Celtics Doom

A classic late season debacle that found thousands of Boston area fans who forked over good money to watch LeBron James and (too a much lesser extent) Paul Pierce, instead subjected to a grueling paint-by-numbers crap-a-thon between the Celtics and Cavaliers supporting casts. I watched parts of the game, listened to most of it, was enervated by all of it. We’ll have a comprehensive season autopsy in the next few days but for now, a few notes on what we learned from last night:

1) Wyc Grousbeck's favorite player is Paul Pierce! For those of us who thought this season's perpetual PR blow job on Paul couldn't get any more shameless, we were treated to metrosexual-fashion icon/owner Wyc Grousbeck spending the 2nd quarter on the mic with Gorman and Cousy, where he let free with some highly coveted insider info. Are you ready? Paul Pierce is not only a super duper player, but, he is a super-er duper-er human being as well. That’s right, Wyc LOVES Paul because he is a humanitarian millionaire who occasionally visits children hospitals on his off-days, just like Wyc and his “very fortunate” buddies who all got together one swell afternoon and bought a basketball team with their fathers’ money. Thanks Dad(s)! And yes, just so you know, Wyc views the fans as owners. Because… I don’t know, something along the lines that he thought he was an owner when he was a fan and now that he’s a fan he’s… I forgot. It was inspiring though, truly. Nothing like hearing the good news from the King of the Trustafarians after watching 81 shitty basketball games on my own dime. Wyc should know that as a newly christened part owner, I now await a large cheque to link my financial divestment with my emotional one.

2) Delonte West, Accountemps 6th Star Award Winner. In a perfunctory development with all the drama of the Lachey/Simpson divorce, the cuddly one was codified by the good people of Accountemps as fan favorite du jour, joining such distinguished past winners as Bryant Stith and Mark Blount. This thing is supposedly voted in by the fans, but that seems about believable as the "touch of the flu" story we've now heard twice this season to excuse a Tommy Heinsohn absence. Delonte gave an almost completely incomprehensible acceptance speech for this "award," muttering something weird and slurred about “hard work…. Fans…. Work… value.” In my eyes, he’d be player of the year if he’d just grabbed the camera and started chanting "because whoever does, is going to make VP." The real prize, however, was hearing Daddy Wyc proclaim him “second favorite Celtic” of ownership, the kind of praise that has “contract lowball up ahead” written all over it.

3) Also from the mouth of Wyc – “The Celtics are a player away.” Uhh, "maybe" he meant, because uhhh, he leaves that all up to Danny, is what he meant to say. But we learned definitively that what makes Wyc so happy is not the record, not the style of play, but the Character of the team. Yes, he literally said that he cares mostly that the team has a good character. Not “a good character” in the sense a screenwriter might be interested in, but rather that we’re a happy cuddly family of elves and Delontes who love one another dearly and don’t pound our heads on the lockers when our natural sense of competitive drive makes us react poorly to 32 win seasons. In other words, a team with one max contract and a rotating cast of mediocre players fighting for their NBA lives. Yeah! Celtic Pride!