Sports Redux: Words Fail

Well, that was something. Coming after a shaky stretch and an embarrassing collapse against Cleveland, the Celtics delighted a home crowd by playing their signature brand of tough D and opportunistic offense, taking advantage of a historically bad Nets team and rolling off their biggest blowout of the year.

Except that none of that happened.

Coming off a shaky stretch and an embarassing collapse against Cleveland, the Celtics lost to the historically bad Nets, showing that they're old and unmotivated and aren't going to last more than two rounds in the playoffs.

So what happened? Why are the Nets 20% richer this morning than they were yesterday? The C's jumped out to a 12-2 lead; when the Nets were close at halftime, we thought, "This is bad." When the Nets took and held the lead through the third, we thought, "This is inexcusable." When a lackluster attempt at a comeback fell short at the end, we thought, ....well, we didn't think; it's hard to think and vomit at the same time. Let's go through the roles of everyone involved in this debacle.

Kevin Garnett. Yes, he's old. Yes, he's creaky and can barely move sometimes. Nevertheless, he was the key to the aborted rally in the fourth, and more importantly, the only Celtic who looked angry about the fact that they were about to be NJ's sixth victim.

Ray Allen. Whatever happened to spark him out west wore off; Ray was 3-of-11, and his missed 3-pointer that could have cut the lead from six to three in the closing minutes was more foreshadowed than the end of Independence Day.

Rasheed Wallace. When the game's flowing to him, he's fine. That happens for about a three-minute stretch every game. The rest of the time, he's defensively adequate and offensively pretty much no help at all. We're really not sure why the C's frontcourters ("bigs" in the parlance of our time) don't like playing in the frontcourt at all. Which brings us to

Brian Scalabrine. Look, we don't want to spit in the face of Celtic Nation. We know people love him for reasons that, while we're unclear about, we're sure aren't as simple as because he's a big white guy. But he played 17 minutes yesterday, and for those 17 minutes, the C's may as well have been going 4-on-5. Scal parks himself in the corner, waiting for a kickout, freeing up a defender to guard someone who might do something, and on the rare occasions someone does kick it out to him, he's got about as much chance hitting a three as you do. His two or three involvements in decent defensive plays don't make up for the total lack of offense he provides. But keep buying those T-shirts. Wow, now we know how Shaughnessy feels.

Doc Rivers. In his chat Friday, Bill Simmons said, "it's easy to forget that, if PJ Brown didn't get hot in the last quarter of Game 7, Doc Rivers would have been Jeff Van Gundy's partner these last 2 seasons on ABC and ESPN." We love Doc the person. Everyone does. But Doc the coach seems to be having a real hard time making adjustments, altering his set-in-stone sub patterns (really, Doc? There's no way Shelden Williams could crack this stellar rotation? It's not like you once buried Leon Powe on the bench for way too long...), and realizing when the guys on the floor don't want to be there.

As late as last week, some nitwits (well, us) were saying that the C's at least have a two-week run of cushy games to get their legs back under them. Last week, we were looking forward to games against the Detroits and Milwaukees and Phillys of the East. Now, we bet they can't wait to come here and take their crack against this fast-fading team.

35 days until the Sox season starts.