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 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.

It's funny to see the way professional sports franchises operate sometimes. The Celtics sinking ship let Sebastian Telfair go because his off court behavior gave them a convenient excuse to drop him without much fanfare. The Patriots reversed field on their operating mantra during this season's draft weekend, forsaking the traditional high character guys fans have grown accustomed to over the last decade and a half for riskier, sketchier players. The NBA equivalent of a chicken running around with its head cut off is trying to take the high road while the NFL's shining city on a hill is suddenly trying to recycle bad citizens. Funny, indeed.

Of course, we all learned recently exactly how significant the decision to cut Telfair is. Bob Ryan emerged from his lair and wrote yet another piece to kick a man while he was down. Anotine Walker, Butch Hobson and Nomar have all merited this treatment in the past, and now it's Telfair's turn. The only thing that amazes me in all of this is that it took an eminent basketball mind like Bob Ryan nearly 10 months to see the flaws in Sebastian Telfair's game.

I suppose I am being somewhat unfair to Mr Ryan and not presenting his entire argument, but this is my blog and I can say what I want. And anybody who has read any of my past material probably can anticipate where this post is heading. Cutting Telfair is just one more in a long line of spectacular personnel failures in this Celtic regime.

The Sebastian Telfair catastrophe is one more step Ainge has taken to step out from under the albatross that was the Antoine Walker trade. Ainge didn't like Walker's game, so he traded him to Dallas for Jiri Welsch and Raef LaFrentz. Jiri added very little value. And Raef's contract was such a nightmare that Ainge unloaded him for a glass menagerie of failure and helped enable Portland to pull off a draft day coup and land Rookie of the Year Brandon Roy.

In the end, I am somewhat disappointed that the Celtics have let Telfair go. He was paid too much, produced too little and served to remind the last few people that really care about the Celtics that the team was in the hands of incompetent morons. Every time he took the floor for the Celtics he was a walking dilemma. He either embodied the fact that the people running the team have no practical conception of how to assemble a basketball team or that the people running the team are deliberately assembling a bad team. Either way, it suited me.

And now the Patriots are rolling the dice with Randy Moss, who has promised to revert to the Randy of old. People can take that one of two ways. Randy Moss will either burn up the league, catching passes, scoring TDs and delivering in big situations or he'll burn down Gillette Stadium. I am more inclined to believe the latter than the former, although the fact that the CHB has thrown down a gauntlet on this deal makes me far less certain of that than I was at this time last night.

I am not now, nor have I ever been a Patriots fan. And even though reports have Moss wowing the assembled luminaries by clocking in at an impressive 4.29 in the 40, I do not find myself convinced that the Patriots are the prohibitive favorites in the AFC. I remember the old Randy from his days with the Vikings. Nobody could run like he did, catch the way he did or terrorize defensive backfields the way he did. But there was always something missing. I think it was courage.

At least, by that I mean the courage to go out and put everything on the line to win a big game. Say what you want about Terrell Owens being a miserable, selfish cancer. But let's not forget that he came back from a broken leg in a month and a half to play in the Super Bowl, signed a waiver and outplayed eventual Super Bowl MVP Deion Branch. And let's not forget that there is no moment like that in the Randy Moss highlight reel. There are no postseason moments in there at all.

That's the Randy I remember. As I talked to my man who is a Patriots season ticket holder, I couldn't help but think of the Randy moments I will never forget. And none of them involved that famous Monday Night game where he punished the Cowboys for passing on him in the draft.

No, when I think of Moss, I'll remember the day a dreadful Giants team earned the right to be destroyed by the Ravens. They shut out the Vikings 41-0. And in all of that, rumor has it Randy sulked all game and didn't perform because he was upset that the powers-that-be in Giants Stadium wouldn't let his kid on the sideline. Truly that is the heart of a champion.

Then there was the tail end of the 2003 season when the Vikings needed to beat the Bears in Chicago to clinch a playoff spot. The Vikings drove down into the red zone, in a goal to go situation, and they looked to Randy Moss on a corner route. The TD would give the Vikings the lead, which would have put them in prime position to make the playoffs. And what happened? Charles Tillman, an unheralded rookie at the time, took the ball away from Randy, who didn't put up much of a fight for the ball and the season, in the end zone. The Bears won the game, the Vikings got a jump on the offseason.

Maybe all the optimism is warranted. Maybe the Patriots can awaken in Moss the fire that never seemed to be there when it really, really, really mattered. Or maybe his production over the course of the regular season will be enough to get the team in prime position for a first round bye and home field throughout the playoffs, so it won't matter if he disappears in the playoffs. Or maybe he won't enjoy playing in balmy Foxboro in November, December and January. Not to mention trips to Buffalo or New York in the dead of winter.

If he is so fragile that he coasted through two dismal seasons in Oakland because he wasn't happy, what will Randy Moss do if he experiences any adversity in New England. Will Stallworth be able to play a full season and be productive? Will Kelley Washington play up to his potential? Will the fact that the Patriots did nothing to shore up a weak offensive line come back to bite this team when they have to play the Colts again this year?

Only time will tell the answers to those questions, and the other fascinating conundrum... can Teddy Bruschi and Mike Vrabel combine to form a serviceable linebacker since they have lost very nearly two steps at this point? And before any Patriots fan reminds me that Matt Light contained Shawne Merriman and was a Pro Bowl alternate last season, think back to how that line held up against the Bears and Colts last season. I think I have a better chance of smiling at the end of this season than Patriots fans do.

This draft was very compelling, and not just because of Brady Quinn's humiliating Green Room experience. It seemed to me like a group of teams got together to see who could make the most spectacular mistakes. Kansas City may very well have pulled it off, passing on Joe Staley to take a wide receiver when they desperately needed to replace Willie Roaf and Will Shields more than they needed a wide receiver. But I think Philly took the cake, trading down to the second round to take Kolb, who looked to have a big future in Canada.

Let's not leave Miami out of this, either. Going with Ted Ginn Jr. will come back to haunt them. They faced a similar situation as the Radiers did this season. Both teams made the wrong QB decision last season, Oakland passing on Leinart and Miami signing Culpepper over Drew Brees. This time out, Oakland owned that mistake and took Russell over Calvin Johnson. Miami didn't own that mistake. In fact, they made it again. Instead of taking Quinn, they took a college receiver who will have more impact returning kicks than catching passes and went with the Mormon Chris Weinke in Round Two.

We also have a tool of note segment or three before I wrap up tonight. First, to Chicago fans who are enjoying the fact that Pat Riley gave them an easy victory in their opening round series, here is an action shot of the broadcasters of the second team in Second City performing the song "Summertime Blues" at a benefit concert. I get the feeling that this song probably made things worse for any one who found themselves feeling any blues, regardless of the season.

There there is this ____________ on Myspace. I really don't know which insult out of my vast store of insults to apply here. This tool transcends words like spaz and dork and tool and fist magnet. Maybe it's because he's Australian. Maybe this is considered cool Down Under. Either way, you'll have to supply your own insult for him, I am just too baffled.

And finally, there is this loser having a go at the eating of meat. Apparently eating meat is not eco-friendly. Apparently it takes too much energy and produces too many carbons. Just for the sake of argument, I wonder how many carbons it takes to produce the synthetic protein supplements that vegetarians often take. Not to mention the fact that there would be a bunch of cows running around once people like me stop eating them. And chemical castration is ever so much more humane and natural than killing them outright and feeding them to people like me.

Orwell himself had very little esteem for vegetarians, whom he deemed "food cranks." In The Road to Wigan Pier, he wrote:

"This kind of thing is by itself sufficient to alienate plenty of decent people And their instinct is perfectly sound, for the food crank is by definition a person willing to cut himself off from human society in hopes of adding five years on to the life of his carcase; that is, a person out of touch with common humanity."

Eating meat is part of what it means to be human. My ancestors scratched and clawed and invented their way to the top of the food chain. And they didn't do it so I could eat lettuce and pop protein pills. And I wonder how much energy and how many carbons will go into caring for generations of vegetarians living to be 100 when all the meat eaters like me have kicked off from coronary thrombosis at age 60.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it's been a while since I posted an update on my blog. Rest assured, I have my reasons. My computer is in the weeds with what I assume is a virus problem. I have a theory or two to account for this problem. If you visit Mark Cuban's blog (Bear in mind, you do so at the risk of your own intellectual well being) with its continual critique of journalism such as it is, perhaps you might see where I'm coming from. If you can find the point in the latest entry, I think you win a prize.

Is it a coincidence that my computer is wracked with a virus while Mark Cuban treats a topic (Ozzie Guillen's recent verbal verbal misstep) covered in agonizing detail by a site in which Mark Cuban himself has been the subject of a vicious attack? Most likely, it is a coincidence. We here at Cincinnati Kid Industries do endorse most forms of paranoia. Particularly the delusional variety.

There is also the possibility that the Red Sox themselves are tired of me, the lone voice of truth in a sycophantic region devoted to glossing over their foibles. As was the case in the Seinfeld episode where Kramer tried to scam the Post Office into replacing Jerry's stereo, the Red Sox just might be endeavoring to drag the Cincinnati Kid from his cushy lair and force me to rely on internet cafes to expose me to the harsh, clear light of day as the monster I am. A monster so vile...

Whatever the case may be, I ought not rule out coincidence, especially as I am a great believer in Ockham's Razor. The likelihood of Mark Cuban or the Red Sox knowing who I am and what I write is pretty slim. My fame has yet to measure with my capabilities as a writer. I realize that, but I can live with it. But I am still paranoid. And yet, I am not quite prepared to rule out the possibility that I am right and you all are out to get me. For my part, I believe that paranoid and arrogant is a winning combination, although it might explain why I'm still single. I've also been told that I'm immature and afraid of commitment. It just might take that weird cult leader from eHarmony.com to get me off the market. Then again, I think I'd rather be single than go through a process like Warren Beatty went through in the Parallax View. I wouldn't want to live in a world where I might come out the other side of the looking glass a Red Sox fan, or worse.

The real subject of my post should have been up a week ago, when it was relevant. Alas, it has little to do with Scott Kazmir markedly outpitching Josh Beckett. I'm going to hold off on commenting on Curt Schilling's brilliant effort for a little while, too. Nor is the pathetic weakness of the NL East my concern on this fine evening. I must confess, that there was very little to say toward the stated purpose of this site with the recent wining streak ruining my days. And I have nothing patriotic to say to celebrate America's 230th birthday. Tonight my subject is Danny Ainge, and the inexplicable lack of criticism for his stewardship of the Celtics.

From what I saw of the NBA Draft (and I watched until Dee Brown was off the board because I thought he was vastly underrated), it seemed to me that Danny Ainge set out to make himself the worst GM in NBA history. Alas, Isaiah Thomas stole his thunder. No one will criticize Ainge when they can wonder why Isaiah picked Renaldo Balkman at 20. For those of you scoring at home, Balkman would almost assuredly have been available in free agency. After this, it mattered little whom Mr. Thomas selected with the 29th pick. For all the good this draft will do the Knicks, Isaiah might as well have drafted me.

The real issue is how poorly Ainge manipulated the draft process. In hindsight, the Cs could have ended up with Randy Foye or Brandon Roy, based on what Portland and Minnesota did with the 6th and 7th picks. For my part, I think that if Sebastian Telfair is all hype. Without that documentary film on ESPN, how many people would know him if they fell over him? And then there's Theo Ratliff. Who knew he was still alive, let alone still in the league? Read the last portion of this passage to get a realistic assessment of this trade.

If you read the article in the last link in the preceding paragraph, you'll find that Bob Ryan gave this draft an F-, and the two guys at the bottom of the piece have problems with Ainge's moves. But Peter May is willing to give Ainge the benefit of the doubt, and Shira Springer is guardedly optimistic. I hate to say this, but I agree with Bob Ryan. That is becoming a disturbing trend in this blog.

As for Rajon Rondo, according to Shira Springer, Ainge had him ranked 7th overall. Of course, Shira also pointed out that Danny Ainge has as much use for media mock drafts as he did for Antoine Walker. While the pro-Antoine anti-management bias of this site is overt, that doesn't mean that we are opposed to showing some consideration to those harboring opposing views. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to ask where Ms. Springer has been for the last several weeks.

In case she didn't notice, Antoine Walker earned a championship ring. As far as I know, not being familiar with the owners of the Pistons or the Heat, I cannot say the same for Danny Ainge as an executive. If I owned the Pistons, I would have been sure to give Danny a ring for the Rasheed Wallace trade where the Cs took spare parts (I will admit that Lindsay Hunter has been a solid player for a number of years, but how can he count when he never played for the Cs?) and Detroit took the O'Brien Trophy. As for the Heat's owner, I think he might make a nice gesture as Bob Kraft did on his visit to Russian head of state Vladimir Putin. After all, two of the players who helped win him the title had spent last season helping the Celtics to achieve their lone playoff appearance in the Danny Ainge Era.

Antoine Walker is vastly underappreciated as a basketball player. He can be arrogant. He misses a lot of shots. In many ways, he reminds me of me. People in Boston that think they know the Celtics, or think they know basketball still use his name as a punchline. To them, he's a poster boy for what's wrong with the NBA. And yet, he was a contributing member of a championship team. It is true that Danny Ainge was also a contributing member of the Celtics' dynasty of the 1980s, but what has he accomplished since then?

In the Miami Herald piece I linked above (see underappreciated), there are two paragraphs that need to be quoted:

In explaining the trade of a seven-year veteran and Celtics co-captain, Ainge reportedly told the media that Walker's leadership "stifled'' other players' leadership and had a ''grasp'' on the Celtics franchise that wasn't ``a positive thing.''

Walker pointed out, ``Look at Boston, look at me right now. Last time I checked, I don't think Boston's had that great a record since I've been gone.''

That speaks for itself. Perhaps Antoine Walker wasn't stifling the leadership of his former teammates. Perhaps there was no leadership there to be stifled. The Celtics cannot ignore the fact that Danny Ainge is a terrible GM. His hat hangs on his draft record. But the team is young, and as yet unproven. They have a great deal of potential, but the trouble with potential is that more often than not it is never reached.

And yet, there is no serious criticism of Danny Ainge the GM. Bill Simmons almost seemed like he wanted to go there in his Draft Diary. Instead, he chose a far easier target in Isaiah Thomas. To be fair, Isaiah's decisions are so bad that they demand immediate response and often overshadow the folly of those around him. I even considered inducting the Sports Guy into the Max Mercy Hall of Fame for leaving Ainge out of the bad GM summit he wrote a few months back (there is no link to this piece, Cincinnati Kid Industries cannot afford the archive subscription fee at ESPN.com). I had to rule against it, since I laugh out loud when I read his stuff. So for the immediate future, Bill is immune to the Max Mercy HOF, especially since the next inductee deserves a special ceremony.

As I said before, Shira Springer blithely said that mock drafts rank up there in Ainge World with Employee Number Eight. So I will wrap up this post with some cheerful thoughts for the last remaining Celtics fans. Danny Ainge elected to pay the money the Suns owed Brian Grant to sit home and watch TV (as he retired on June 28). For the record, that is $1.8 million to a guy who won't even play a game of basketball, let alone play for Boston and a first round pick next year (granted, it comes from Cleveland so that it won't be all that great unless King James vanishes from the material sphere) for Rajon Rondo, a point guard who prompted this reaction from Bill Simmons in his running diary:

9:40 -- Just when this draft couldn't get any crazier, my beloved Celtics just bought the 21st pick from Phoenix to take Rajon Rondo, the Kentucky guard who Chad Ford touted all summer because he mistakenly thought Rondo was foreign. Unfortunately, Rondo can't shoot. This is an understatement. As Bilas says, "Teams in the SEC didn't even guard him." Put it this way: The list of NBA teams that won an NBA title with a point guard who couldn't shoot looks like this:
1. (empty)2. (empty)3. (empty)
On the other hand, my Celtics moles told me that Rondo absolutely DESTROYED Foye and Williams in their workout a few weeks ago. So who knows?
God, I'm a sap ...
9:43 -- My dad's reaction: "So we have two new point guards, but one of them's 5-foot-11 and the other one can't shoot? And I'm supposed to be happy about this?" Tough to argue with that one. I'm not even going to bother telling him about Rondo's freakishly long fingers. Maybe tomorrow.

At least the Celtics will have a dance team for the first time in franchise history in the coming season. It's almost ironic that two teams broke tradition in a big way in the last few months. Boston, with it's arena rafters filled with championship banners and the retired numbers of past heroes now has cheerleaders. Miami, the former expansion team whose first ever field goal came from the immortal Rory Sparrow, made its first finals appearance and won its first title. But I'm wrong about Antoine Walker, and Danny Ainge is right.

And Sebastian Telfair and Rajon Rondo will be a championship back court one of these days.

In the immortal words of country music legend George Strait: "I've got some ocean front property in Arizona. From my front porch you can see the sea. I've got some ocean front property in Arizona. An' if you'll buy that I'll throw the Golden Gate in free."