Bends Toward Justice

Check out what LZ Granderson says at ESPN's Daily Dime: the truth is, barring injury, you'd be hard-pressed to find a team in the East that will get past Kevin Garnett's defense in the middle in a seven-game series. Sure, Andrew Bynum will give the Lakers more beef in the middle if the Finals repeat, but unless Pau Gasol undergoes a heart transplant between now and June, Leon Powe, Glen Davis and Kendrick Perkins will once again have their way down low. "Our bench has been phenomenal [and] has been the reason we've won games," Rivers said. "They play together, they share the ball and they've done all the things as a group that makes them a good group. There is no one guy that can carry them, but when they play together it makes them a really good basketball team." Tony Allen is looking like a candidate for 6th Man of the Year. Leon Powe is no flash in the pan. The team defensive commitment is still there. I'm not worried that Paul Pierce h...

A movie tribute to the World Champion Boston Celtics, and the playoffs MVP, and, in a way, to "The Artist of the Day."

I don't know why I despise all these Euros, except that they are in Laker uniforms and playing with the great American Euro, Kobe Bryant -- I hate him, I hate him as a person, I hate him as a player, I hate that he's so good at the game, I hate the way he is the apotheosis of the superstar mentality that took the league back into a big money toilet after Bird and Magic pulled it out of the toilet it was in. Rant over. Here's video of a crying Laker who just got tooled in the biggest moment on the biggest stage of all.

Meg and I went down. What a great night it was! Very pleasant to be in Boston. Nice, traditional Boston dinner at Durgin Park. A couple beers at an Irish pub called Hennessey's while we watched the middle part of the Red Sox game. Then the atmosphere around and at the Garden was electric. Converse gave us some green shirts ("Weapresent Boston") outside. Reebok gave little signs saying, "You Got Rondo'd." Our seats were draped with white shirts ("Gotta Beat LA" in green) courtesy of Modell's. Then the game was a terrific see-saw battle. I thought the Celtics were outplaying the Lakers early in every phase except field goal percentage. Kevin Garnett should be able to torture any Laker who tries to defend him. Rondo the same. Whichever wing man Kobe doesn't cover should also be able to shoot essentially unmolested. Pierce going down was scary. Then they were getting tough without him, and his return was inspirational. It was gr...

Paul Pierce was disappointed with the Celtics fourth quarter in the fifth game. In the sixth game he personally made sure they didn't play as soft. Even one of the craziest bad calls in a playoffs rife with bad calls only made him more determined. Even the refs couldn't take that game away from him. Here's a picture of him celebrating with Celtic fans in Detroit's arena. Detroit fans were so fed up they left while the game was still in question, but a quarter to a third of all the fans were Celtic fans, and still there when this picture was taken.

Maybe I should look harder for a video that includes LeBron James's spectacular performance too. But, hell, I'm a Celtics fan; this is good enough for me. It used to be a leprechaun on the rim; now Pierce says it's Red Aurbach.

This hike was actually up North Brother, then across to find the site of a WWII-era commercial plane crash on Fort Mountain, but I'm using the Katahdin moment as an excuse to cross-link.

As mentioned in the previous post, the St. Simon's Island vacation allowed us to kick up the exercise regimen. We went out for a run that I estimate at 4 miles three times while we were down there. We went for bike rides, exercise walks and easy strolls, played catch with the lacrosse stuff and tried frisbee golf. Logging a couple of my workouts on Anthemrewards.com I finally hit Katahdin after two years of cyberhiking. Should I go back to Georgia?

Next week is school vacation. As usual we are headed south. As usual we plan to kick it up a notch on the exercise front. So look for an activity report in a couple weeks. We're already trying to run a little more, more than three miles today and it felt good since the weather was sunny and warm. On my other favorite topic here, the Celtics, I realized there's a good chance I'll be in Georgia for the first round of the playoffs so I've sold my two first-round games. I have home games two and four of the first round, and if nothing untoward happens the game four tickets won't be necessary. For the second round I have home games one and three -- those should be fun to go to.

I just read some posts at Shamrock Headband (follow the link to the right; it's worth the time). One connected to a great interview with the Celtics' new-this-year defensive assistant coach. Good Reading! http://basketballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=235

This year, if gambling were legal, I would have wagered on the tournament three different ways. One was an auction of teams at which I would have quickly been outbid on any team I really thought could win. At this point I'm hoping that West Virginia and Washington State can somehow win two more games. If I had bet on them and they went to the final four it would be an incredible payday if gambling were legal. In another pool I play just for fun, with no money changing hands, I picked eight teams, each with a different seed # and only two from each region: UCLA, Georgetown, Stanford, Washington State, Marquette, West Virginia, Arkansas, and Davidson. I got through the first round happy, happy, happy. There's been other years when I tried to pick so that my teams wouldn't be knocking each other off until late in the tourney, but they got knocked off by other teams anyhow. This year Davidson knocked off Georgetown, and Stanford put Marquette out. Oh well. Finally, you h...

And I'm slower than ever... Last Sunday I ran the Brian Boru Irish Road Rover in 27:51 (Results) Compare to last year's results here This Sunday I ran the Kerryman Pub 5K in 27:02 (Results ) Compare to last year's results here .

Bill Simmons' links this week include a piece he wrote in April '06 . Most of what he says about Sam Cassell is quoted below. I know Sam won't be there tonight, and P.J. Brown won't play, but I'm psyched through the roof for tonight's game against Detroit. Say what you want about Elgin Baylor (and I have), but the longtime Clippers GM swung the single most important trade of the summer: a sign-and-trade where Minnesota ended up with the incompetent Jaric and the Clips ended up with a No. 1 pick and Sam Cassell. It was a calculated gamble for a team that desperately needed leadership, experience, someone who wasn't afraid to take big shots, and someone who looked like E.T. Sure, Sam is a little crazy (or so they said), and he wore out his welcome a few times, but what's more reliable than a good player trying to prove himself in a contract year? In the words of Val Kilmer in "Heat," the bank was worth the risk. Sensing one final chance at a b...