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.

I had a hard time coming to terms with this year's Daytona 500. For the life of me, I could not figure out how the partnership between Roush Racing and the Red Sox owners did not produce a victory. After all the race should logically have ended up in a four way tie between Greg Biffle, Matt Kenseth, Jamie McMurray and Carl Edwards. That was the slate of drivers the team entered in the Great American Race.

It was an amazing finish. That's about all I watched of the race, I caught maybe the last half hour and a few moments here and there as looked around for something to watch. One segment I happened to catch showed me that NASCAR (and racing in general) is not a very good TV sport. With no TV timeouts, there is no logical place for commercials. So you run the risk of missing something important every time the network needs to show you a slate of "that thing got a hemi?" ads.

Today, the two leaders crashed (Stewart and Kurt Busch) during a break and all of a sudden you're back and the wreckers are towing two of the highest profile drivers who just happened to be running one two down the home stretch of the sport's marquee event all of a sudden fell out of the running while you were watching a promo for Stacey Keach's earth-shattering performance in the upcoming episode of Prison Break. That's no way to broadcast sports. But there is no way to help that, networks have bills to pay, just like the rest of us.

But Red Sox fans can take solace in the fact that no organization has ever won the World Series and the Daytona 500 in the same season, so Red Sox Nation dodged a bullet with the defeat of Roush Fenway Racing. I ought to clarify that sentence, that is, as far as I know it's never happened. It's late and I'm tired, so I'm not going to do my due diligence. I'd rather print an apology that try to hunt that trivia down at the moment. A very lazy attitude, but what can you expect from a guy who does this for free?

The road to the City Hall victory celebration has already begun for the pitchers and catchers. Soon, the position players will report. Early rumors from the Yankee organization have the team so traumatized by the mighty Red Sox lineup that they're going to give up baseball and take up the art of scrimshaw. Given that whales are protected species and obtaining the teeth in flagrant violation of US and international law, it is, apparently, still preferable to the humiliation they would endure at the hands of the new look Red Sox, who are eager to erase the atypical end of the 2006 season from their collective memory. Only time will tell about the Red Sox this season, whether or not they're as good as the fans think they are, or whether I'm right.

The NBA All Star Weekend is now over. Dwayne Wade won the skills challenge, Jason Kapono won the Three Point Shooting Contest, Detroit won the team shooting contest and Gerald Green redeemed one of the worst seasons in franchise history by winning the dunk contest. I must concede that I will be telling my grandchildren about that Dee Brown dunk over defending champ and amazingly good sport Nate Robinson, all while wearing a Dee Brown throwback jersey. It was the greatest moment of all time. Bar none. BAR NONE.

I assume Ainge is satisfied with a job well done. There was a time when making the playoffs and winning championships mattered more than accumulating lottery ping pong balls and winning frivolous All Star Weekend sideshows. That time has past. Now, the TNT commentators were talking about this "triumph" as a bright spot for the Celtics franchise amid all this gloom. When you set franchise records for the Boston Celtics, and those records are for futility, winning the Dunk Contest is no consolation. It's an insult to the fans.

If you don't believe me, think back to Dee Brown. I still can't believe that the people whom TNT pays to discuss basketball weren't a little bit more subdued as they talked about this dunk contest. It's a nice achievement, but when you reach back into the Boston Celtics past and pluck Dee Brown from the hat like some half-assed magician pulling a rabbit out of a top hat, you are reaching into one of the only eras of a celebrated franchise that isn't worth celebrating.

It was, strangely enough, an era very much like this one. A lot of young players with potential put together in a combination that choked potential rather than allowed it to grow. But this is just one more reminder that Ainge has to go. If he stays around, remember when it happens that you heard it here first. The Celtics will either waste a second round pick on undersized Northwestern forward Tim Doyle. He's too small to be an NBA forward and too slow to be an off guard, but I'm willing to be that he has one humdinger of a brain type, that and he has an immaculate head of hair at all times. That ought to be worth Brian Scalabrine money, at least, under Aingonomics.

And I hate to do this, I really do. Believe me. But the temptation is too strong. Read this story. Our little championship is all growed up now. It's not outside the realm of possibility that Tom Brady has knocked up his ex on his way out the door. And don't make any plans for next Saturday. If you have plans, cancel them. Sarah Silverman hosts the Spirit Awards (for independent films, in case you care). It could be the least funny awards show of all time.

But far and away the most interesting event of the All Star Weekend (far better than the Western Conference's laugher over the East) was the Barkley vs. Bavetta race. As you read here, Barkley won big. Bavetta gave it his all, including a dramatic dive as Barkley channeled the hare from The Tortoise and the Hare and backpedaled across the line. All in all, Sir Charles looked very good for an overweight guy who wears his bulk well (like me), until he tripped over an invisible obstacle and fell on his ass after he crossed the line. It's good to be right, once in a while. But I wish Barkley hadn't taunted the old bag of bones. As Dr. Kelso said after Dr. Cox coldcocked him: "At a certain point, you're just beating up an old man."