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.

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.

So, the Final Four is upon us again. I have been very hesitant to report on Sedition in Red Sox Nation Bracket Challenge of late. Let us just say that I took a man sized beating. The only team I had in the Final Four which ended up making it was Ohio State. Texas, Kansas and Notre Dame were not the best picks, I guess. So I offer congratulations to the Daniel Bellott entry, which according to my calculations is so far ahead at this point that it cannot possibly lose.

If you have the time, and let's face facts if you're reading this you probably do, check out Bob Ryan's take on the Final Four. It's not half-bad. Of course, with the magnitude of the Final Four, you know that I have to offer my irrational and quite possibly insane prediction for the event's outcome.

Watching this tournament, I finally realized why I hate Joakim Noah. He's a giant tool who celebrates every little thing like he just cured cancer. It's not just that he celebrates a dunk, or a big shot or block or assist. But he emerged from one exchange against Butler where a guy four inches shorter than him pushed him as they battled for a loose ball pounding his chest and screaming.

It got me thinking what is he like off the court? Does Noah beat his chest and scream to celebrate waking up in time for class because he set his alarm clock correctly for daylight savings time? If he gets his whites whiter and his brights brighter in the laundry room does he take a victory lap and taunt his neighbors? He needs to take it down a notch, or 12.

I think UCLA will beat Florida this time out. I don't want to see either team win, but one of them has to. I don't think Humphries will be as hot as he was last game (or in last year's championship game, for that matter), and I don't think UCLA will be anywhere near as cold. Plus UCLA improved by leaps and bounds over last year's team. Never has addition by subtraction accomplished so much as it did when Jordan Farmar went pro.

I am not comfortable with either of the coaches in this matchup. Ben Howland is bald. My sources tell me that bald people have tremendous difficulty with idea retention, what with not having hair to keep the thoughts from wafting up through the top of their head and all. On a more serious note, I think the slow-down defense first style can choke all the life out of your offense if one or two of your players isn't hitting shots.

Then there's Billy Donovan. Outside of the fact that he's a Pitino disciple, and I hate Pitino (a vestige of my days as a Celtics fan), there's the fact that he looks like Matt Damon. And not so much Matt Damon the actor as Matt Damon the puppet doppelganger from Team America who couldn't say anything beyond shouting his own name. For some reason that's all I've been able to think about as Billy Donovan attempted to sidestep the Kentucky rumors this past week.

I simply do not like Georgetown. I was 6 when they last made a Final Four, so I don't remember the Ewing Sr. teams. I do remember the teams with Mourning and Dikembe Mutumbo who underachieved like crazy. But more than just the basketball team, I don't like the school.

If you're from the Northeast, it's reasonable to assume that you went to high school with a guy who ended up going to Georgetown or really wanted to. Think back on that guy, and what a tool he was. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that that guy was a sort of arrogant sycophant. When it couldn't possibly hurt him, he was a tough guy, but when there was a grade to be grubbed or a chance that he could catch a beating, then our Georgetown guy was not so formidable. I do know a few guys who attended Georgetown and were good guys, but they are the overwhelmingly small minority.

That sort of arrogant sycophant is a type that gravitates to the Catholic schools of the Northeast, and it not a phenomenon exclusive to Georgetown. BC is packed to the rafters with them. And Holy Cross has produced the two most visible, the dueling lizard kings of the arrogant sycophants in the CHB and Bill Simmons. If you don't believe me, think about the CHB's dust up with Jurassic Carl Everett. Or Bill Simmons full on retreat from Isiah Thomas.

To make a long story short, I see Ohio State beating Georgetown. Oden (provided that he stays out of foul trouble) can shut down the Georgetown's inside game. And I'm not buying a team with the son of Doc Rivers as a championship contender. To say nothing of how sickening the montages of John Thompson Jr/Patrick Ewing Sr. and their sons will be.

And I think Oden is strong enough to shut down the middle against UCLA too. I've heard roughly one billion times in the last five years that the NCAA tournament is all about guard play. So let's agree now to call this year the exception that proves the rule when Oden leads Ohio State to the title.

After the last 50+ years, I think the last thing the Boston Celtics should want to do, from an organizational standpoint, is make franchise history. After the 16 titles, 11 in a 13 year span and all the facts that you already know, it's almost impossible to break any of the positive records. Unfortunately, what will go down in history as the 3rd consecutive year Danny Ainge should have been fired (even the year they went to the playoffs should have cost him his job, nothing says I have no idea what I'm doing like reacquiring Antoine Walker) will have seen two milestones in Celtics history eclipsed.

The franchise record losing streak was bad enough. But these things happen. The worst thing about is that the Celtics are going to play the Sixers tonight without Paul Pierce. And at stake is the fifth 50 loss season in franchise history. But I'm the only guy who thinks Ainge is the problem...

In the May 22, 1974 issue of Rolling Stone, Jon Landau famously wrote: "I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen." We haven't seen the future of the NBA yet, but we will this weekend. It really doesn't matter, either, who ends up winning this year's NCAA championship. What does matter, for the future of the NBA, is that we'll see if Roy Hibbert can be the rival Greg Oden needs to save the NBA on Saturday.

Make no mistake about it. The NBA needs salvation desperately. Ratings peaked in 1998, and they show no signs of getting back to that level any time soon. There is even a great deal of consternation in some circles that Major League Baseball has scheduled a game between the Red Sox and the Yankees up against an opening round playoff basketball game. Can you imagine the NFL fearing to schedule a playoff game against another sport's regular season game?

Anybody who tells you that the NBA's ratings are falling because of the hip hop culture or mainstream white Americans turning away from it are full of sanctimony and not correct. At the end of the day, people want one thing, and one thing only from sports. It isn't cultural commentary or the world of yesteryear. People could care less about how long the player's shorts are, what kind of music they listen to or what they wear. They want to see good basketball and nothing more.

The ratings are falling because basketball is not being played the way it was intended by Dr. Naismith. Basketball is not being played the way the Russell era Celtics played it. Basketball is not being played the way the Showtime Lakers of the 1980s played it. And it's not really being played the way Jordan played it.

In a sense, it's Jordan's fault that the ratings are falling. And not because he retired and came back and retired again. The NBA Finals which enjoyed the highest rating of all time was the 1998 series which featured the Jordan Bulls against the Utah Jazz. Jordan won the series with the famous, iconic isolation play (where he may or may not have fouled Byron Russell). And since that play, that has become the core of most team's offense in crunch time.

Look at the end of the Laker game against the Warriors. Kobe Bryant dribbled and dribbled through the defense until he had an opening to take the winning shot. Yes, he made it and the Lakers won their fifth straight game. But that's not basketball. Maybe his teammates aren't very good. But a professional basketball player ought to be given a chance to make the last shot.

Who really wants to see four grown men who are extremely well paid stand around and watch one guy dribble through a crowd? That's not worth the price of admission. That's junior high basketball. Or worse, the one bigger kid playing on the playground with his little brother and his friends.

Oden can save the NBA because he'll give a team a dimension no team has had in a long time, not even Miami - a true center. Shaq doesn't really count any more, as age and his bulk have limited his minutes and his effectiveness over the last few years of his career. He can only play with full on intensity for a few minutes at a time. And Duncan, Garnett and the rest of the big men in the NBA these days seem more comfortable away from the basket than in the post, or they might just as well be sold for spare parts (Dampier, Djiop, Kendrick Perkins, et al.) as paid to play basketball.

Oden has a combination of size and athletic ability that is inordinately rare, even in professional basketball where inordinate size and athletic ability are the rule rather than the exception. He can control the glass on both ends of the court. He can run with the break, which is almost funny, since no NBA team can really run a break anymore.

But what he really needs is a rival. That's the one thing that kept Shaq from being the best center of all time. He never had to work day in and day out to hone his skills to beat that one opponent worth beating. Am I the only one who stops to wonder what Bill Russell would have been like without Wilt Chamberlain? Or Chamberlain without Russell? Even Kareem had Cowens and Walton and Willis Reed and Wes Unseld among others hanging around when he was young. The only guy on the horizon that can be that rival for Oden is Hibbert, as I see it. His offense needs a bit of work, but he is a very good defender.

A player like Oden will give a team a low post option that opponents must respect, he'll draw double teams which will open space on the floor for shooters. Not that that's necessarily a good thing, what with the fact that even "good" shooters seem to have difficulty hitting the floor upon falling out of bed two days out of three these days. At least, with any luck, that might bring an end to the 1 one 5 superstar suicide charge that is the NBA equivalent of the four minute offense from NFL endgames.

For his sake, and for selfish reasons, I hope Oden doesn't come to the Celtics. Since this ownership group has steadfastly refused to terminate Ainge's employment, Oden could prolong his tenure in Boston indefinitely. For obvious reasons I don't want that to happen. But it won't be good for Oden, either.

Let him go to a team that isn't crippled by salary cap woes. Let him play for a team that doesn't have Brian "The Great Brain" Scalabrine as it's fifth highest paid player. After all, won't drafting Oden cast aspersions on the $4.48 million due to be paid to Kendrick Perkins. And above all, let him go to a team that isn't crippled with a superstar who is a selfish, petulant boy emperor who can't play a team sport with a team.

In the immortal words of Detective John McLane: "If you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Quit being part of the problem." Paul Pierce isn't part of the solution. He can't share the spotlight. He couldn't with Ricky Davis, he couldn't with Antoine Walker. How in the world could Paul Pierce, the face of the Celtics, share the spotlight with a projected savior of the franchise. Pierce may or may not be one of the brightest minds in professional basketball, I wouldn't know, but he has to see that if the franchise has to be saved, in a sense, it has to be him from whom the team must be saved.

But it's all academic if the game within the game between Oden and Hibbert doesn't deliver. Any one of a million things could go wrong, one or both could get into foul trouble. Oden could eat Hibbert alive (metaphorically speaking, I hope), or vice-versa, which is infinitely less likely than the former. Or God forbid, one or the other could get hurt.

If this game doesn't live up to the hype, I think the NBA is in trouble. Then the future of the league is in the hands of Kevin Durant and OJ Mayo. And will those players make a team better. And I don't just mean wins and losses. Because what will the difference of 10 or 12 wins to the Celtics mean for next season? Will it make them a playoff team? More importantly, will it make them a worthy playoff team?

Whatever flaws it had (and it had a few), that 2001-2002 Eastern Conference Finalist had an energy and a chemistry that made it fun to watch. I don't think I've ever enjoyed a sporting event more than I enjoyed that monster comeback against New Jersey. Now put Oden or Durant on this Celtics team and tell me they'd be capable of something like that. I don't see it. It might make them a lower seed in the first round, and maybe they could be dangerous. But since the NBA went to a seven game format in round one, miracles have been outlawed.

Let Oden or Durant go to a team that can build around them from jump street. Let the Celtics take Joakim Noah and sink with the spare parts. Get rid of Ainge. Sell the team to an ownership group that won't preside over a poorly managed but expensive tax dodge, but actually try to build a champion. FYI, no one trying to build a champion would sign Brian Scalabrine to any kind of deal.

PS - Durant ought to come out for economic reasons, but he's less NBA ready than Oden. He's way to skinny to survive the NBA right now. He'll be knocked around until he can bulk up to withstand the punishment. Staying in school would help, since college teams aren't allowed to turn basketball into rugby as often as NBA teams do it. I think he's two years away at least from really contributing, maybe three if he has the misfortune to get hurt.

Ever since the incompetent tools who named themselves Banner 17 took over the Boston Celtics and entrusted the most storied franchise in professional basketball to a man who dabbles in brain typing, I never thought I'd look forward to a Celtic win streak. But now that the team has followed its epic losing epidemic with a nice four game win streak, I am surprised that I am happy. It makes things so much more interesting for me.

With Greg Oden and Kevin Durant all but locks to go 1 and 2 in the draft this year, it seemed like even the immortal Danny Ainge could not find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory this time out. But if the mishmash of spare parts that is this edition of the Boston Celtics wins enough games, the Celtics could lose for winning. Imagine what Ainge could do with the third pick after the two mortal locks are gone. I can't believe it, but since I am almost certain the ownership group won't pull their heads from their rear ends and terminate the contract of Mr. Ainge, I'm rooting for the Celtics to win enough to lose the lottery.

One more bad draft will cost Ainge his job. It has to. Or at least it would be a mortal lock, but then I'd have to assume the cretins who run the Celtics are not as incompetent than I think they are. Against all odds, Ainge has seemed positively bulletproof in his capacity as Celtics GM. Of course, I've been attacking him for the nearly 11 months that I've been writing this blog but since somewhere on the order of 20 people read this space on a very good day, I attract only so much attention.

But the tide has turned, it seems. First, about two weeks ago, Jackie MacMullan had an excellent piece in the Globe detailing the appalling state of the franchise's business plan. I might not know very much about running a business, but I know that when your business is winning basketball games and your team is losing much more than it wins, you're not running a good business. When you run a team in a salary cap system and you're $11 million over the cap, you're not doing the right thing. Unfortunately, when both things are true of your franchise, basketball isn't the business for you.

I have been attacking Ainge for the Walker-LaFrentz deal strictly from a basketball standpoint. He took away one of the core pieces of a team that had reached the conference finals for the first time in over 10 years and received an inconsistent center more comfortable on the perimeter than the block and a terrible defender to boot. Much worse than that, Antoine was due to make just over $28 million over the two years left on his contract at the time while Raef was signed for six years and due to earn almost $63 million.

It seems like a strange decision to make as a general manager of a basketball team. I don't understand why you'd trade a better player due to earn less money over a shorter time for a worse player due to earn more money over a longer time (yeah, other players were involved, but these two were the centerpieces). Maybe if Jiri Welsch panned out, it would have been different. But then, to paraphrase an old saying, if grasshoppers were armed to the teeth with automatic weapons, birds wouldn't make such a habit of eating them. Of course, we all know how the Jiri Welsch era in Celtics history worked. He wore number 44 (as Danny Ainge did in his time in Boston), and that's about it.

One would have to admire the tenacity with which the Celtics ownership group has stuck by Ainge if one did not want to see a winning team play in the TD Banknorth facility (I still won't call it a garden). I imagine I should clarify that last statement by adding the caveat that said winner should happen to be the home team. After all, a number of winning teams have helped the Celtics to the worst home record in the NBA.

I thoroughly enjoyed this quote from Steve Pagliuca from the MacMullan piece:

You can't make a judgement on Danny right now. It's only been four years. If Delonte becomes Bibby and Al Jefferson becomes Karl Malone, I'd say Danny Ainge has done pretty well.

Where should I begin with this gem? First, the Founding Fathers believed that four years was ample time to evaluate the President's job performance. General manager of a basketball team is a serious responsibility, much more difficult than running a nation. Second, it might have escaped Pagliuca's notice, but I did some serious research on Karl Malone and Mike Bibby. You might not know this, but neither one of them has won a championship in the NBA. Bibby has never even made it to an NBA Finals.

The problem with that statement is that taking a wait and see approach in the fourth year of an ongoing rebuilding process that seems to be stuck in reverse is about as effective as the ostrich who sticks its head into the sand to escape a predator (as far as I know, that is a myth, but still an enduring and appropriate image here. Also, there is no indication that Al Jefferson will become dominant. Finally, with the way Bibby fell off the face of the Earth these last two seasons, I wouldn't wish that on Delonte West. Actually, I would since I want the Cs to lose, but one of the owners shouldn't, unless he's using a losing franchise as a tax write off like the lady from Slap Shot.

In case you care, Theo Ratliff is the third highest paid Celtic, and the who earned a little bit over $1 million for every four minutes of basketball he played this season. His final total came to a whopping 44 minutes before he called it quits for the season. Four and five on the list of highest paid Celtics are Kendrick Perkins and Brian Scalabrine respectively. Between the three of them, they earn just over $19 million. For those of you who don't do much math, that's just south of 40% of the salary cap. For those of you who might be a bit slow on the uptake 40% of the Celtics salary cap is devoured by a carcase who can only charitably called a has-been, a damn good third center in Perkins (too bad they don't have a number 1 or 2 center) paid damn good starter money and Brain (not a typo, deliberate error) Scalabrine.

Bill Simmons was disappointed by the lack of trades at this season's trading deadline. I was unpleasantly surprised. As I'm sure you must have noticed because the media covered it thoroughly, there was no way a big deal was going to be made unless a third team stepped up to get hosed. Ainge did that to facilitate the Rasheed Wallace trade to Detroit in 2004. Maybe he learned his lesson.

I thought this passage from his the trade deadline piece was interesting:

BOSTON: F
I'm relieved they didn't do anything -- especially a Pau Gasol-Al Jefferson deal, which would have been an enormous mistake when you consider the age difference (five years), the salaries (Gasol makes six times as much), the stats (Jefferson's a better rebounder, and they're equally mediocre defenders, so they would have been picking up an extra 4-5 points a game and that's it) and the fact that Gasol could have inadvertently knocked them out of the Greg Oden/Kevin Durant Sweepstakes.

Still, I'm giving them a retroactive "F" for the hideous Sebastian Telfair trade, in which they passed on Brandon Roy or Randy Foye to acquire a shoot-first point guard who can't shoot. I know they saved $20-25 million in the deal (a big consolation for my dad, who's paying something like $360 a game for his seats) and acquired Theo Ratliff's eight-figure contract as a potential trade chip ... but Danny Ainge hasn't swung a deal in four-plus years that could be considered a home run, much less a triple or double (I'll give him a single on the first Ricky Davis trade), but he managed to hit into two triple plays (the Telfair deal and the Raef LaFrentz/Antoine Walker deal). Will Danny be able to parlay Ratliff's contract into something substantial? I'm dubious.

I give you the passage because it reminded me of something I wrote just after the draft. The date on my post was July 3, 2006. I questioned the wisdom of choosing Telfair over Roy/Foye. I don't mean to allege or imply that Simmons reads this space, I'm just saying that I knew this back in July. Why didn't he?

I do attack him a bit in the blog, so I guess I also must give credit where it is due. His retrospective on Dennis Johnson was excellent.