Sports Redux: Celtics Talk A Lot, Back It Up

Rasheed Wallace collected another technical, and will be donating a lot of money very soon, which we'll talk about in a second. Rajon Rondo (as seen here) had a lot on his mind, and so did Pierce, and KG, and Doc, and everyone else in Green. And the refs heard it all, and somehow only T'd up Rasheed. We don't quite understand it, either. But when it mattered most, the C's let their defense and clutch shooting do the talking, and held on after some wild moments to beat Miami, 92-85, to start their road trip.

The offense was very nicely balanced; all five starters were in double figures, with KG's 24 leading the way. Rondo and Kendrick Perkins both notched double-doubles in their respective areas, and Ray Allen scored 11 even while part of his mind was elsewhere, since his 2-year-old son had just gotten out of the hospital after some diabetes-related misery. Defensively, the C's held the Heat to just over 40%, kept them from scoring a basket for the final 4 1/2 minutes, and somehow had the refs on their side enough that they swallowed their whistles a couple times when Dwyane Wade made his patented "free throw or bust" charges into the lane. Credit Ray with some great defense there.

And credit Rasheed with speaking his mind; he'll need all the friends he can get, since he was fined $30K by the league for his monologue about flopping in the NBA. He's also keeping the UN busy by calling out foreign players (specifically, in this case, Toronto's Hedo Turkoglu): "Let The Golden Child do that or one of the NBA Without Borders kids do that and it’s all fine and dandy." We'd suggest Sheed take the Dave Cowens approach to dealing with floppers, but that's just us, because it's not our money.

The Red Sox offseason rumor mill keeps churning; with Alex Gonzalez gone to Toronto (a move which ticked off Bob Ryan), they're circling Jays shortstop Marco Scutaro as a replacement, but the name Hanley Ramirez is never far away from the conversation, nor is his .917 OPS over the last three seasons.

REMINDER: Bostonist is going to live-blog the Pats/Saints game tonight. We'll go live a few minutes before the game starts, so you have plenty of time to settle in in front of the screen with your chips and beverage of choice. Or jambalaya, if you're feeling especially authentic.