nba musings

I’m sick about this. It now occurs to me that my two favorite players in the NBA do not play for the Boston Celtics (James Posey and Leon Powe). I’m shocked by the Celtics decision to not extend Powe a qualifying offer. Powe’s agent said it best:

What does it say when a player like Leon Powe, a great human being, who played through injury and pain for three straight years for the Boston Celtics, including in a playoff game after tearing his ACL, is rewarded by the team saying to him “we only have a short window to win, and you are not a part of our plans because you are now injured.”

It shows you the true state of the NBA.

The Celtics are traditionally a class act. I have great respect for the organization as a whole, but they truly missed it on this one. (Via True Hoop)

The minute Leon went down, I was afraid this was going to happen… I just didn’t think it would. I suppose there is always a chance that Leon could end up back with the Cs, but I’m not getting my hopes up. If this truly is goodbye, then I just want to say thank you to Leon for all the great memories and for being the heart and soul of my favorite team.

You will be missed!

Related news:

• True Hoop: Leon Powe is Unemployed
• Red’s Army: The sad reality about the Leon Powe decision
• FanHouse: Leon Powe Will Prove the Celtics Wrong
• BostonHerald.com: Powe feels Celtics career over
• BostonHerald.com: Leon Powe, Celtics say goodbyes
• NESN.com: Ainge pulling plug on the Powe show?
• NESN.com: Questionable move to let Powe go
• Celtics Hub: Farewell, Leon

————————————-

Update #1: This is from the official Celtics site…

Powe’s Progress

As for Leon Powe, who’s an unrestricted free agent, Ainge said that the C’s would be keeping tabs on his progress as he rehabilitates his left knee from the ACL/meniscus injury he suffered in Game 2 against the Bulls. Powe just went home to California to continue his rehab but is no longer under contract with the Celtics.

With a long rehab ahead of Powe, the Celtics aren’t breaking ties with him, but there’s a lot of uncertainty about when he would be ready to contribute again. When that time comes, he’ll be free to sign with any team he wants.

“We know that Leon is not going to be available to play until late in the season, possibly,” Ainge said.

So, I guess there is always the possibility he could be back. I know I’ve been drama queening out on Twitter today and no player is above the team… but if there was ever a player who could be above the team, it’s Leon. Life goes on, though and I guess like everyone else, I’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

————————————-

Update #2: According to The Boston Herald & NESN.com, Powe thinks he’s done in Boston based on a convo with Danny Ainge.

“They told me, ‘Good luck with another team.’ Doc (Rivers) told me that he wanted me there, and he would do whatever he could to make sure I came back, but Danny came to me yesterday saying that they only have a two-year window, and I would be taking up a roster spot for someone else,” he explained.

But that doesn’t mean he is officially off the C’s radar.

“We love Leon, and would consider having Leon back at any time, once he gets healthy,” Ainge said.

That’s where Powe’s and Ainge’s feelings begin to differ.

“I wasn’t feeling a vibe like that,” he said. “I knew they wouldn’t (offer a qualifying offer), so I just have to move on.”

Sigh.

Not ready to give up? Sign the petition to re-sign Leon Powe — Powe-tition!

These silly season rumors are giving me fits. It seemed like the very minute game 7 finished and the Celtics went fishing in Dingle, Ireland, people started speculating about who isn’t going to be back next year. Thoughts immediately flashed through my brain. Will they keep Leon or Big Baby? The answer is clear, simple and finite. Leon stays! Baby can go. I’ll miss him, but not as much as I’d miss Leon. This is not Sophie’s Choice for me. The decision is clear. After that, I pondered how quickly they’d tell Mikki Moore and Stephon Marbury not to let the door hit them in the ass on the way out. No problem with that. The rookies? Haven’t gotten attached to them. They can go too. However, there were certain players that I just assumed were untouchable. Never for a moment did I think I might have to brace myself for life without Ray Allen, Rajon Rondo or Kendrick Perkins. I think I could almost handle losing Ray. As much as I love him, I probably wouldn’t go into mourning if they felt like they had to trade him. But, the idea of trading either Perk or Rondo is just completely unbelievable to me. Rondo is a star. He has a lot to learn still, but he’s a star. And, what can you say about Kendrick Perkins? He’s the most underrated player on that whole team. Trading Rondo and Perk, in my opinion would be as ridiculous as trading KG and Paul Pierce. I will NOT part with any of them. You hear me, Wyc?!

Here is what I’ll agree to part with:

ps. Keep your grubby little mitts of Scal! I will NOT part with Scal either! Get back! *jabbing the air with a pitchfork*

1. Celtics assistant coach Tom Thibodeau has been making the interviews rounds for head coaching opportunities with Philly and Sactown. Good luck, Tom!
2. The Globe’s Marc Spears reports that KG will have surgery on his right knee sometime next week.
3. Stephon Marbury on his future with the Celtics: “I mean I love it here, I loved playing basketball here. That’s where I am right now… I don’t know what my future holds. I”m just going to wait and see what the future holds.”
4. Big Baby on his future with the Celtics: “I love Boston. It’s a wonderful place. But if the opportunity is here, it’s here. If it’s somewhere else, it’s somewhere else. I have to go where the opportunity is.”
5. In April, Leon Powe received that month’s NBA Community Assist award. As the April NBA Community Assist Award recipient, Powe will receive the David Robinson Plaque with the inscription, “Following the standard set by NBA Legend David Robinson who improved the community piece by piece.”
6. Doc recently revealed that the Celtics starters were even more banged up than we thought. Perk/shoulder, Ray/hamstring, Paul/knee. Thankfully fishing doesn’t require any of those body parts to be fully functional.
7. Sam Cassell has been hired as an assistant coach for the Washington Wizards. Congrats Sam!

Playoffs Game 3
Celtics @ Bulls 107-86

I was so not expecting the game that I saw tonight. I figured either Rose/Gordon would go off offensively or Thomas/Noah would throw another block party and it would be another close game. How wrong I was. This was a blowout and got away from the Bulls quickly and they never recovered. The arena was sold out with Bulls fans all wearing red t-shirts and mid-way through the game they were booing. By the 2nd half, they were leaving. The Celtics were fantastic on defense. They haven’t been this good on defense since KG was playing. It was superb. I can’t wax philosophically about it enough. When they make up their minds, collectively, to do everything they need to do to wind up with that ball, they’re unstoppable. This was without KG and Leon too. Awesome. I can’t imagine the next game will be this easy, so we’ll see how the series pans out, but either way, I’m really proud of the way the team stepped up tonight, on the road, and got the convincing win.

Studs of the game: Pierce (24 Pts), Rondo (20 Pts, 11 Reb, 6 Ast), Big Baby (14 Pts, 8 Reb, 6 Ast), the entire team’s defense

Quote of the night: Rondo, post-game: “We played our A game tonight, on defense.”

Tidbits: Steph got hammered and needed an awkward arrangement of bandages on his head/face. Rondo’s feet hurt after the game and Bill Walker carried him off the court. According to @talkhoops, someone stole the headband off Walker’s head (what the hell does someone do with a sweaty Bill Walker headband?). In the post-game presser, Doc joked that he thought Big Baby stepped on Rondo’s foot “…and we all know what that would do.” Fat jokes, Doc? Tsk tsk.

Not to be a buzzkill, but I’d be remiss to not mention on this blog that my heart goes out to Leon Powe. It’s no secret that he’s my favorite player on the team, so of course this one hits me especially hard. For those not following the Celtics, Powe is out for the season (and longer) with a torn ACL. The same knee he’s previously already had surgically repaired. It is going to be a tough road trying to come back from this. Adding to the problem is the fact that he’s a free agent after this season. Do the Celtics tender him, wait and sign him if he recovers? I sure hope so. Everyone’s heard the stories about what a great guy Leon is so I won’t rehash it… I’ll just say that I hope and pray that he recovers as quickly as possible to resume his promising career. Come back soon Leon!

ps. Can I complain about Tyrus Thomas for a minute? For all of his talent — and he is extremely talented — he’s so frustratingly immature. As P. Diddy would call it, he has a lot of bitchassness.

Related news:

• CelticsBlog: The Truth Is, I Told You So
• Red’s Army: Crashing Down to Earth
• Celtics Hub: “My Feet Hurt. That’s All”
• Boston.com: Celtics, 107-86
• WEEI: Five Things We Learned: Paul Is Not Dead

Where to start? I’m going to start off by admitting that I have finally taken off my derrick rose colored glasses… we’re in big trouble. I was alarmed when Leon Powe appeared to injure himself (which turned out to be a season ending torn ACL injury) and went back into the locker room, but I went into full on panic mode when Rondo went down, threw the remote control (my specialty) and started rocking back and forth in the fetal position. Lol. I hate to give up or even hint that I might be giving up, but this is going to be a mammoth undertaking trying to get just to the ECF.

I prefer to focus on the positive though, so on the upside, how about that triple double (19 Pts, 12 Reb, 16 Ast ) for Rondo? On a sprained ankle! He’s a rockstar. Nice to see Ray Allen snap out of his funk too. I had no doubt that he would but sometimes it takes a game or two for him to get his shot back and this time he got it back right away. Thank goodness for that because we needed him desperately. We need everyone desperately, that’s the problem. The bench is killing me. I hate to bag on them, because I really do love them, but watching them last night was painful. You might be wondering how I could even hint that I love Stephon Marbury when I was comparing him to Terrell Owens and Manny Ramirez not very long ago… Well, honestly I think I’d cheer for Beelzebub if he suited up for the Celtics in jersey number triple 6. That’s how much I love this team. (Did I just compare Steph to Beelzebub? Sorry Steph.) It was also painful watching KG watch these games. I think it’s quite literally killing him to sit on the sidelines. How about that game winning 3-pointer though? Those never get old. KG’s reaction was priceless.

Related news: Red’s Army: Powe Done For Season | New Public Enemy #1, CelticsBlog: No Mo Powe | The Smoothest Strikes Again, Celtics 17: An Open Letter To Danny Ainge, The No-Look Pass: Call Me Crazy… But This Is Game of the Year

In general NBA news, congrats are in order for Mike Brown (COY) and Dwight Howard (DPOY). I would’ve picked Stan Van Gundy and Dwyane Wade, but you can’t really knock those picks either. I would’ve liked to have seen the Magic play the Bulls in this opening round if for no other reason but to try and see Joakim Noah’s fuzzy ponytail & TyTh take on Dwight. That would be something.

Also, I’ve done some soul searching and I think I’ve come to terms with my recent Cavaliers hatred. I’m jealous. They’re us… last year. And I’m bitter. I think though, if it does end up being the Cavs and Lakers in the finals that the Lakers have a better chance to win. The Cavs are deeper at Lebron and Mo’s positions but the Lakers have the edge everywhere else. The Lakers are going to be playing the tough guy role that the Celtics played last season and I’m not sure the Cavs will be able to respond. Lebron is all kinds of amazing, I’m not questioning his ability to take over the game and home court does definitely help them immensely, but I don’t think it will be enough. So, if the finals ends up being the matchup we all think it will be, my money will be on the Lakers… but I won’t be rooting against the Cavs. Or the Lakers. I’ll have no horse in that race, I’ll just be sitting back like everyone else and enjoying the show.

Shortly after Paul Pierce (@paulpierce34) joined Twitter and gained a gaggle of followers, I noticed that people were also starting to follow/@ reply/re-tweet accounts purporting to belong to Stephon Marbury (@starburymarbury) and Leon Powe. I’m always skeptical about new NBA players appearing on Twitter and like to get some kind of confirmation before I get excited about it and start following them. I was semi-convinced that the Marbury account was legit when I saw that he registered his Twitter account in the wefollow.com directory under the tags #nba, #entrepreneur and #celebrity. Something about that just rang true to me. A faker probably wouldn’t have bothered to register, but if they did, I think they would’ve picked something more like #nba, #celtics and #basketball. No offense to him, but I feel like only Steph himself would choose #celebrity.

From the get-go though, the @LeonPowe account didn’t smell right. I asked a few people and nobody knew and then Marbury responded to an @ reply that he’d ask him personally at shoot-around. Before I had a chance to ask him again today about it, I saw this article from WEEI.com. It definitely leaves no doubt as to the legitimacy of the account.

Excerpt from: WEEI.com > To Tweet or Not to Tweet by Jessica Camerato

For every player who has a legitimate account, there are even more whose identity is falsified. Take Leon Powe: According to Twitter, he has more than 300 followers who he keeps updated on his knee injury and even the weather. But as it turns out, Powe didn’t even know what Twitter was, let alone manage a profile.

“I don’t even mess with the computers like that. If I did, it would be cool, but nobody has come to me and talked to me about anything like that,” he said, adding, “I think being an athlete, it could be a positive but sometimes it could be a negative, too. Being an athlete, you’re always out there and people are always going to find stories and find what you did eight years ago. So it’s basically the same thing.”

Powe is in favor of using Twitter for a good cause, such as giving away tickets as Pierce does. But it feels invasive to him when people know the miniscule details of his daily life.

“That’s weird to me,” he said. “I don’t do that. I don’t do that. I think that’s weird, but that’s just me. I wouldn’t do it like that. But some players probably like doing that stuff. It’s based on what you like.”

So you can follow @LeonPowe if you want, maybe he/she is a great person… but just keep in mind that it isn’t the real Leon Powe. The real Leon Powe thinks it’s weird.

Ok, there’s been a lot of bad breaks going our way lately and that sucks… but if you’re a Celtics fan and you want to turn that frown upside down, just enjoy this YouTube video with me. Damn, if I don’t get choked up every time right around the 2:20 mark.

Source: celtsfanjay/YouTube

If that doesn’t do it, then just enjoy the cutest Celtics fan ever on Ellen!

Source: neufundland/YouTube

Celtics @ Bulls 121-127

Doing my best Chandler Bing impression, I ask you, “Could this game be any more annoying?” First of all, whose bright idea was it to market all that St. Patrick’s Day NBA swag? It’s stupid. The Lakers and Pistons gear in particular just look all WRONG in green. Not to mention, their fans hate it, so who exactly is buying it? Every year we play some team that trots out in our colors and everyone (especially me) exclaims, “Oh this is so weird!” and is distracted the entire game by it.

Anyway, on to the game. Sucked. We lost Leon. Paul had a sore throat before the game, Rondo got hurt (again), Ray got hurt. We even lost Doc. Dudes were dropping like flies. To their credit, most of them just played through it, but I was half expecting Pruitt to be sent in to play center. The team looked tired, out of sorts, discombobulated, disoriented and just generally un-Celtics-like. Frankly, they resembled the pre-trade team that I used to watch piss away close games in the not so distant past. Where’s the defense? That’s what bothers me the most. I understand that the team has been hit with a ridiculous number of injuries and the guys that aren’t injured are tired as hell… but I just can’t stand to see guys give up on defense. There’s no excuse for it. We really need KG back. Like yesterday, if not sooner.

Oh well. We’re the dark horse now. Maybe it will be a blessing in disguise. We might be bloody, exhausted and dragging our bloody stumps up the hill, but it’s not over till it’s over. It will be a whole different story come playoff time. Bank on that.

Celtics  @ Milwaukee   77-86

The Celtics tend to suck it up Sundays at 1pm. They seem to really need to stay on their schedule and the games that step out of that really don’t work for them. Doesn’t seem to matter if it’s home or away. Our offense looked awful. Actually it’s looked pretty awful to me since so many of our guys went down and we’ve had to try and incorporate so many new people (buy-outs and rookies) into the system. I have to believe that Doc knows what he’s doing and regardless of how many games we lose leading up to the playoffs, it’ll all be worth it. Doesn’t mean I want to watch it though since I’m really spoiled and pretty much always expect them to win. Lol. All I know is that I miss KG like a long lost play cousin. I think he’s had enough rest by now… Come back KG!!! (…and bring Scal, TA, and Big Baby with you)

Amusing tidbit: When they showed the green Lakers t-shirt and said that the Lakers are upset by the St. Patty’s day line and Tommy Heinsohn said, “I’m tired of the Lakers talking. Who cares if they’re upset?”

Celtics v. Memphis   102-92

This was the Leon Powe Show in every sense of the word. It’s the second great game he’s had this season and I love love love it. Thank goodness for him too, because Ray and Paul were way off. More Ray than Paul, but they both looked tired. Leon was doing all the scrappy Leon-ish things that won us the game. Rebounding, taking charges, making buckets in impossible spaces… Sigh. I could watch him all day.

Amusing tidbit: During the pre-game show, when they were talking about the Orlando Magic making the playoffs, Donny Marshall said, “I have some friends who still play on the Magic and they tell me that SVG treats them like college players and screams at them on every play. They’re starting to tune him out.”

Celtics  @ Miami   99-107

It’s funny how I much I love Dwyane Wade until the Celtics have to play him. Then I think he’s a gigantic pain in the ass who gets too many star calls. Kind of like Chris Paul.

I defy you to watch this and not get a little teary.

Source: 23witty, Youtube.com