The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. Again.
The Good
-------------------------------------
1) Now that that's settled, let's get back to killing each other.
-- If there's one thing that religious nuts can agree on, it's that gays and any rights they desire are an abomination before God/Allah. (Ha ha...we wrote "bom")
-----------------------------------
2) Dan Shaughnessy's article in today's Globe.
-- Mostly for calling out a columnist at the nation's paper of record who wrote an attempted hatchet job on Red Auerbach fifteen years or so ago called "The Selling of the Green", and apparently kept his old notes from the prepwork on that "book". Here are some excerpts from a piece Araton wrote on Red's recent passing, and a few comments:
"Color blindness without a cause is also righteous, but we have to point out that the 1980s happened, too. Auerbach’s team fell from its progressive perch, from a reputation in the 1960s as the black team in a white sport to being considered by many as the white team in a black sport. A remarkable transformation, and in true Auerbachian fashion, executed in the interests of doing whatever it took." -- During the 80's the Celtics won three titles, second to the Fakers five. They were in the Finals a few other times. If Araton had a memory, he would have also ripped the C's for the team that took that floor back in the 70's, which featured Havlicek, Cowens, Westphal for a few years, Don Nelson, Steve Kuberski, Kevin Stacom. That group, along with "tokens" Silas, Scott, and Jo Jo White won two titles.
"An article Wednesday in The Boston Globe questioned whether Auerbach might have achieved anything close to the Celtics’ 11 Russell-era championships between 1956 and 1969 in the modern N.B.A., given the fundamental changes in the operation of the sport. Highly improbable in any rational judgment, but we do know how an Auerbach-run franchise was repositioned to successfully compete in an emerging high-stakes market, all the way to a $48.1 million public stock sale in 1986." -- Is this guy serious? Today, Mark Cuban's team jet costs about that much. The team wanted and or needed some cash, and folks turned it over willingly. Nothing wrong with that. Looking back on the IPO, the Celtics braintrust was visionary. And should have held out for more. Also, holding it against Red for not replicating what he accomplished in a league that fielded less than ten teams decades ago is just about the most meaningless statement we can imagine. Boy, if the South just had a few thousand AK-47's they would have won the Civil War, too (Someone actually wrote a book on that premise a while back). Really, what's the point? Red did what he did in a different era. And Phil Jackson has also won nine titles. They're both great coaches, all timers. But Apartment404 happens to be strategically located in New England. So we know that Phil Jackson sucks ass.
"Free agency balanced the negotiating table in the 1970s, then leveled the playing field. The Celtics, a bad draw in Boston during their heyday, no longer had the luxury of depositing only championships in the bank." -- Titles in 74, 76, 81, 84, and 86.
"'No matter what they’d say for the record, it was always assumed there had to be a certain amount of whites on the team,' Jo Jo White, a 1970s mainstay, said in the book. 'You’d start with the blacks you knew would make it and figure everyone else would be white.' -- Now our memory may be wrong, but the staff of Apartment404 is pretty fucking certain this is an old quote from when Jo Jo White was pissed that Red didn't think he could be a major contributor anymore in the late 70's. Jo Jo went to Golden State, played little, and retired, though we seem to recall him talking about coming back a la Cowens a year or two later, drawing no interest. How do we know that White and the C's have forgiven and made up? Because the man sits behind the goddamn bench just about every home game and works for the C's. That's how. Passionate people say things they regret. Idiot writers hold on to these quotes and wield them like knives decades later.
"The blacker the N.B.A. became in the 1980s, the whiter the Celtics became, from Larry Bird on down to the end of the bench." -- Terry Duerod? Micheal Young? Darren Daye? Sam Vincent? Carlos Clark? A.C. freaking Earl, from the 90's?
==========================
The Bad
-------------------------------------
1) Not Yahoo!, too.
-- This article was originally titled "Stocks seen off sharply on Democratic win" and posted Wednesday morning. Since the markets did fairly well (Drats!), Yahoo! wisely chose to change the headline as the text was updated. God help us all if we return to the financial ruin that was the Clinton Era.
-------------------------------------
2) We all went to public school, so we wouldn't know about "values" and "morals".
This from Deadspin and the San Jose paper: After reading the post about the ref who screwed up the game-deciding call, and the aftermath, we wonder how could anyone even ask if there is a decision to be made? The dude who heads the school that benefitted from the mistaken call....this guy is qualified to be in charge of anything?
===========================
The Ugly
-------------------------------------
1) Who's going to be the next General Manager of the Celtics? Does it fucking matter?
-- Because as long as Wyc Y. Grousbeck and his group are running that club there will be no 60 win seasons, no more retired numbers save Paul Pierce's, and certainly no new banners. Danny Ainge has played "52 Card Pickup" for several years now, and the resulting roster is a complete mess. Last night Boston beat a young Charlotte BobJohnsonCats team on Pierce's feed to West. But if you think that anyone in the NBA would trade the C's roster even up, including PP, for Charlotte's, then you're nuts. Bernie Bickerstaff has chosen to go solely with youth. No grizzled, wiley vets like......like......Scalabrine or Candy Man to teach the youngsters to......to.....well, whatever it is they could possibly teach the young guys. Bickerstaff has youth at each position that we can see being a big factor on a 50+ win team in the league, and soon.
On the C's, you have PP, of course. Then who else? No one. Telfair is an over-hyped disaster. No wonder Portland got rid of him: he is now possibly the fourth best point guard in Boston (Rondo, West, Gomes [point forward], then Bassy). The guy's defense is, as Cooz has said several times in the young season, "unacceptable". That would be almost OK is he got it done at the other end. But he can't shoot consistently, can't seem to drive and dish, and fiddles and diddles the first 12 seconds off the shot clock every single time downcourt.
Wally is now the Rob Deer of the NBA. Reason? If there are eight or so major basketball skills (shoot open jumper, score points, pass, pick for teammates, defend, run the court, rebound, and block shots) he has exactly one: shooting the open jumper. That's it, just as Deer could only hit homers. Poor Kevin Garnett. He's had four guys who came to Minnesota heavily hyped: Starbury, Wally, Sam Cassell, and now Randy Foye. Starbury wanted out after a couple of extremely promising seasons up there because he is, as his posse always tell the media, "the best point guard in the world.", and would never get the media attention that playing second fiddle to KG allowed. So he forced a trade and has become kind of a league joke (in NJ and Phoenix most especially). Wally thought he should have been the number one pick when he came out of college. Turns out he probably should have been a late lottery pick at best. One All Star Game and not much in the W's department. Cassell has two rings, so whatever else you want to say remember that. And he has won everywhere he's played after the Houston title years. Sam is the only one of those three to survive the KG experience unscathed, as he still can play and still wins. Not that it's Garnett's fault. But when you get signed to the biggest contract in league history, in the early stages of the salary cap era as KG did a while back, then you have a rather large load to carry .
Back to Boston's roster. Perkins just doesn't play smart. West has a bad back. Allen has the bum knee. Let's hope that Rivers gives out plenty of minutes to Green, Big Al upon his return, and Rondo. Soon.
Did young Rajon say something obnoxious in practice this week? Is that why he sat last night? We can see that. Otherwise, 30+ minutes of Bassy is inexcusable.
---------------------------------------
2) Hoping it all goes away.
-- The headline here is inflammatory, and may be jumping the gun. But how much more bad news can this country take?
-------------------------------------
1) Now that that's settled, let's get back to killing each other.
-- If there's one thing that religious nuts can agree on, it's that gays and any rights they desire are an abomination before God/Allah. (Ha ha...we wrote "bom")
-----------------------------------
2) Dan Shaughnessy's article in today's Globe.
-- Mostly for calling out a columnist at the nation's paper of record who wrote an attempted hatchet job on Red Auerbach fifteen years or so ago called "The Selling of the Green", and apparently kept his old notes from the prepwork on that "book". Here are some excerpts from a piece Araton wrote on Red's recent passing, and a few comments:
"Color blindness without a cause is also righteous, but we have to point out that the 1980s happened, too. Auerbach’s team fell from its progressive perch, from a reputation in the 1960s as the black team in a white sport to being considered by many as the white team in a black sport. A remarkable transformation, and in true Auerbachian fashion, executed in the interests of doing whatever it took." -- During the 80's the Celtics won three titles, second to the Fakers five. They were in the Finals a few other times. If Araton had a memory, he would have also ripped the C's for the team that took that floor back in the 70's, which featured Havlicek, Cowens, Westphal for a few years, Don Nelson, Steve Kuberski, Kevin Stacom. That group, along with "tokens" Silas, Scott, and Jo Jo White won two titles.
"An article Wednesday in The Boston Globe questioned whether Auerbach might have achieved anything close to the Celtics’ 11 Russell-era championships between 1956 and 1969 in the modern N.B.A., given the fundamental changes in the operation of the sport. Highly improbable in any rational judgment, but we do know how an Auerbach-run franchise was repositioned to successfully compete in an emerging high-stakes market, all the way to a $48.1 million public stock sale in 1986." -- Is this guy serious? Today, Mark Cuban's team jet costs about that much. The team wanted and or needed some cash, and folks turned it over willingly. Nothing wrong with that. Looking back on the IPO, the Celtics braintrust was visionary. And should have held out for more. Also, holding it against Red for not replicating what he accomplished in a league that fielded less than ten teams decades ago is just about the most meaningless statement we can imagine. Boy, if the South just had a few thousand AK-47's they would have won the Civil War, too (Someone actually wrote a book on that premise a while back). Really, what's the point? Red did what he did in a different era. And Phil Jackson has also won nine titles. They're both great coaches, all timers. But Apartment404 happens to be strategically located in New England. So we know that Phil Jackson sucks ass.
"Free agency balanced the negotiating table in the 1970s, then leveled the playing field. The Celtics, a bad draw in Boston during their heyday, no longer had the luxury of depositing only championships in the bank." -- Titles in 74, 76, 81, 84, and 86.
"'No matter what they’d say for the record, it was always assumed there had to be a certain amount of whites on the team,' Jo Jo White, a 1970s mainstay, said in the book. 'You’d start with the blacks you knew would make it and figure everyone else would be white.' -- Now our memory may be wrong, but the staff of Apartment404 is pretty fucking certain this is an old quote from when Jo Jo White was pissed that Red didn't think he could be a major contributor anymore in the late 70's. Jo Jo went to Golden State, played little, and retired, though we seem to recall him talking about coming back a la Cowens a year or two later, drawing no interest. How do we know that White and the C's have forgiven and made up? Because the man sits behind the goddamn bench just about every home game and works for the C's. That's how. Passionate people say things they regret. Idiot writers hold on to these quotes and wield them like knives decades later.
"The blacker the N.B.A. became in the 1980s, the whiter the Celtics became, from Larry Bird on down to the end of the bench." -- Terry Duerod? Micheal Young? Darren Daye? Sam Vincent? Carlos Clark? A.C. freaking Earl, from the 90's?
==========================
The Bad
-------------------------------------
1) Not Yahoo!, too.
-- This article was originally titled "Stocks seen off sharply on Democratic win" and posted Wednesday morning. Since the markets did fairly well (Drats!), Yahoo! wisely chose to change the headline as the text was updated. God help us all if we return to the financial ruin that was the Clinton Era.
-------------------------------------
2) We all went to public school, so we wouldn't know about "values" and "morals".
This from Deadspin and the San Jose paper: After reading the post about the ref who screwed up the game-deciding call, and the aftermath, we wonder how could anyone even ask if there is a decision to be made? The dude who heads the school that benefitted from the mistaken call....this guy is qualified to be in charge of anything?
===========================
The Ugly
-------------------------------------
1) Who's going to be the next General Manager of the Celtics? Does it fucking matter?
-- Because as long as Wyc Y. Grousbeck and his group are running that club there will be no 60 win seasons, no more retired numbers save Paul Pierce's, and certainly no new banners. Danny Ainge has played "52 Card Pickup" for several years now, and the resulting roster is a complete mess. Last night Boston beat a young Charlotte BobJohnsonCats team on Pierce's feed to West. But if you think that anyone in the NBA would trade the C's roster even up, including PP, for Charlotte's, then you're nuts. Bernie Bickerstaff has chosen to go solely with youth. No grizzled, wiley vets like......like......Scalabrine or Candy Man to teach the youngsters to......to.....well, whatever it is they could possibly teach the young guys. Bickerstaff has youth at each position that we can see being a big factor on a 50+ win team in the league, and soon.
On the C's, you have PP, of course. Then who else? No one. Telfair is an over-hyped disaster. No wonder Portland got rid of him: he is now possibly the fourth best point guard in Boston (Rondo, West, Gomes [point forward], then Bassy). The guy's defense is, as Cooz has said several times in the young season, "unacceptable". That would be almost OK is he got it done at the other end. But he can't shoot consistently, can't seem to drive and dish, and fiddles and diddles the first 12 seconds off the shot clock every single time downcourt.
Wally is now the Rob Deer of the NBA. Reason? If there are eight or so major basketball skills (shoot open jumper, score points, pass, pick for teammates, defend, run the court, rebound, and block shots) he has exactly one: shooting the open jumper. That's it, just as Deer could only hit homers. Poor Kevin Garnett. He's had four guys who came to Minnesota heavily hyped: Starbury, Wally, Sam Cassell, and now Randy Foye. Starbury wanted out after a couple of extremely promising seasons up there because he is, as his posse always tell the media, "the best point guard in the world.", and would never get the media attention that playing second fiddle to KG allowed. So he forced a trade and has become kind of a league joke (in NJ and Phoenix most especially). Wally thought he should have been the number one pick when he came out of college. Turns out he probably should have been a late lottery pick at best. One All Star Game and not much in the W's department. Cassell has two rings, so whatever else you want to say remember that. And he has won everywhere he's played after the Houston title years. Sam is the only one of those three to survive the KG experience unscathed, as he still can play and still wins. Not that it's Garnett's fault. But when you get signed to the biggest contract in league history, in the early stages of the salary cap era as KG did a while back, then you have a rather large load to carry .
Back to Boston's roster. Perkins just doesn't play smart. West has a bad back. Allen has the bum knee. Let's hope that Rivers gives out plenty of minutes to Green, Big Al upon his return, and Rondo. Soon.
Did young Rajon say something obnoxious in practice this week? Is that why he sat last night? We can see that. Otherwise, 30+ minutes of Bassy is inexcusable.
---------------------------------------
2) Hoping it all goes away.
-- The headline here is inflammatory, and may be jumping the gun. But how much more bad news can this country take?
posted by joe sweeney at 2:44 PM
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