If We're Gonna Play Hockey, then We Need a Goon on Our Roster

The West Coast trip proved lots of things, but one of them is that from here on out when we play teams in their arenas in front of their fans, they're coming after us.

The tactic is one of the oldest in the books.

If you can't beat your opponent playing by the rules, then let's not play by the rules. Let's see if we can distract the unbeatable opponent, get them off their game, get them out of synch.

There's something else going on here, too.

It's professional sports, or, to be more precise, men's professional sports. When the most talented, best paid male athletes don't get their way on the playing field, well, then, they must be playing like wimps, like woosies.

Their manhood is at stake.

No team is coming into my house and pushing me around.

Pro sports teams have used physicality to motivate them since they've been playing pro sports, and the NBA has no shortage of examples.

Before the McHale closthesline in the 1984 championship series, Bird told a reporter one reason that the Celtics were losing the series is that they had been playing like girls.

Before game 5 of the 1986 championship series, talk was widespread about the Celtics preparing to celebrate banner 16 in Houston after dispatching the Rockets in short order in the upcoming game. Ralph Sampson didn't like this talk, and showed everyone, including his teammates, what he was going to do about it when he went after Jerry Sichting.

More recently, the Indiana Pacers took every opportunity they could to get physical with Paul Pierce and company to distract the Celtics during the 2005 playoffs. Again, the tactic worked.

It didn't work for the home team on the West Coast trip just completed by the Celtics.

But I guarantee that won't stop teams from trying.

So this tells me we need to fill roster-spot 14 with a player who can be on the court 10-18 minutes per game, and play the role of Enforcer.

We can't have players like KG, Pierce, and even Kendrick Perkins responding to hard fouls with chippy play of their own because the loss of one of those guys would be harder for us to replace than it would be for an opponent to replace the goon they are using to start the fight.

We already needed another big who could contribute.

Now we just need him for a different reason.