Sports Redux: Thanks

What were Boston sports fans thankful for yesterday?

We were thankful for the Celtics escaping the Garden with a win on Wednesday against an athletic, young, unpredictable Golden State team - the only kind of team that seems to have success against the C's lately. We're thankful that Rajon Rondo somehow just keeps getting better and better.

We're thankful that the Bruins' loss in Buffalo on Wednesday seems like just a hiccup in a great season, instead of a telling sign of weakness. We're thankful that we don't have to ride back from Buffalo with Marc Savard's iPod as our only companion.

We're thankful that the Bull Gang at the Garden is dedicated and professional, since they have to convert the barn from this afternoon's Bruins/Islanders game to tonight's Celtics/Sixers tilt in just a couple of hours. We're thankful that there are any number of restaurants open today in the North Station area to serve a quick dinner to anyone lucky enough to be going to both ends of the doubleheader.

We're thankful that Bill Belichick knows what he's doing, even if sometimes people wonder. Not many teams can lose an All-World All-Everything QB, bring in the backup (who almost lost his job in the preseason) and stick around in the playoff hunt while the backup gets better and better. And we're thankful that the nitwits calling talk radio and musing that Tom Brady might now be expendable never get within 15 miles of anybody making an actual decision.

And we're thankful that we didn't have to sit through three blowouts in the NFL yesterday, though we do admit to tuning in for a while and watching, helplessly, as the trainwreck that is the 2008 Detroit Lions splattered all over the screen. And speaking of Detroit, we're kind of thankful that Allen Iverson got fined for missing practice, ensuring that some old jokes will never grow stale.