Sports Redux: Another Week, Another Rock Bottom

Maybe this will be the one that gets to them. The collapses against Orlando and Cleveland didn't do it. The close loss to LA didn't do it. The having to struggle just to get by Detroit and Washington didn't do it. And the loss to New Jersey didn't do it.

If the Celtics are going to find that magical extra gear that will allow them not to completely humiliate themselves once the playoffs start, they'd better start looking now. Because we're ready to switch to baseball. The C's embarrassed themselves in front of an ever-shrinking home crowd last night, getting scraped off the floor by Memphis, a team that's young and improving, but still have no business leading by 20 points from almost the opening tip.

Since we don't even know where to start pointing fingers (no defense, no offense, no hope), we'll just throw in some quotes from guys who you'd think would be sick of saying things like this. "We're not looking down to May and April right now, right now we need to be taking care of March. That's the mindset. We've got to do it soon, and do it immediately," said Kevin Garnett. "It’s a lot of people’s first time in the building . . . performance-wise you want to do everything you can to show people enjoyment," said Ray Allen, who may not be aware that most of the crowd these days seems happy just to get on Jumbotron and have a chance at a free T-shirt. And Doc Rivers, on the "two minutes to go" announcement, said, "When they announced that, that was the only good message this entire game." Ho ho ho. Now if you can do something about the apparent fact that the team's quit on you.

One guy who still thinks the C's can find the on-switch is Rasheed Wallace. "You’ve always got to believe. I haven’t given up on this team, I’m not a quitter," said Rasheed after finally huffing and puffing his way to the other end of the court for his press conference.

The Nomar press conference/retirement went off as planned yesterday, and everyone's happy that a rocky relationship finally got a happy ending. Well, almost everyone. Dan Shaughnessy was in the cockpit of the Drive-Nomar-Out-Of-Town bandwagon in 2004, and he's not going to forgive and forget. At least Dan has the self-awareness to call himself "the fly in the punchbowl", which is very nearly what consider him.

The Bruins will try once again to right their ship tonight in Philly. At least if things don't work out, Dennis Wideman has a sweet couch to watch the playoffs on.