think Noah is going to be terrible. He can't shoot, he was worse than useless against bigger, more athletic players in college and he was compared to a baby wildebeest on ice in this space not entirely unfairly. He got by in college because there were very few players who were bigger and more athletic than him. But this is the NBA. Here's looking at you Chicago. The new Bulls run is ending before it began.

On one peripheral level the Ray Allen move makes sense because the last thing the Celtics need at this point is another young player. However, that is the only thing about this deal that makes sense at this moment. Paul Pierce is more of a slasher (or was before he left his speed somewhere back in 2004), and Allen is a jump shooter. But that doesn't mean they can play together. Both guys have egos, after all.

Even if the intention is to turn around and package Pierce with some young players and try to chase a big man like Garnett or Jermaine O'Neal, where is the logic in trading for a guy who makes fantastical sums of money despite the notable handicap of never having won a title, or a finals game, or a conference finals? Even better, why pair him with Pierce when all those things apply to the "Truth" as well?

Unless I miss my guess (and I'm always ready to admit that my predictions go wrong in spectacular fashion far more than they hit the mark), the Celtics have just taken the first step in the process that will lead them to the inevitable conclusion that they should have traded Al Jefferson this season. With Pierce and Allen squabbling over shots and touches, what will be left for Big Al? Or Ryan Gomes? Or Rajon Rondo? Or Tony Allen if he comes back? Or Gerald Green if he has another discernible skill beyond dunking?

Maybe I am of a one track mind when it comes to the Celtics current management team, but I think that this trade is just one more attempt to get out from under the mill stone that was, is and ever shall be the Walker trade. Since that day, Ainge has been trying to find a player to complement Paul Pierce. Ricky Davis didn't work, and Wally might have worked if he'd stayed healthy for more than 8 seconds. If this were the damn rodeo, he might have had something, but it's basketball. Obviously, Antoine did something right, but Ainge didn't like his game. Ainge must like Allen's game, but he hasn't been right yet.

I say this to avert what I fear could be a series of tragic scuffles, tramplings and scattered outbreaks of hooliganism when Celtics fans flock to their local video rental professionals to clamor for the few remaining copies of He Got Game. Don't get your hopes up, Celtics fans. Or do, so that I can laugh at you and say I told you so over and over again.

The rest of the draft was disappointing. I'm not very familiar with Gabe Pruitt, since I never got a chance to see USC play this season. I do remember Big Baby from the NCAA tournament run LSU put together in 2006. I was favorably impressed, and I felt he should have come out right away. Injuries and the fact that LSU was no longer a surprise team hurt him this year. But I think he was a steal in the second round. I think he is immediately the best option the Cs have at center.

I was hoping for the Cs to draft Josh McRoberts. I even had a nice little seed for a paragraph where I could compare McRoberts to Joe Klein, minus (of course) the athletic ability and the mean streak. Too bad I'm one of about 12 people in the area who remember Klein. But trust me when I tell you, it's an insult. Plus, since the Davis pick seems to work, it doesn't help my School for Scoundrels reference from yesterday, because even though Ainge's self sucks, he did help himself tonight.

So without Noah and without McRoberts coming to Boston, I can only be so happy with the terrible trade that will haunt the Celtics. Although it might be possible that Allen could be insulted and awakened by the fact that he was traded for Jeff Green, Delonte West and the aforementioned Wally, I'm not losing any sleep over that possibility. I suppose I wouldn't be a very good Catholic if I didn't believe in miracles, but I don't expect to see them where the Celtics are concerned.

I was, however, so bummed that the Cs could have had a worse draft that I had to include this mugshot of Larry King.

He is one intense, creepy dude today. But back in the 70s, he was worse. I always assumed that you got more creepy as you aged, but this seems to contradict that notion. Hell, I bet if I'd said that was the Green River Killer, you'd have bought it. Yikes.

The other day I was reading one of the articles Shira Springer wrote on the upcoming NBA Draft. This quote from Cory Brewer struck me as kind of funny:

It reminded me of the film School for Scoundrels. In it, Billy Bob Thornton's character asks his students if they own any self-help books. He then proceeds to inform them that they cannot help themselves because their selves suck. So good luck improving your offense, Cory Brewer, but you might have been better served to find a good offensive player to help you. Self reliance only works if your self doesn't suck.

I think that scene from School for Scoundrels also applies to the Boston Celtics. To be fair, the Celtics have their work cut out for them before they can accurately be said to suck, that's how bad they were last season. But now the Cs have the fifth overall pick in what some people think is a loaded draft. They have young players and expiring contracts. They should be able to help themselves, right?

First, I still don't believe that this draft is loaded. I agree with most people that there isn't a big drop-off in terms of talent between the guys projected to go at three and those projected to go at 17 in the various mock drafts. That doesn't mean the draft is loaded, that means that there are a lot of half-decent players who probably will earn superstar money and never manage to become superstars. Maybe that's what Boston fans want now, an overachieving hustler who will shine for a few years before flaming out, like Kevin Youkilis. But only a moron would give a guy like that the guaranteed money due to be paid the fifth overall pick in this year's NBA draft.

And one can never get around the fact that this ownership group and management team have proven themselves manifestly incapable of producing a winning basketball team. Lest we forget that the Celtics were coming off back-to-back trips to the playoffs when they came on the scene and now apparently tanked games down the stretch. Just say that to yourself: "The Boston Celtics lost games deliberately to improve their draft stock." It hurts, doesn't it?

Danny Ainge, who ought to know better (and would, if he had an IQ approaching room temperature) having played for the Celtics is clearly not the right man for the job. Under his watch, the Celtics have become such a mess that Kevin Garnett threatened to sit rather than be traded to Boston. And when the proposed four team trade that would have sent Garnett to the Lakers was announced, it would have ended with the Celtics giving up the 5th pick and Al Jefferson to get Jermaine O'Neal.

Can you imagine that? Giving up a guy who was good for nearly 17 points and 10 rebounds a night and a top 5 pick for an older player who will might get you 22 and 10? Don't get me wrong, I still think that Al Jefferson's trade value will never be higher. He'll never be as big a part of an NBA offense as he was for the Celtics this season. He's just not good enough. But that doesn't mean they should give him away to help other teams get better.

Of course, for what it's worth, Ainge has come out and said that the team intends to hold on to that fifth pick. That's a frightening thought. Ainge has done some serious damage to this team for years to come, maybe a generation. Boston is on the high road to becoming the new Dallas Mavericks, in the bad 1990s version rather than the bad we have a great regular season team with no guts and an owner who makes the Joaquin Phoenix version of Commodus look like a model of restraint and decorum of contemporary vintage.

The funny thing is that every one I talked to about that trade before the report came across the wire that it was rejected believed it. No one was particularly surprised that a team got the shaft in a multi-team deal and it was the Celtics. 25 years ago and beyond that would have been a scandal, now it's a go figure situation. Ainge can't help the Celtics. Nor can the Celtics help themselves. The culture of mediocrity runs too deep.

I think this isn't a bigger story in Boston because Boston fans are morons. It's not because the Pats and Sox have forced the Celtics out of the limelight. It's because in the years between 1957 and 1991, the Celtics provided their fans with an embarrassment of riches. The teams were so good, so deep and so competitive that the fans never needed to bother understanding why a basketball team wins and loses. It was enough that they were the Celtics and they very nearly always won.

Now the NBA stinks. And the Celtics are worse. But it doesn't bother the fans because the average fan doesn't understand basketball. They just want to see dunks and buzzer-beaters. It matters very little that other plays have to be made to set up the dunk and the buzzer-beater. It also doesn't matter that every fan who booed Antoine Walker when he played for the Celtics and thought the team would be better if they ran every play through Paul Pierce could not have been more wrong. Boston fans just want to be diverted for a few minutes and given a venue where 18,000 can (and 14,000 do) gather to chant "Yankees Suck" and feel strong for 3 hours.

And like that, the Detroit Pistons are no longer in the hunt for the NBA title. Alas, I am not happy. You may rest assured, however, that it has very little to do with the fact that the Red Sox cam back to beat the Yankees today, thanks to Mike Lowell proing that he is the gutless fraud I always suspected him to be. Imagine if A Rod had maliciously attempted to hurt one Yankee and then succeeded in his second attempt.

Unfortunately, I am not pleased to see Cleveland advance. I want LeBron to win a title. I really do. But I don't want to see the NBA turn a blind eye to Manu Ginobli and Tony Parker running at LeBron to augment Bruce Bowen's "defense." The three of them will hack, flop, whine and coward their way to another ring that would be LeBron's if the NBA allowed basketball to be played by the rules.

The only reason the Spurs deserve to win is that Popovich has a defined rotation and a logical system to govern the way that rotation is rotated. That is not the case in Cleveland. For instance, tell me why Damon Jones has played the number of minutes he has played in the situations he has played them in this series. I am not saying he should have played more or fewer minutes. I just don't understand why he has played the minutes he has played; it never seemed to fit.

Why, then, is there even a series to be played? Why waste a young, healthy, impressive star like LeBron when the NBA has not had the guts to stop a machine that churns out bad basketball? Maybe it might sell internationally, but this brand of basketball annoys American audiences. We want to see teams run the floor. We don't want to see stagnant, let the superstar do it half court sets. But we don't want to see flopping, gutless whiners. So thanks for playing Dallas and San Antonio. Dave Cowens and JoJo White want you to man up before you step on the court again.

But I am scandalized and offended that Bill Russell was on hand to present the Eastern Conference trophy. Not so much because he did it, since this is a free country he can do what he wants. But he and LeBron were the only two people who had any business on the basketball court. Plus he's Bill Russell. The NBA should pay him money to be in Boston to remind Ainge and Banner 17 of the enormity of their crime.

I am also scandalized and offended that the Cavaliers put on such a display to celebrate a conference championship. There are still games to be played. You have to go to war with San Antonio. It isn't time to celebrate yet. No one should be allowed to celebrate a damn thing until the last basketball game has been played. Maybe I'm just old fashioned that way. But I must sign off, since I am running a 5K in West Roxbury tomorrow and I have to go to bed.

I knew today was going to be a weird day from the start. I woke up to see a headline in the Boston Globe, one of the day's lead story in a major metropolitan newspaper, to the effect that some jackass with a pseudonymous blog (not me obviously) managed to get himself revealed in open court. He actually included a thinly veiled account of the daily proceedings of his trial for medical malpractice in his blog. As far as I'm concerned, important personal details have no business in a blog so long as the blogger wants to keep a private life apart from the blogging life. I'm not sure yet what the details are on the settlement of the other blogger's case look like, but I bet it was one hell of an expensive mistake.

Then as I was driving through a neighborhood in Boston at 7 this morning (I can't tell you which one, lest I compromise my somewhat secret identity), I found myself behind a Nissan SUV. The guy driving it was rocking a cowboy hat. At 7 AM. In Boston. And not the metropolitan area, either. The city itself. If that's not a bad omen for the start of a day, I'm not sure what is.

And there is the whole A Rod mess. So what if he yelled at a guy who was trying to field a pop fly at third base? If any other player on any other team did that it wouldn't have been a story. If one of the Red Sox players did that, Red Sox Nation would be fawning over him as though he cured polio. But since it's A Rod, it's the worst thing that has ever been done on a baseball diamond, or at least since he slapped the ball away from Bronson Arroyo. People just need to leave the guy alone for a while.

But tonight's post is really about basketball. The NBA is slowly wasting away before our eyes, and it's almost laughable. I'm not blaming the refs or the league for the on-court violence which is a far bigger problem in my eyes than the off court violence associated with the current NBA player. This degeneration from basketball to a sort of half-assed rugby is the responsibility of the players. They put up with it, so why should the league address it. Every team that whines when its star is hacked turns a blind eye when its goons maul the opposing star. So the players need to do fix this themselves.

And it starts with personal pride. Not ego, but honest-to-goodness "I did my damn job the way it ought to be done to the best of my damn ability" pride. For the love of God, Bill Russell would have been scandalized into committing ritual seppuku if he defended Chamberlain the way Prince and Hamilton played LeBron tonight and he were a samurai. A little bit of contact is fine, but a player ought to find a new line of work if he can't guard his man without hand checking him 10 times in a 24 second possession.

The three most egregious instances of shameful basketball came in the second overtime. First, Webber never should have gotten continuation on the foul that sent Ilgauskas packing. He carried the ball in the first place. Also, the motion which enabled him to put the ball in the basket was not the same motion which was interrupted by the Ilgauskas foul. That cannot be continuation, de facto or de jure. Finally, it probably wasn't even a foul at all.

Then there was the 24 second violation on Cleveland where they passed the ball to Varejao for some strange reason. As he fought for the loose ball, Billups splashed him. That's got to be some manner of foul. You simply cannot throw your body onto another player's body in a non-contact sport. It's just not the way it was intended to be played.

Finally, on one of Detroit's final possessions in the second overtime, Chris Webber tried to set a pick by hand-checking the Cleveland defender (I'm pretty sure it was Pavlovich). There's no way that you can set a pick with a hand check. Hell, according to strict semantics, I don't even think you can hand check on offense, but I don't know how else to describe what Webber did. Instead of positioning his body appropriately, he reached out and put his hand on Pavlovich's hip as the Cleveland player was defending another Piston.

But lost in the hype that will surround this game (and rightly so, it was a legendary performance by LeBron, he played like 3 men in the 4th quarter and 2 OTs), is a rare win-win situation for me. Phoenix has decided to take the GM title away from Mike D'Antoni and install Steve Kerr in that position. I like this move because I do not like the team, and I won't miss Kerr calling games.

First, Phoenix was on a nice run under D'Antoni. True, they have yet to advance past the Spurs or reach the conference finals. However, they have made the playoffs after a very good regular season in each of the past two years. It seems like an interesting time to mess with their chemistry in this fashion. Players seem to like D'Antoni, more to the point they have responded to his leadership fairly well when it comes to wins and losses.

And what exactly has Steve Kerr done to show that he's ready to build an NBA championship caliber NBA organization? Was it sitting next to Marv Albert night in and night out without being bitten? So what if he were a cog in title runs by the Bulls and Spurs? Where does that translate to successful GM?

After all, if that were all it took, maybe Danny Ainge would be helping to hang banners in the rafters of his own building. Can Phoenix not see the parallel? Role player on title teams, terrible broadcaster, terrible 80s hair. Ainge and Kerr might be the same person, for all intents and purposes, with the exception of one key detail. Ainge was a moderately successful coach for a couple of years. Kerr doesn't even have that on his resume. Enjoy the long descent into mediocrity and beyond, Phoenix fans.

I am not often given to quoting Scripture in this space, but tonight it seems appropriate. In Proverbs Chapter 11 Verse 29, there is an eloquent bit of advice from King Solomon, it reads: "He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind and the fool shall be the servant of the wise at heart." Unfortunately, Danny Ainge probably didn't read that particular passage before he dealt Antoine Walker to the Mavericks in 2003.

Tonight has just provided the culmination of the Boston Celtics inheriting the wind from that bad trade. I predicted (one of the very few instances where I have been correct) that the Celtics would lose out on the Oden-Durant sweepstakes. I didn't dare hope, however, that they would fall all the way to 5th in this year's draft. This team earned this karmic suplex by making bad choice after bad choice and then compounding the affront to good taste that was this season by tanking games down the stretch.

Why did Danny Ainge deserve a chance to derail the career of Greg Oden or Kevin Durant? Because he's honestly submitted his best effort at producing a winning team in his four seasons at the helm? Because he conducted himself as a model of professional decorum? Because the two best things about his reign are the creation of a cheerleading squad and unloading Raef LaFrentz? It never ceases to amaze me that this man is still employed. I could work 2 hours a week and do a better job than he's done. Hell, the monkeys at the zoo could do a better job and still have plenty of time to fling feces at one another.

Take a look at the Celtics trades under Ainge. This list of transactions made by the team since he took over basketball operations is an appalling roster of ill-conceived decisions. Since when has it been advisable to shuffle players in and out of an organization? And yet it's the Ainge MO. So the question lingers for Celtics fans: do you want Ainge to use the pick or trade it?

They traded the rights to Randy Foye to Portland for Sebastian Telfair and the carcase of Theo Ratliff (who earned $1 million for every four minutes of basketball he played this season), Foye went on to earn a place on the NBA All Rookie Team. Portland turned around and traded Foye for the rights to Brandon Roy who won the Rookie of the Year award. Telfair is going to be cut from the team because his play was sub-par and his off-court behavior unacceptable. So that's what Ainge can do with a draft pick when it comes time to trade.

Among the veterans he has managed to acquire include Ratliff, Chris Mills and Raef LaFrentz. Ainge has managed to come out on the winning end of a trade once, when Gary Payton refused to report to Atlanta after the Cs traded him for Antoine Walker. When the Hawks cut Payton, he returned to the Celtics. So does that inspire confidence that the Celtics could somehow trade a pick that will not become Oden or Durant in a package with Pierce or one of their young players for Garnett or Gasol or Jermaine O'Neal or some mystery player who might not suck as a Celtic?

I have found myself wondering lately whether Ainge's determination to get into one-sided trades which have benefited the Trail Blazers at the expense of the Celtics have some connection to the shameful manner in which he stabbed the Blazers in the back in 1992. In case you have forgotten the story, Ainge (an Oregon native, by the way) was on the Blazers as the 1991-92 season ended and was due to be a free agent.

He promised the team and the fans he wanted to stay and would contact the team to make the necessary arrangements. And then, all of a sudden, on the very first day of the signing period, Ainge came to terms with the Phoenix Suns. I am all for clearing one's conscience and atoning for past transgressions, but I must say I hate to see the Boston Celtics serve as a vehicle to help their GM help a team he shafted 15 years ago.

Then there is the fact that some player from the Roy Hibbert, Joakim Noah, Al Horford, Brandan Wright, Corey Brewer or Yi Jianlian mix will be available in the fifth spot. I have heard as many times as you have that this is a ridiculously deep draft. Maybe I'm stubborn (I'm not alone, my man in Maine emailed me tonight to complain that this draft isn't what it's been billed to be), but I'm not convinced.

Roy Hibbert is a project. He may be great, and for the sake of the league he'd better be great. Greg Oden needs a rival like I need to marry a beautiful heiress. But Hibbert's not going to come in right away and dominate. Frankly, I'm barely willing to believe that he can come in and contribute. Think Emeka Okafor with a steeper learning curve, and I think you'll have a good picture of what Hibbert's future is going to be for two, maybe three years.

I have expressed my distaste for Joakim Noah's ability to play in the NBA a number of times in this space. He's not big enough to play NBA big men. He's not quick enough to hang with a Nowitzki or a Bargniani. He's nowhere near polished enough to score from the perimeter, and he handles the rock like a wildebeast calf on ice. Joakim Noah will be the death (certainly from a career stand point, and maybe literally also) of an NBA GM. I don't want it to be Ainge, though, as the Cs would be stuck with Noah, or Acie Earl with less marketability and talent.

Horford is probably the best of this sorry lot, provided you want a player to come in and help a team win games in the near term (of course one wonders whether NBA teams really want to win based on their personnel choices). The problem here is that he seems to be a more athletic version of Al Jefferson. Al has impressed a lot of Cs fans and the reporters who cover the team, but I still believe he's at his ceiling right now. Adding another power forward named Al won't help him. Plus, as much as I like his game, I don't think he's worth half of what the number five pick in this draft will earn.

Brandan Wright is a great unknown. He has all the potential any basketball fan could dream of, but he isn't seasoned enough to be the face of a franchise. To my way of thinking that's what the Cs need more than anything right now. They have too many young players with potential trying to develop into solid pros as it is, one more guy like this isn't going to help the team, especially when they're in salary cap hell and there aren't enough minutes and shots to go around.

I don't know enough about Yi Jianlian to offer any kind of assessment of his game. Beyond hearing that he's a Chinese Dirk Nowitzki on Outside the Lines the other day, I know nothing about him. I can spell his name only because I have today's Globe sitting on the desk in front of me. I do know that Yao Ming is monstrously overrated. He's an adequate big man benefiting from the total lack of centers in today's NBA. He ought to be able to score 30 points a night when he's 7 inches taller than 95% of the guys trying to cover him. So I would be inclined to stay away from another Chinese player, considering how much money goes to a #5 pick.

Corey Brewer captured the attention of fans across the country with his defensive play in this year's NCAA tournament (and last year too, but I try not to face the fact that Florida won two consecutive championships). This instantly makes him the most NBA ready guard of his generation. It's a little knows fact, but if you can handle Aaron Afflalo and Mike Conley Jr., then you can shut down any player on any team at any time. I bet you Iverson is soiling his drawers at the prospect of facing Brewer as we speak. Give me a break, he's not ready for prime time. At least not for $50 million.

And that is why I am so happy tonight. The lottery was Danny Ainge's last shot at keeping his job beyond this season. He can't keep getting chances to ruin what little future this franchise has. Maybe Jefferson, West, Rondo, Perkins, Powe, Gomes and the rest are better than I think. Maybe they're a lot better. But with the group of them competing for minutes, touches and shots there is no way that this group of players can form a team. They need leadership, and the team has no pieces to trade to get value in return.

This situation is so very perfect for Ainge. He traded Walker and then gradually had to punt away the magic beans he got in return. And even better, he acquired Telfair in his scramble to get out from under that Walker trade and that blew up in his face. He traded for Ricky Davis only to give up on him a little over a year later. In short, he created a hell of a lot of trouble in his own house and he just inherited the wind losing this lottery.

And if you aren't miserable enough, Celtics fans, just think... Portland got Brandon Roy thanks to the Cs terrible draft day trade last year. Now they have the inside track on Oden even though they had a 5.3% chance to win the lottery. At least the Cs threw one hell of a lottery party at Clery's on Dartmouth Street. I couldn't quite make it, I still remember a time when the Celtics didn't throw parties for anything short of a title.

I find myself wondering whether Pat Riley wants to win basketball games. Things looked bleak for Miami when Shaq went to the bench with his fifth foul at the 8:35 mark of the 4th quarter. They certainly did not look like they were going to get a whole lot better when D Wade joined him after he was called for his fifth with 8:26 to play. One would have thought that things were going to fall apart for the Heat at that point.

Unfortunately for Scott Skiles and the Bulls, their road to victory was made considerably more difficult by one man. It was Antoine Walker, and the Bulls had no answer for him, as he led the Heat back to within two points with 5:17 to go in the game. Thankfully for Bulls fans, Pat Riley decided that it was time to bring Shaq and D Wade in off the bench at that point. Here is the full game play-by-play, in case you're interested.

I realize that Wade and Shaq absolutely must be on the floor at crunch time. I was looking forward to their return. I just don't think Antoine needed to go to the bench with his twenty when Shaq and Wade had been on the bench for three minutes of game play and three of the Heat (Eddie Jones, Udonis Haslem and Jason Williams) who also played important minutes had managed to combine to score fewer points than Antoine.

By the way, I would pay money to see Eddie Jones do Shakespeare before I paid money to see him play basketball at this point. I understand that Pat Riley has a man-crush on him, but enough is enough. He was done like dinner in the last days of the Clinton administration. Maybe Antoine would have scored more consistently in the regular season if he'd played more minutes. Just a thought. I am also working on the theory that he might have scored more consistently had I watched more of his games. But there was work to be done on the Bears bandwagon, and injuries from which to recover after each time it piled up into a trestle.

Chicago promptly went on a quick 5-0 run, until Shaq picked up his 6th, and Toine returned. Antoine didn't score another point, but finished with 20. His 3 point shooting on the day was pretty good, and he was perfect from the freethrow line for a change. And I would say that his defense did not suck quite as much as the other Miami players' effort on that end of the floor.

Antoine, on the off chance that some one in your entourage reads this and can pass it along, please stop playing hard. You have no right to remind Celtic fans that you were the last person that really wanted to win in a Celtic uniform. Stop showing up Danny Ainge. He does the best he can, and it's not his fault that he cannot run a basketball team. Stop making Bill Simmons look bad for saying that you're moving like Fred Sanford these days. It's not his fault he's a tool, and people seem to prefer his wife's writing to his. He and J Bug or Joe House or Fist Magnet will always have the time they routed Norv Turner from a $10 blackjack table.

And above all, stop playing hard because it encourages the lunatic fringe that wish Ainge had never traded you. Just think, on a day when the Red Sox played the Yankees, I watched the Miami Heat play a basketball game because I like Antoine Walker. If only we lived in a free country, then a grown-ass man could eat what he wanted and watch what he wanted and hope that Charles Barkley runs for President in peace.

You need to see this clip from the Detroit-Calgary game. I know I rarely talk about hockey in this space, and then it's usually college hockey, but this is strange. I am almost speechless. I've never seen a goalie get a game misconduct. I'm sure it's happened before, I just don't want to do the leg work since it's Saturday afternoon and googling hockey was pretty low on my to-do list for today.

It caught me by surprise because I haven't been following that series with much interest. I assumed that Detroit was up 3-1 based on the fact the fact that the score was 5-1 at the time of the incident and the Flames were that frustrated. I didn't realize the series was deadlocked at two wins apiece. There's still a game to play, that ought to be interesting.

I am going to watch the New Jersey game tomorrow afternoon, so I may have a thing or two to say about it. If there are any compelling moments, I may be doing some more writing on hockey as the playoffs progress. I do like the sport, it's just that I have no energy to hate the Bruins with so much devoted to hating the Red Sox and the Danny Ainge era of Celtic basketball.

Here is my conservative prediction for tonight's NASCAR race under the lights in Phoenix: a semi-literate moron will win. Of course since that cruelly insensitive epithet covers the entire spectrum of NASCAR drivers, I have a 100% chance of being right. And let me tell you, it feels good, for a change.

And it looks like the meek are going to inherit the earth today in Fenway, or at the very least a baseball victory. It's not every day that you can defeat a pitcher like Jeff Karstens. Red Sox Nation has a lot to hang its hat on today.

PS - There is a Springsteen reference somewhere in today's post. I wonder if you can spot it and tell me the song from which it came.

Bill Simmons is an amusing man. He has now taken it upon himself to lead the charge against the Celtics' team management. It is true that he has been sharply critical of Doc Rivers for some time now, but the Sports Guy has now moved on to criticize Danny Ainge and the buffoons who write the checks. Suddenly, now that a writer with an exponentially larger profile than mine has joined me, I am not enjoying the anti-Banner 17 movement as much as I should.

Simmons is convinced that the young players have not developed to the extent that many casual observers have been led to believe under River's slightly less than inspired leadership. That is clearly true, unless you consider Gerald Green winning the slam dunk competition as some tangible form of progression in genuine basketball skill and not raw athletic ability. The lone bright spot has been the continued development of Al Jefferson.

I must say once again I am not convinced that Al Jefferson is going to continue progressing. Last night, at the tail end of TNT's Inside the NBA Kenny Smith refused to consider Al Jefferson for his personal Most Improved Player Award. His rationale (loosely paraphrased) was that a reasonably skilled guy on a bad team has a lot of chances to take shots because no one else can score and better teams pushing for the playoffs are likely resting their best players when the games are in hand. Kenny Smith played on some preternaturally bad Sacramento teams in the late 1980s, so he knows a bit about the statistical benefits of being the big fish in a small, polluted pond.

At the moment, Al Jefferson's stats really aren't all that impressive to me, even on a Celtics team desperately yearning for mediocrity. He's averaging 15.8 points, 10.6 rebounds and 1.5 blocks per game. Jefferson is shooting nearly 51% from the field, but he turns the ball over 1.98 times per game while averaging only 1.2 assists. If that is the bright spot for the Celtics, it's going to be a long, long night.

As a point of comparison, at the same point in his career, Antoine Walker averaged 18.7 points, 8.5 boards, 3.1 assists versus 2.83 turnovers. He did not block as many shots as Al Jefferson does, but he had more steals per game. That was also the 98-99 season shortened by the labor dispute where Walker came back out of shape and submitted his worst season as a Celtic.

I realize that Antoine played two years of college basketball before joining the Celtics. But I bring him up not to be unfair to Al Jefferson but to show how the Celtics have fallen in the eyes of the basketball world. People booed Antoine mercilessly for putting up gaudy numbers on terrible teams. Now Al Jefferson is averaging just under 16 points a game and people are excited. I also bring up Antoine to link to this video of Toine talking about Red, since he was probably the last person to play for the Celtics who really understood what an honor that once was.

I just don't think it makes sense to take for granted that Al Jefferson will continue to develop at this pace, or at all for that matter. If the Celtics should somehow wind up with Greg Oden should he declare, or Kevin Durant, one or the other may not take minutes of playing time away from Al Jefferson but Jefferson won't be taking as many shots. It is possible that getting better looks for those fewer shots will still help his game.

Tony Allen will probably be coming back from his injury at the midway point next year. There will likely be a period of adjustment as he tries to rebuild the confidence in that knee. But he was on track to be the star of this team and its future. His comeback will also take shots away from Al Jefferson. And let's not forget that Paul Pierce will probably play more than 47 games next year, too.

That brings us to another of the real villains in the demise of Celtic pride - Paul Pierce. So many people, like Simmons in the piece linked above, believe that Paul Pierce is a great competitor who desperately wants to win. I don't believe it. I believe he hates to lose, but hating to lose and wanting to win are not necessarily the same thing. When push comes to shove, I think Paul Pierce would be happier putting up great numbers on a perennial doormat than he would be in taking fewer shots and contenting himself with less statistical production on a winning team.

For those of you who would disagree with me, I offer you the example of Game Six of the first round series between Indiana and the Celtics back in 2005. The Celtics ended up winning that game in overtime, but they very nearly lost it in regulation when Paul Pierce threw his infamous tantrum which resulted in his ejection. The Celtics went on to be routed out of the playoffs in Game 7, at home of all places, with Pierce scoring 19 (Antoine had 20). Since that time, the closest a Celtic has been to a playoff game is when Pierce went to games as Toine's guest in last season's championship run for the Miami Heat.

I don't know if Pierce likes the role of the tragic victim of a poorly managed organization or if he simply can't bear to share the limelight, but he simply can't carry a team to victory on his own in this NBA environment. Kobe isn't good enough to do it, and he brings a similar skill set to the table. Kobe is more athletic and a better defender and an even bigger tool when it comes to sharing the spotlight.

I wonder how long Ainge will be able to hang his hat on Jefferson, West and (maybe, even though I am not impressed) Rondo. I am not happy living in a world where a man turned the number 7 pick in the draft last season into Sebastian Telfair, even if it did banish Raef LaFrentz to Portland. Not when that pick is probably going to be Rookie of the Year Brandon Roy even though he missed 20 games.

I knew that the Telfair/LaFrentz trade was a bad idea all the way back on July 3rd when I took time out of my efforts to recreate the journey Ray Miland took in Lost Weekend over the holiday to complain about it. I've been ripping Ainge to my nation of two readers (to paraphrase the Kurt Vonnegut line from Mother Night) for a long time now. All that while disappointing my loyal reader the Kobra Kommander by mentioning a certain Japanese pitcher in a scandalous 10.4% of my posts.

PS - It's a shame that Kurt Vonnegut passed away. Slaughterhouse Five and Cat's Cradle are two of my favorite books. One of the underappreciated funny satiric sequences in the movie Back To School comes when the Rodney Dangerfield character hires Vonnegut to write a term paper on Vonnegut for him and ends up getting a D. It's just too bad, but with the way Americans continually conspire to produce generations of morons, America will probably never produce another writer of his caliber.

In hindsight, I probably should not have reminded the universe of the remarkable coincidence on Monday afternoon. After today's victory against the Royals, the Red Sox are in first place in the AL East. It is true that the Yankees are playing at the moment, and technically have yet to lose a game, but Major League Baseball will announce at any moment that the aberration on Monday evening will not count against the Red Sox in the standings.

Plus Daisuke Matsuzaka pitched seven strong innings struck out ten Royals and allowed only one earned run. That ought to be enough to offset minor inconveniences like a loss here or there. I think most teams are simply going to give up the ghost now that John Buck, Royals catcher and keen baseball mind, has decreed that Matsuzaka has ace-type stuff.

As much as Daisuke's stellar regular season debut is a blow to Sedition in Red Sox Nation, it's just one game against a team that has managed to lose quite a few games over the last two decades or so. It reminds me of another highly touted prospect who made a debut almost twelve years ago for a team I do not hate. I don't know if you remember the Ron Powlus era at Notre Dame. I do. He came in as the most highly recruited player of the year, he was going to join the Pantheon of greats at Notre Dame and a funny thing happened on the way to immortality.

It turned out he was overrated. After a nice debut against a very bad Northwestern team, things just kept getting worse for Ron. Now, he's back at Notre Dame as quarterbacks coach, preparing touted recruit Jimmy Clausen to replace Brady Quinn. That is not making me happy to be a Notre Dame fan next season, but what can you do? Just something to think about, there's a lot of room for regression after today's performance by Daisuke.

This piece by the CHB on the hype leading up to Daisuke's debut isn't worth reading, but it is worth taking a look at him in that video that accompanies it. Holy crap, he looks like Kramer from that episode of Seinfeld where he turned his apartment into a smoking lounge and hyperaged himself in a couple of days. He's kind of like the Picture of Dorian Grey, and not just in the sense that he's unreadably pretentious. Finally the man on the surface matches the madness within.

Not only did the hated Red Sox prevail, but ESPN interrupted its regular lineup to bring us the breaking story about the fate of the Florida junior class following their repeat performance this week (also part of the payback for me celebrating the Red Sox defeat and TMC showing Cromwell). Who cares? This draft is about Oden and Durant.

And this Florida team isn't a top 5 or 10 all time team. Remember, these guys only came to college because they weren't good enough to go pro right from jump street. College basketball was better this year because people had to go for at least a year after high school under the new age limit rule. But imagine if no one went pro straight from high school for the four or five consecutive drafts? Only then would it be fair to measure this generation against the past.

Finally, there is the Miami-Cleveland game tonight. I was looking forward to watching it, because it is an increasingly rare occurrence that a sporting event should take place where I actually like both teams. However, the universe could not allow me to enjoy it after the indecent enthusiasm with which I celebrated the bone the universe threw me on Monday. No matter how the game shapes up on the floor, Turner Broadcasting is continuing the universe's campaign against me.

Reggie Miller, Doug Collins and Kevin Harlan are calling the game. Things are being taken away from the table at an alarming rate. Early in the first quarter, Shaq hit Haslem with a no-look pass. Perhaps jarred by the fact that Udonis "Hand of Stone" Haslem caught said pass, Miller went on a mini-tangent about the pass. In his ecstasy, Miller giddily narrated the replay and marvelled at the fact that Shaq's eyes didn't stray in Haslem's direction, after telling the viewers that a no-look pass was coming.

Now I didn't attend that celebrated disco with books that is the University of California in Los Angeles. But it seems to me that the fact that Shaq did not look at Udonis Haslem whilst passing the basketball to him is what makes it a no-look pass. Of course, I may be wrong. But redundancy in engineering complicated systems is a good thing, and redundancy in broadcasting is a bad thing. Reggie Miller is not helping fans enjoy the game.

TNT would be better served to let Barkley and Kenny Smith call the games. Even better, throw Tommy Heinshon in the mix. Maybe a fourth guy like Ernie Johnson as a referee/moderator. These are intelligent guys who love basketball and know the game better than anyone. More importantly, they're honest, they have integrity and they aren't afraid to speak their mind.

I'm sick to death of announcers trying to pretend that a bad game is interesting, exciting and/or intrinsically watchable simply because it's basketball. Also, keeping abreast of current events would be helpful. And by that I don't mean world news, arts, literature, politics and so on. I mean what happens in the game. For instance, Kevin Harlan just announced that Antoine Walker made his first appearance of the game at the 11:11 mark of the second quarter. Toine was on the floor in the first, I know it for a fact. I saw him. Wearing number 8.

Good broadcasters would now something like that before they said it, or they wouldn't bring it up. A team like Barkley, Smith, Heinshon and the moderator might make a mistake like that from time to time, but they'd call one another on it. They'd make a bad game watchable because they have personalities. They'd tell you it was a bad game, start talking about other things and telling stories about a bygone age when basketball was basketball and players passed, played defense and we were as kings.

I know every broadcaster tries to do some or all of those things, but 95% of people in the world can't tell a story to save their life. It's a natural gift. Something you can't be taught. A good storyteller has a rhythm. A certain vocabulary, maybe a patois (as much as I hate pretentious, foreign words like that, but there isn't a good English alternative). It's not about using big words or small, complicated words but about using the words that come naturally to you from your environment and experience.

Guys like Barkley and Heinshon can be offensive because they speak their mind extemporaneously. I remember an All Star Weekend event (I think it was a celebrity game), Barkley was calling it with Ainge and a couple of other people. Two WNBA players were on the floor and Ainge said that we were seeing two of the best point guards in the world. And Barkley cut across his point and said, slightly derisively: "You mean for girls, right."

Now that was a little bit sexist (or a lot sexist). But he said what a majority of the audience was thinking. Men are better basketball players than women. Fundamentals are important, but they take a back seat to the ability to play above the rim. I complain a lot about the way basketball is played in the NBA, but I flat out refuse to watch the WNBA. The fundamentals are so good in women's basketball because they aren't athletic enough to get away with anything else.

Barkley wasn't excessively hostile toward the idea of women's basketball, and he wasn't saying that the two women didn't belong on the court in general. But he was right to point out that the two women could play in the All Star Weekend exhibition against retired players and celebrities, but they weren't talented enough to play top flight pros from the NBA in a genuine, honest to goodness, no fooling NBA game. That's the truth, more to the point it's one man's honest opinion, untainted by fear.

A certain amount of sensitivity is important, but not more than honesty. In that celebrity game several years ago, Ainge was right in the sense that the two WBNA players of whom he spoke are among the best point guards in the world because they can play better than the vast majority of human beings on the planet. But the two of them were not better than even the worst point guard in the NBA at the time, so in that sense they were not two of the best point guards in the world.

Barkley just said during the halftime show that Dallas needs to pick up their intensity or they might lose to Utah in a potential second round playoff matchup. There are a lot of reasons to dismiss this out of hand, Dallas has won 62 games this season. They've won 9 out of their last ten. But Barkley says Dallas has not been as focused on its defense lately, and now is not the time to sleep on Utah.

He may be wrong, I hope he's right. But then I may be attracted to that line of reasoning because I hate Dallas. But he's obviously thought about it, he didn't shout that prediction the way a lot of commentators do these days. He didn't say it to take the other side of the trade the way a lot of talking heads do. It's something he thinks, and he threw it out for people to take or leave. If he's wrong, he'll admit it, and if he's right he'll throw an "I told you so" or two at us, but he won't be a tool about it. That's why he should be calling games.

For his part, Tommy Heinshon is no stranger to saying some things that aren't tremendously sensitive. There was the Dikembe Mutumbo comment about hunting lions. And the Yao Ming chopsticks comment. His sensitivity could improve, but he has a gentleness about him that leads people to overlook his comments, which are very few and far between. People will always forgive a guy they like for minor transgressions.

That's the difference between the insensitivity from Barkley and Heinshon going largely unnoticed and the firestorm that greeted the Billy Packer "fag out" comment. It's not just that the audience in Heinshon's case is fairly small, because there could not have been more than 100 people watching that particular Charlie Rose. After all, you can't tell me you know more than three people who watch him.

It seems that hating Billy Packer is the one thing that makes us all Americans at heart. And unlike TO or Tank Johnson who are widely criticized but defended here and Ozzie Guillen who called a sportswriter I loathe a fag and was defended in this space, I will not defend Billy Packer. I really don't care if he called Charlie Rose a fag, or implied that Rose is a fag. While I would like to see him retire, I am not going to attack him for this.

I want CBS to show him the door because he's a bitter old man who seems to hate what he does. He has no sense of timing. It seems like there are moments when a small aside comparing a contemporary team or player to one or more from the past works and then there are moments when Packer does it. And never the twain shall meet. Plus, it's never a short aside. It seems like 15 minutes of game time elapse while he's talking about what Dr. Naismith told him about throwing the spheroid into the peach basket.

Maybe I would hate him less if he didn't work with Jim Nantz. Jim Nantz with his voice stuffed full of fake sincerity and fake emotion and fake gravitas will exercise his formidable talent at turning what should be a legitimately dramatic moment into an artificial, saccharine schmaltz fest as fake as Natntz' own claymation character hairline. He's the only reason not to look forward to the Masters.

Hearing him say "Amen Corner" or azaleas or "What a moment" or "the Masters on CBS" in his phoney "I alone understand the full signifigance of this moment" voice makes me wish that the tree the course owners would not remove for Eishenhower would fulfill its destiny and fall on Nantz' head. It's going to be a long weekend.

PS- Antoine Walker had 20 points in Miami's win tonight. Danny AInge would be rolling over in his grave, if he'd only drop dead.

What a difference a day makes. Yeah, I went out on a limb and said I wanted Ohio State to take down the tyrant last night, and it kind of, sort of didn't happen. OK, Ohio State was soundly beaten and Florida became the first repeat champion since Duke in 92. But things could be worse.

As painful as it is to backtrack from that pronouncement, it must have hurt Bill Simmons just a bit more to eat his words from Monday's Basketball Blog. The Sports Guy actually said that he could live with Joakim Noah on the Celtics, should they miss the Oden-Durant sweepstakes and wind up with the number 3 pick in this year's draft. After all, I don't claim to be a basketball junkie, a devotee of good basketball and I don't get paid for this.

I may not watch 300 basketball games a year, but I could see what Simmons apparently missed. Noah is going to an NBA team, who will waste high pick and a considerable sum to learn a painful lesson. I almost feel guilty for writing what I am about to write in the wake of that tender scene where he ran into the crowd and climbed row after row to see his mother (which is just a bit creepy). But Noah's game has to progress quite a bit to be considered fatally flawed.

First off, he can't create his own shot, which is only so much of a problem since he's not a very good shooter. Have you seen him dribble the ball? He moves like a newborn caribou on ice. I don't think he's quick enough on the defensive end to make it at the next level. He's just not athletic enough to make it, and he's not big enough to offset his limitations.

He was a very good college big man, but the thing about that is the road to organizational hell at the next level is paved with the remains of guys who were tall but not tall enough, quick but not quick enough, big but not big enough, tough but not tough enough. That's Joakim Noah.

I guess if I had to compare him to any current or former NBA players (and it's hard, what with the fact that he's biracial and ethnic sensitivity is the order of the day), I'd go with Udonis Haslem or maybe Danny Ferry. There is an outside chance that he might turn out to be a serviceable power forward, if he goes to a team that has a solid center. But that doesn't seem very likely.

His performance in yesterday's game was more indicative of his NBA potential than any of his other tournament games. Oden was the only NBA ready big man he's faced, and it wasn't even close. Noah's not ready for prime time.

I really don't want to hear about how well he played against other teams in the tournament. None of the guys Noah faced in the first few rounds has much of a chance at the next level. So what if he ruled the court like a man against boys in the Butler game? That's what he was. No one on Butler was over 6-7, and when the starters got into foul trouble, Noah had 6 inches on his man. It's not particularly impressive to dominate under those circumstances.

For a little while, part of me wanted to see the Celtics draft Noah. Getting him will hasten the end of the Ainge era, or at least it ought to, since the team would not improve significantly. Of course that presumes that Banner 17 wants to field a winning team and isn't in the basketball business for a tax dodge, which might not be the case. Plus Ainge must have compromising photos in his possession. How else can you explain his bulletproof status?

But then I got to thinking, and I realized that there is only a small chance I can become a Celtics fan again, even if Ainge goes. I don't care for Banner 17 as an ownership group. My brother had season tickets through his business up until the Walker trade. When they hadn't renewed after the trade, Wyc placed a call to the company. Wyc gave the party line about how the team could improve and how the ceiling with Toine had been reached.

Now, the Celtics may have reached their ceiling in 01-02. But the team has not shown any signs of mounting a playoff run without Antoine. There is a considerable body of evidence to show that they're a lot worse without him than they were with him. Not only is this team a poorly constructed loser, it's also in salary cap jail. Yes, they're not as far over the cap as the Knicks. But there was a time when more was expected of the Celtics franchise.

I might find a way to overlook Banner 17 if this team were remotely likable. Paul Pierce is a whining, overrated bust. His defining moment as a Celtic will most likely end up being that playoff meltdown at the end of game six against Indiana in 2004-2005. That cost the Celtics the series (they were up 3-2, and the team, with the exception of Walker, failed to show in game 7). He wonders why he doesn't have more endorsements? Maybe if he had more charisma or delivered when it really mattered with any consistency (let's not forget that he fell to the Celtics after a memorable 0-11 from the field in his final NCAA game), he'd get more money.

I just don't see much future for the young players. I think Al Jefferson and Delonte West are as good now as they'll ever be. Don't forget, a high profile pick will take time and shots away from the "pieces" already in place. Ryan Gomes is a tweener. Rondo can't shoot. Telfair is a bust who will never live down that terrible trade which sent a much better player to Portland. So what if Gerald Green won the Dunk Contest? At the end of his career, he may have a resume full of dunk contest victories but very little in terms of more tangible accomplishments.

Throw Noah into that mix, and in the short run it should cost Ainge and Rivers their jobs. Unfortunately, the Celtics will be stuck with him for a few more years after that. But if the team ends up with pick three and they take Noah, and the plan is to keep Ainge and Rivers long term, there's only one way to go. Noah should have his choice on a night in and night out basis of any of the retired jerseys for his number.

I think the Celtics are getting close to forfeiting the right to celebrate their legacy. Instead of fielding this travesty of a team, they might as well let Noah wear number 6 for a game or two, then 33 or 15 or 18. Hell, I don't think Cowens is very busy these days, he could be forced to convey Noah around the city (or at least around the TD Banknorth Facility) in a rickshaw. Maybe Havlicheck could wash his car every day.

For what they've done to this organization since they purchased the team, Banner 17 would have been only slightly more disrespectful to everything Red stood for had they gone the Jeremy Bentham route and preserved his remains for permanent display in the vestibule of the stadium.