I make that face alot when watching the Celtics play these days
Well, the day of reckoning has finally arrived for the guys in green and white. The proverbial “ three year window” that Danny Ainge said he could keep open at the beginning of the Big Three Era is, in my humble opinion, finally coming to a close. Now, despite the increasing popularity of second guessing/excoriating Danny Ainge as our GM, people should realize we got 4 years of strongly competing for a title when the Celtics, when back in 2003, were stuck in Salary Cap/Basketball HELL due to the impossible mess that dumbass…I mean former GM Chris Wallace left. Ainge got rid of Antoine Walker, an overpaid inefficient volume scorer, Mark Blount who possessed a personality so toxic reporters needed haz mat suits to even speak to him, and jettisoning Raef Lafrentz when it was apparent he was beyond worthless.
As far as I am concerned, Ainge has only missed on 2 significant draft picks in his time as GM, using a first round pick on Gerald Green and J.R Giddens. Green was somewhat defensible at the time, as taking high school kids was becoming more trendy and their #1 target, Danny Granger, had just come off the boards. Additionally, despite David Lee being picked 30th overall, there was no one else of significance in that draft. The Giddens pick hurt a good deal, because Mario Chalmers (hero of the Kansas Jayhawks title run that year) was available to shore up the revolving door we have had at back up point guard as well as DeAndre Jordan, which every fan of college basketball or the Celtics believed we were going to take to complement Kendrick Perkins.
Despite these two screw ups, Ainge at least has the balls to make things happen for this team. He’s not afraid to spend money or trade players for the right deal. Wallace, Pitino, and M.L Carr were HORRENDOUS at drafting, free agency, or making sensible trades. Hell, Wallace was LUCKY Pierce fell to the Celtics at the 10th pick in the 98 draft, because if he wasn’t there, word is we would have drafted *Keith Van (false: as CW pointed out to me, Van Horn was drafted a year prior to Pierce. From what I remember, Michael Doleac was who the C's were going to take if they didn't get Pierce. I could be making that up as well, whatever. Point is 90's front office didn't do much right.) I shudder to think of what would have happened if we didn’t dodge that bullet.
The point of the matter is this: Every GM in the NBA makes great moves and horrible ones, that’s the nature of dealing with professional sports. Some make nothing but terrible moves (Otis Smith for example) while others seemingly can’t miss (Sam Presti recently) But over time, every GM gets hot and cold, much as players do. Mitch Kupchak, apparently a genius for drafting Bynum and trade raping the idiotic Grizzlies for Pau Gasol, now has Metta World Peace, Steve Blake, and Luke Walton tying up $15 million in cap space, completely handicapping the Lakers at the tradeline. So whatever failings Danny may have had (The Kendrick Perkins trade sticks out like a sore thumb,) he’s also the man that turned a bottom 5 team into a champion in one season and that, I’ll forever be grateful to him.
Now to the fun part of the piece. Despite the fact I still watch every game of the Celtics season, it’s coming to feel like watching the Titanic right after the ship has smashed into the iceberg: a slow, tortuous sink to the bottom. Here are 50 things I’d rather do that would probably be less painful
1. Get a colonoscopy from Edward Scissor Hands
2. Watch an episode of Chloe and Kim take New York
3. Try to out eat Takeru Kobayashi
4. Lick a heated waffle iron
5. Watch the Fourth Kind again (I can’t stress how much this movie sucks)
6. Smash my face into a windshield so I can FINALLY call 1-800-54GIANT
7. Get into a fight with Bruce Banner
8. Play Chess against Spock
9. Listen to any of the nonsensical garbage spewing from the sound holes of the dumb broads on “The View”
10. Play “Guitar Hero: Avril Lavigne Edition”
11. Go to a modern art museum
12. Be the donkey in a “Pin the tail on the Donkey” Competition
13. Read anything written by Frederick Nietzsche
14. Go skinny dipping in the Atlantic Ocean right now.
15. Discuss politics with Michael Moore
16. Play a game of dodgeball with wrenches instead of balls
17. Wax all the hair off of my body
18. Have a private work out session with Richard Simmons
19. Talk religion with Rick Santorum
20. Work as Chucky Cheese as a child’s birthday party
21. Be a window washer for the Empire State building
22. Sled down Mount Everest
23. Eat anything on the menu at America’s source of E-coli, Denny’s
24. Hold in my puke from #23
25. Be a security guard at a heavy metal concert
26. Try to convince people Tom Cruise isn’t secretly gay
27. Get in a sword fight with Aragorn, son of Arathorn
28. Listen nothing to but Rihanna, Katy Perry, and Pitbull (god that would suck)
29. Get in a jello wrestling match with Hillary Clinton
30. Ride to the west coast on a plastic big wheel
31. Take a dump in a hot girls house and clog the toilet (ala Harry in Dumb and Dumber)
32. Survive on a diet of hot pockets, egg nog, and hungry man tv dinners
33. Wear a Lebron James Heat Jersey in downtown Cleveland
34. Pick up a chick at a Wal Mart
35. Do the laundry at a retirement home
36. Watch any member of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour do standup
37. Write a dissertation defending the merits of “The Jersey Shore” and its social effect on modern day society
38. Challenge an Irishman to a drinking contest
39. Try to do more coke than Charlie Sheen
40. Only watch The Phantom Menace and The Clone Wars
41. Drive a mini-van as my primary method of transportation
42. Try to ride a REAL bull…in the wild
43. Listen to the story of how I was created
44. Use dial-up internet connection speed for a week
45. Fit John Goodman for assless leather chaps
46. Get some sort of piercing, not on the wiener though.
47. Try to argue that bowling is a sport
48. Attend a WNBA game wearing a team’s respective apparel
49. Eat a bag of puke flavored jelly beans only
50. Meet Ron Burgundy (This one is actually awesome, I want to do this very much)
