So the Celtics couldn’t finish off what would have been the perfect road trip, but it was a solid on nonetheless. The four game swing included the best win of the season Monday night in San Antonio, a thrashing of the red hot Rockets, and a close victory in Dallas. Hopefully the loss in the final matchup against the Hornets will teach the team to be more careful with the ball as I don’t remember the C’s turning the ball over that many times since last season.

The trip contained some pretty poor officiating in all four games, which is a continuing trend for the NBA. Basketball, more than any other sport, has consistently controversial calls. The nature of the fouls makes them far more subjective than football or baseball, and the sheer number of fouls per game means more errors are made. Turning the ball over so frequently narrows the margin for error, and the Celtics need to do a better job of ensuring that referees can’t decide the game.

I would also like to state my concern for the Pacman Jones rumors that have been floating about. Supposedly the Patriots are one of 3 teams, including the Lions and Cowboys, who have interest in the troubled cornerback. Now I trust that Bill Belichick and Scott Pioli will not acquire Pacman unless they believe that he can turn his life around, but he has a pattern of bad behavior far more concerning than that of Randy Moss and Corey Dillon, the other two players who have played nice once wearing the flying Elvis on their helmets. In the cases of the latter, they both had attitude problems on losing teams, which was appeased by the Patriots and their winning ways. Pacman on the other hand has shown a pattern of detrimental and downright dangerous off-field behavior, and the inability to learn from his mistakes. I for one have a hard time believing that coming to New England will make much of a difference.

Tomorrow night the Celtics will complete one of the greatest road trips in memory, win or lose, but more on that some other time. For now, I must take issue with Patrick’s fantasy baseball expoundings.

For starters, I would like to clarify that I don’t take issue with any of his draft picks. Certainly in the last few rounds of the draft it is acceptable to take rookies who may or may not perform. In the case of Oliver Perez, I wish I had been able to snare him, and the reason why is that he has a history of dominance. He also has a history of miserable failure, but that’s a risk you can take by selecting him late in the draft.

I tend to be more cautious with rookies, especially guys who have never played in the majors. I have no problem at all drafting players like Loney, Butler and Theriot, who have all shown what they can do in the bigs. I do take issue, however, with people who get too excited about rookies that haven’t shown anything and draft them ridiculously high. A good example of this is Alex Gordon, who was supposedly a wunderkind from Kansas City last year and got drafted in the middle rounds in one of my leagues. One day he may be great, but last year’s performance was not worth that kind of investment. History tells us that it rarely is; hardly any rookie comes in to dominate, especially one with absolutely not major league experience. One could point to certain counter-examples, such as Ryan Braun, but the point is it is impossible to tell (case in point, Braun went largely undrafted last season and turned out being a great waiver pickup). There are far more examples of guys like Perez who have shown that they can dominate and returning to form than there are of phenomenal rookies.

You will do well in our league Patrick, because you were smart and saved your rookie picks to the end. There are certain other teams in the league, who I will spare the embarrassment of mentioning, who fell in to the trap of drafting over hyped rookies way too high. So readers, when you do your fantasy baseball drafts, take a deep breath and realize that even if you think a guy will far outperform his ADP, there is no reason to draft him too early. Even if he pans out you could have had him later, so no matter how good your baseball intuition, you’re still a moron for taking him too soon.

Check back tomorrow for my thoughts on the Celtics, and don’t forget to watch the game!

5 days remaining; the countdown has begun. To what you ask? To the biggest showdown in the NBA so far this season. And like a NASA space shuttle scheduled for blast off with a thunderstorm approaching, this is a countdown which could very well end prematurely.

On March 18, 2008 at 9:30pm EDT the Celtics, riding a 13 game winning streak, will take on the Houston Rockets and their fate defying 22 game victory parade. Boston will have yet another chance to show that they are the team to beat in the NBA if they succeed where nearly two dozen predecessors have failed and knock off the Yao Ming-less Rockets.  The  TNT network will hype their Tuesday night broadcast to no end.  ESPN will inform us that this is the first time in god knows how long where teams with combined 35 straight wins have met. This will be a must watch game, whether you are an avid follower of the Celts or not.

Standing in the way of this death match are three tough games for Boston (Utah, Milwaukee, and San Antonio) and two home games for Houston (Chicago and the Lakers) which will be no cake walk.  Should both teams make it through this stretch unscathed, the Rockets, who have Monday off, have a clear advantage given that the Celts play in San Antonio the previous night.  Because of that I say Houston will be the favorite to win this matchup, although I would not be surprised at all to see Paul Pierce, KG and Ray Allen pull it off.  We don’t know for sure if the game will happen; what we do know is that, by the early hours of March 19th, somethings got to give.

It’s been a pretty slow news week in New England up to this point, I thought it time to make a quick post about the Celtics and Randy Moss.

Let’s start with the better of the two stories, the Celtics. I’ll admit that I was pretty down on them after their two recent losses. Ray Allen had been awful, and Rondo’s injury was clearly hurting the team. As they proved against the Blazers, however, the Celts will step it up for big games, and when Allen is on they can overcome other setbacks. Had Rajon played last night, the point difference would’ve been even greater.

This game also highlighted one of the main differences between Ray Allen and Paul Pierce. Paul had an off night in the scoring department, but was still able to make a huge contribution with 8 rebounds, and the team won the game. Ray on the other hand doesn’t do much when he isn’t scoring, so let’s hope he’s put his shooting troubles behind him.

Now on to the Randy Moss situation. Already he has shown that he is much more adept at defending himself than Roger Clemens. Hopefully this is because he actually isn’t guilty. In Roger’s case, no one is benefiting from the accusations, whereas Randy’s accuser clearly has a lot to gain at his expense. We should find out more details soon; in the meantime is anyone concerned that the Patriots will be distracted by this? Didn’t think so.

That’s it for now, be sure to check back Saturday for my next round of playoff predictions. (By the way, the Manning theory is in tact, let’s see if it applies after Peyton’s season is over. If it does, watch out Packers!)

60 Minutes

Who else just watched 60 Minutes and found the gangster story much more interesting than the Clemens interview? Had the John Martorano story run a few months earlier Clemens could’ve hired him to take out McNamee. Oh well.

I can’t say I’m surprised but the Clemens interview didn’t sway me in one direction or the other. What Clemens needed to do to help his case was give a satisfactory answer as to why his friend McNamee would lie, yet when asked that question his response was along the lines of “I don’t know”. Given that this was the most important part of the interview I wish that Mike Wallace (like Theo Epstein, Bob Kraft, and myself, a distinguished graduate of Brookline High School, by the way) had spent more time on it. As it is, I am still not 100% convinced that Clemens is guilty, but if I had to bet on it I’d say he was.

tick…tick…tick…tick…

Celtics better than the West?

After the Celtics finished off the Pistons yesterday I pointed out to my friend Colin, a Chicago Bulls fan (he grew up in 90’s and likes the Bulls, Cowboys, and Yankees; needless to say he is not at all “beyond the bandwagon”), that the Celtics could very well break the Bulls’ single season win record. At this point my other friend John suggested that they would have an easy time since the Eastern Conference is weak. While the East may be weaker than the West I disagreed with this notion, since the East has several good, and two very good teams. John countered that Dallas, the Suns, and the Spurs were better than any team in the East, including the Celtics. Given that much is made about whether the Celts are as good as teams in the West I have decided to take this notion on.

First and foremost, the Celtics are 10-0 against Western teams. What’s that you say? They haven’t yet played any of the elite west teams? Fair enough, but lets see what those “elite” teams have done against the same Western competition. The Celtics have played Denver, Golden State, Houston, LA Lakers, Memphis, Sacramento, Seattle, and Utah (the Lakers and Kings twice). The Spurs are a pedestrian 9-5 against those teams, Dallas (who amazingly have played those conference foes only the same number of times as the Celtics) are 8-2, and the Suns are only 7-4. A combined 24-11 is not a bad record, to be sure, but its certainly not 10-0, and shows that the teams the Celtics have beat can win against tough competition. The Celts don’t play any of those teams until Dallas comes to town on January 31, but until then they’ve proven to be as good, if not better, than the good Western conference teams.

Jim Rice to the Hall?

There is a lot of talk swirling that this may be the year Jim Rice finally makes it into the Hall of Fame, given the weak competition for votes. I can’t say I had ever done do much analysis on this, and having been too young to see Rice’s career I had no first hand experience, but I was always skeptical just looking at his career numbers that he belonged in the Hall of Fame. After reading this column on ESPN, however, I am convinced that he does; it is a good read for those of you that have not seen it.

That’s it for now, I hope everyone has had a joyful beginning to 2008, its looking to be a great year for New England sports.

P.S. In case you’re scratching your head at the title of this post, read it to the tune of the Bernie and Phyls jingle. Fine…it still sucks. F*** you.