Another Impulsive Season Recap

This entertaining email-turned-post comes from loyal Red's Army reader and infrequent contributor - Rob G. Enjoy!

Even though I have very little respect for Orlando as a team (relative to the other top notch teams in the NBA) and I am positive that the Celtics would have mopped the floor with the Magic if they had been healthy, I think I could have accepted a 5 game mauling or a decisive 6 game loss better than what ended up happening. Like everyone else, I can recognize that they were running on fumes, but that is a poor excuse for blowing a double digit 4th quarter lead in a close-out game and then putting together a Game 7 stinker of such historic proportions that only the 2005 Celtics could appreciate it. (As I'm sure you remember, they were the ones who put together an inspiring 27 point loss at home in a Game 7.)

 

I'd have to check box scores to be sure, but I'm pretty sure that in 14 games, Pierce and Allen never put together one game in which they both brought so much as a B+ performance. That's unacceptable. Without Baby bailing their asses out by more than doubling his scoring average and going from "nice role player off the bench" to "damn good NBA starter" in a matter of a few days and Rondo becoming a superstar in the same period of time, they probably would have been steamrolled by the Bulls.

 

I agree with Chuck that it's hard not to blame Danny for what we saw with the "6 and two halfs" (as opposed to 7 or 8) player rotation that we saw. On a smaller scale, he did the same thing with Patrick O'Bryant that he did with Scal a few years ago. "Sure, this guy has done next to nothing in the NBA (Scal had done a little bit), but I'm going to sign him. And not only am I going to sign him, I'm going to give him good money because, dammit, I am smarter than actual, ya know, results." I think we all agree that Joe Smith was the guy to get, but I don't blame Danny too much for that. He was playing a tough game of chicken and lost. I don't really blame him for the Steph disaster (yes, I wrote "disaster") either. It was definitely a gamble worth taking. Who could have known that an arrogant former superstar would not only have understandable physical rust, but he would have the confidence of the smallest, most uncoordinated kid on a Little League team? Plus, there were no better (and realistic) options that I know of.

 

I think our pie-in-the-sky hope right now is that KG's knee problem is nothing chronic and that they can muster up one more run next year, lest they be relegated to the same pile of fairly irrelevant one-title-and-bust teams as the 2006 Miami Heat. With Baby showing that he should be a terrific first guy off the bench next year, if they can find a few bench pieces, they should have a shot. But if any of those things does not happen (specifically KG's knee healing), it could be a quick return to NBA purgatory. Or was that hell?