Category: Sports

Yeah, Danny’s pretty serious about running this team. I think it’s kind of sneaking up on us. During the glory years of the 80s, Danny was clearly the least talented starter. Mind you, on a team with Larry Bird, Robert Parish, Kevin McHale, and Dennis Johnson that leaves plenty of room to be pretty damned good — and he was — but he was still the least talented starter and in a lot of ways he was the kid on the team. I think that Boston fans, on occasion, have trouble thinking of Danny as a hard-nosed GM. Look at me; I’m still calling him Danny. Everyone does.

But you know, he’s kinda creeping up on us. Today he pointed out that no Celtic is untouchable. If there’s a good enough trade involving Pierce, he’ll take it. Good for him. And even more interesting:

Ainge said he will not balk at taking a step back from the Celts’ current standing or going with very young (read: no immediate impact) talent to achieve the greater good down the line.

“Sure, if I think it’s worth the risk, I’m patient enough,” he said, adding, “Are you patient enough? Are the Boston fans patient enough? How patient is Jim O’Brien? Those are all questions you have to weigh.”

The money quote from that excerpt is “How patient is Jim O’Brien?” O’Brien hasn’t shown a lot of signs of patience with young players, and many (including myself) would argue that it’s getting to be a serious flaw. There was clearly a gulf between O’Brien and Chris Wallace; Wallace was drafting players that O’Brien didn’t really want to play. Part of that was O’Brien’s tendency to expect players to produce from day one. At this point, I think it’s clear that Ainge isn’t going to put up with that, and since Ainge is O’Brien’s boss he won’t have to put up with it.

Good times.

Rick Carlisle, coach of the Detroit Pistons told ESPN he was fired yesterday. The Pistons are denying it but there’s a press conference Monday so I’m kind of guessing it’s true. In my opinion, this is an incredibly foolish move. Carlisle won Coach of the Year last year and deserved it. The Pistons have the #2 draft pick this year, and Carlisle should have gotten a chance to work with whoever they pick. Sure, they got swept by the Nets in the playoffs this year and were somewhat embarassed by the Celtics last year, but the Celtics and the Nets are currently the scariest teams in the Eastern Conference. (Yes, I mean it; the Nets own the Celtics but it’d be silly to ignore what the Celtics have done to Indiana, Detroit, and Philly in the playoffs the last couple of years.)

The thing that really kills me, though, is that Jim O’Brien just signed a two year contract extension, so he’ll be coaching the Celtics through 2006. I think he’s a good coach, and he has the trust of his players, but his weakness is certainly offense — which is Carlisle’s strength. In fact, when Larry Bird was coaching Indiana, Carlisle was the offensive coach and Dick Harter was the defensive coach, a combination which came pretty close to a title. And hey! Dick Harter is currently the defensive coach of the Celtics.

What’s more, Carlisle was a teammate of Danny Ainge, the current Celtics GM. They got along; there’s a good chance that Ainge could have tempted Carlisle over to the Celtics. So speculation about what Carlisle might have done as Celtics coach is not as futile as (say) speculating on the chances that Jason Kidd might want to play for them for the veteran minimum.

Alas, they resigned O’Brien, which struck me as a good move at the time. How could anyone have known the Pistons would be stupid enough to fire Carlisle? Now he’ll probably wind up with Indiana as soon as the Pacers get around to sacking Isaiah.

Yao Ming is suing Coca-Cola China. One might well assume that he’s out for big money, etc., etc. One would be wrong; he’s suing for 1 yuan, which is about 12 cents, for “spiritual and economic losses.” I.e., he feels he has to sue to protect his rights but he’s not interested in punishing Coca-Cola.

Gotta admire that, even if it’s a bit unAmerican.

I finally got around to breaking down the IOC members by coalition/non-coalition. Of the main Committee, 79 members come from non-coalition countries, not counting Mohamad Hasan from Indonesia, because he’s been suspended. Hm, make that 74 — there are five Swiss members and we’ll count them as neutral. 45 come from coalition countries, counting Taiwan as a coalition country even though the US didn’t list ‘em as part of the coalition. I kind of suspect that had more to do with mainland China than anything else.

The President of the IOC, Jacques Rogge, is from Belgium — non-coalition. Of the four Vice Presidents, two are from coalition countries and two are not. The other ten members of the Executive Board are mostly non-coalition: 6 non-coalition, 3 coalition, and 1 Swiss.

Conclusion: in the unlikely event that all the members agree with the politics of their countries, and assuming people still care a lot about this when the final selection is made, New York, London, and Madrid are not gonna be getting the Olympics. Paris is the probable victor, since Moscow is rather a troubled city. (This doesn’t take into account any additional negative effect from the USOC corruption issue.)

This kind of sucks as a possibility. New York could really use the estimated $11.3 billion, after all.

The 2012 Olympics has turned into quite the little microcosm of the political split over the war on Iraq. Paris just tossed its hat into the ring. The other cities bidding are New York, London, Leipzig, Madrid, and Moscow. The choice isn’t made until July of 2005, so plenty can change between now and then, but it’s still a significant group of cities.

Oh, OK. Cuba is bidding too.

I can’t see New York winning, not so much because of the political issues but because of the corruption scandals wracking the USOC. Leipzig is really too small. Cuba isn’t seriously likely. The other four… well, the IOC always says there’s no political aspect to the selection, but I still think it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out.

It really is different out here. Not unique, I’m sure, but different.

I didn’t realize until recently how much I’d missed being a sports fan in New England. Recently? Until I settled down in Fenway Park the other day and watched Wakefield handcuff the Royals. Yeah, I think that was just about exactly the time.

The thing was, the day after the game I could talk about it with just about any native New Englander at work. The Canadians, not so much, but the people who grew up here knew what had happened and who had won and why. I can strike up a conversation about why Vin Baker is the worst thing that ever happened to the Celtics with my insurance agent. We know this crap. We, as a region, care about it.

And it’s not about success. We’re not LA. We love our crappy teams more than we love our successes. Joe Thornton gets a free ride when he gets arrested because he plays well for a really bad team. The failure of the Red Sox is mythology, and for over eight decades we have come back ready to believe once again. The Patriots, on the other hand, made the error of winning a Super Bowl. That’s a recipe for controversy.

I think we just love stories about ordinary people working hard. You win the hearts of Boston fans by being ordinary. Bird, Nomah, Williams, Borque. We didn’t love the aloof Russell, although we should have. See how it goes?

Now it’s spring. The Bruins and Celtics just made their exits from the playoffs, while the Red Sox are playing strongly enough so that we can lie to ourselves a little while longer. In a few months, our hearts will be broken on the baseball diamond and we’ll be scarred from a summer of bad personnel changes on the hardwood. Fall is the brutal months of football, when almost every game is critical. Then it’ll be spring again.

Gotta love Boston.

At one point in his ill-fated reign over the Celtics, Rick Pitino told the team that Larry Bird wasn’t going to “come walking through that door.” He was right. But it looks like Danny Ainge is. This is pretty awesome news. It relieves the team of the burden of Chris Wallace, who has made some good moves but has also made some moves so incredibly boneheaded that I can only say “Wow, what a boneheaded move.” It provides a connection to the most recent Celtics dynasty. And Ainge has a good basketball mind.

He says he’ll keep O’Brien as coach. He’d say that anyways, since the guy has another year on his contract and they just extended the assistant coach contracts to make O’Brien’s. Figure that the next year will be an audition year for the coaching staff; the bar won’t be impossibly high but O’Brien will have to work for a new contract. Not that he hasn’t been working so far, of course.

The big question in my mind is whether Ainge and O’Brien will get along better than O’Brien and Wallace have been. Wallace lost O’Brien’s confidence when he traded for Baker. The GM and coach need to be in sync.

While I think this change will be good for baseball, I have to wonder if the people criticizing the mid-season decision to stretch the NBA first round to 7 games will criticize baseball for doing the same thing. (Winner of the All-Star Game now gets home field advantage in the World Series.)

Parenthetically, I approve of it because strength of schedule is not something controlled by the World Series teams. For example, right now, three of the teams with the four best records are in the AL. Should the National League World Series team suffer because there’s more parity? I don’t think so. The Giants (say) can’t control who wins the All-Star Game, but they can’t control everyone in the AL falling over for the Yankees either.

This would be an even better change for the NBA, given the number of stars who have implied that they’d just as soon miss the All-Star game and given the number of teams that make the playoffs. That latter fact means teams like the Lakers can laze through the first chunk of the season and still feel good about their chances. Make the change, and suddenly Shaq has a really good reason to show up to the All-Star game. Well, or he would if the East could field a credible contender.

I got unexpected gift tickets to the Red Sox game tonight. Happy times! Red Sox win, despite an in the park home run by the evil KC Royals. It turns out that if your group decides “Hey, let’s pick up beers for everyone” whenever anyone goes to the bathroom, you wind up with a lot of beer. It’s kind of a positive feedback cycle.

“We expected to see a lot of meat slapping here tonight.”

I’d like to introduce the above quote as the most convincing evidence yet that the first round of the NBA playoffs should not have gone to seven games. The announcers are starting to get just a little punchy.