By Blaidd Drwg

There is an article on ESPN about Danny Ainge being willing to break up the Celtics Big 3 of Garnett, Allen and Pierce. The Celtics are an old team, more than half of their roster is 29 or older and 4 of their 5 starters are over the age of 33. That is really not a recipe for success in the NBA. Is it any real wonder that the Celtics have started 5-8? What I really found interesting is a comment Ainge made in the article:

Ainge saw the Celtics pass up deals when Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish were aging, and the result was a steady deterioration that saw Boston not make the playoffs or advance beyond the first round from the 1992-93 to 2000-01 seasons.

“First of all, it’s a different era,” Ainge told The Globe. “I sat with Red (Auerbach) during a Christmas party (in the 1990s). Red was talking to Larry, Kevin, and myself and there was a lot of trade discussion at the time, and Red actually shared some of the trade discussions. And I told Red, what are you doing? Why are you waiting?

“He had a chance to trade Larry (to Indiana) for Chuck Person and Herb Williams and (Steve) Stipanovich and he had a chance to trade Kevin (to Dallas) for Detlef Schrempf and Sam Perkins. I was like, ‘Are you kidding?’ I mean, I feel that way now. If I were presented with those kind of deals for our aging veterans, it’s a done deal to continue the success.”

Maybe it is just me, but it seems that this conversation took place after Bird, Parrish and McHale were retired. If that is the case, why the heck would you have said “What are you doing? Why are you waiting?” If this conversation took place in the 1990’s, those deals were long since past being able to be made. So either the conversation took place in the 1980’s, which would be odd, or Ainge didn’t think about the tense of his quote and should have used the past tense. My best guess is that this offer came around 1988-1989, which, ironically, would have been the year the Celtics traded Ainge to the Kings with Brad Lohaus for Ed Pinckney and Joe Kleine (not one of the better deals for the Celtics).

Would these deals have benefited the Celtics, most likely. The Celtics would have come out way ahead on the McHale deal. The problem is much more than just swapping players. I lived in Boston for 12 years. Larry Bird is pretty much as close to God as you can get in Boston after Ted Williams. I remember going to Celtics games well after Bird retired and he would get a standing ovation from the crowd, at half time, every time he walked across the floor to the tunnel. Red may have been the architect of the greatest franchise in history and not even he would be dumb enough to be known as the guy who traded Larry Bird. Bird was going to be a Celtic player as long as he wanted to be, as long as Red had any say in the matter.

I think what really did the Celtics in was poor drafting and a change in the way the game was played. Right around 1990, the NBA went from being a sport about teamwork to a game dominated by inside post players. Let’s look at the Celtics 1st Round picks from 1988 – 1995.

1988 – Brian Shaw (24th Overall)
1989 – Michael Smith (13th Overall)
1990 – Dee Brown (19th Overall)
1991 – Rick Fox (24th Overall)
1992 – Jon Barry (21st Overall)
1993 – Acie Earl (19th Overall)
1994 – Eric Montross (9th Overall)
1995 – Eric Williams (14th Overall)

Only one of those players, Dee Brown, averaged better than 10 Points per Game in his career. Granted, they were generally drafting in the bottom half of the first round, but the effectively drafted a bunch of role players and never supplemented that with a solid free agent signing. There were 2 truly awful picks in that group, solely on where they drafted.

In 1989, which is one of the deepest drafts in NBA history, the Celtics got 3 lousy seasons of Michael Smith and passed up the following players, all of whom were drafted in the first round after Smith: Tim Hardaway, Dana Barros, Shawn Kemp, BJ Armstrong and Vlade Divac (although the Celtics did redeem themselves a bit by taking Dino Radja in the second round).

In 1994, they completely blew it by taking the “great white hope”, a slow footed center from UNC, Eric Montross. Granted, there wasn’t a huge amount of talent at the back end of the draft, but honestly, it wasn’t hard to see that Montross wasn’t going to be the force in the middle the Celtics needed him to be. The poor drafting was supplemented by poor roster management. Here is the roster the Celtics fielded the year after Bird retired:

No. Player   Pos Ht Wt Birth Date Exp College
4  Alaa Abdelnaby   F-C 6-10 240 June 24, 1968 3 Duke University
7 Dee Brown G 6-1 160 November 29, 1968 3 Jacksonville University
12 Chris Corchiani G 6-0 185 March 28, 1968 2 North Carolina State University
20 Sherman Douglas G 6-0 180 September 15, 1966 4 Syracuse University
55 Acie Earl F-C 6-10 240 June 23, 1970 R University of Iowa
44 Rick Fox F-G 6-7 230 July 24, 1969 2 University of North Carolina
34 Kevin Gamble F-G 6-5 210 November 13, 1965 6 University of Iowa
43 Tony Harris G 6-3 190 May 13, 1967 1 University of New Orleans
30 Todd Lichti G-F 6-4 205 January 8, 1967 4 Stanford University
31 Xavier McDaniel F 6-7 205 June 4, 1963 8 Wichita State University
27 Jimmy Oliver G-F 6-5 205 July 12, 1969 1 Purdue University
00 Robert Parish C 7-0 230 August 30, 1953 17 Centenary College of Louisiana
54 Ed Pinckney F 6-9 195 March 27, 1963 8 Villanova University
40 Dino Radja F-C 6-11 225 April 24, 1967 R
50 Matt Wenstrom C 7-1 250 November 4, 1970 R University of North Carolina

Not exactly striking fear into the hearts of opponents, huh?

A few years ago, when Ainge started building the current Celtics roster, I told a friend of mine they probably were built for a 3-4 year run before the team got too old (and I had a very low opinion of Ainge as a GM and his ability to build a team with home grown talent). This is year 5 of that Celtics run. The Celtics have gotten old and have gotten little out of their last 5 drafts. Unfortunately, I believe the Celtics are headed for yet another down period in their storied franchise history.

by A.J. Coltrane

Kobe scored 48 the last Tuesday. The ESPN highlight package for the game opened with Kobe with the ball at the left of the free-throw line, then taking a big dribble and a big pivot step. He then took five more steps, doing a series of small shuffles away from his defender until he had enough space to get up a shot. I know it was seven steps because as I was watching the highlight I said to myself: “That’s a lot of steps!” , then I slowed it down and counted. During Kobe’s dance his defender was frozen in place — if his defender had moved forward to close the gap Kobe would have simply jumped into him and drawn a shooting foul.

I *was* going to post a link to the highlight package, but ESPN removed it from circulation — as far as I can tell they only showed it the one time, then replaced it with a different series of highlights. It’s a conspiracy! I’m guessing some phone calls were involved.

Here’s good read about Kobe Bryant on Grantland.

2nd Thought: Before the Mavericks (at) Lakers game last night the production crew scanned the crowd, showing all the “celebrities”. The celebrities included the usuals like Nicholson, Adam Sandler, and Chris Tucker. They also showed Dyan Cannon. I’m wondering if including Dyan Cannon in the celebrity montage is just a courtesy at this point — when was the last time she was actually famous? And has anyone under the age of 40 ever heard of her?

I tried a Google search for a picture of Cannon. The first autofill was “Diane Cannon Plastic Surgery”.

 Yep.

Bonus trivia: Did you know Cannon was married to Cary Grant? If Grant were still alive, tomorrow he’d be 108 years old.

Happy Birthday Cary Grant – you handsome man!