The end is never easy.
You want to hang on as long as possible. You see numbers 5, 20, and 34 running around out there, and you think a championship is still possible. Just find the right pieces to put around them, and the good times should continue. It doesn't work that way, however, at least not when your "star" players are all in their mid-30s.
Many Celtics fans believed the green were good for 40 wins this year, which would have translated to a winning percentage of .606. That's not much to expect, right? I mean the aging Celtics of the late 1980s still managed to win 57 games in 1987-88 season, good for a winning percentage just shy of .700.
What's the difference?
Those "aging" Celtics teams of the late 1980s, especially the 1987-88 team, were still pretty young. Larry Bird was 31, while Kevin McHale was 30. Those two players remained unstoppable scoring machines. Bird averaged 29.9 points per game that season, shooting at a .527 clip. McHale shot 60% from the field, while averaging almost 23 PPG. Exactly whom is the unstoppable scoring machine on the current team? Rajon Rondo wouldn't be a bad answer, and he doesn't have a jump shot.
The 1987-88 Celtics were also one of the preeminent defensive rebounding teams in the NBA. As a team, the Celtics finished third across the entire league in defensive rebounding percentage. The Big Three, Bird, McHale and Robert Parish, averaged over 26 rebounds per game by themselves. How many players would we need to combine on the current squad before their rebound averages totaled 26 or greater (answer: five)? Kendrick Perkins, a player whom some still lament his departure, would not have helped on this front either, as he's never even approached an average of 9 rebounds per game, and is grabbing a grand total of 5.9 caroms per game this year.
But the end is here fans, and the question is what will Danny do?
I do know one thing.
Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen deserve better than to end their careers this way.
Trade them all to contenders, cities where they can still make a difference.
21 comments:
two years later bird's ppg dropped to 22.
That's age and injuries, my friends.
They don't creep up on you.
One day, you just old.
Ainge doesn’t have to blow up the Celtics because he already did. He’s dragged as much as he can out of this run while timing almost everything to end when the extension Garnett signed upon his arrival is completed. He will have ample cap space, two All-Stars including a 25-year-old point guard, a respected coach locked up on a long-term contract and at least two picks in what will be a loaded draft.
There are teams who spend years wandering in the NBA abyss trying to get themselves into this position with half the assets that Ainge will possess if he simply lets the season play out and does nothing at the trade deadline. The twist was the Celtics were able to put themselves in this position while remaining a contender. Those days appear to be over, but if the price to be paid is one season of inconsistent at best, and awful performances at worst, then that’s the cost of doing business in this league.
You’re Danny Ainge and it’s beginning to look like you made a promise you can’t keep.
You thought you had it figured out. You knew you were smarter than everyone else even when it didn’t seem that way, and if you had any doubts you looked in the mirror and asked the image you saw there. The answer always was reassuring.
You’re Danny Ainge and you had it all under control.
You’d duplicate history without repeating it. You’d build a team that would win multiple championships in the image of the one you modeled it after, but you’d get the fraying pieces out of town before the ambulance or the undertakers showed up.
You’re Danny Ainge and you are very smart.
You won a championship — the first one in the old gym since it became the new gym — and you might have won a second if you hadn’t been unlucky. You had it going on, but the time came for the pieces that made it work to move on and you couldn’t do it, just like your predecessor 25 years ago. You’re Danny Ainge and you’re beginning to learn it’s not so easy to blow it up when it’s your finger on the trigger.
As the new and not-quite-so Big Three began to show its age you kept reassuring yourself, your bosses and the public that you would not repeat the past, back when you watched the truly Big Three unravel. You would make moves. You would not hold on too long. You would be cold-hearted. You’re Danny Ainge and you wouldn’t get sentimental like Red did.
Pretty much what I said three days ago, huh?
“You don’t panic when things aren’t going well and when your lineup isn’t 100 percent,” you said a couple days ago, and you’re sure you won’t. You may not but the rest of us can’t remember the last time your lineup was 100 percent. Can you?
You’re Danny Ainge and you’re looking in the mirror today and seeing Red looking back at you.
He’s not lighting a cigar.
"The window is shut on the big 3 era," proclaims one celtics oracle today.
Hmm.
Where have I heard this idea before?
Great trip dub by rondo, i hope we never trade him.
I want him to be a celtics lifer
8 of next 11 on the road
we'll see how they fair away from home, remember when they had a better away record than home?
I still check in here every now and again. Can't believe it was five years ago when KG made us competitive again.
I am so torn as well. When you see these guys playing well, you want to give them one more run together...but then I think how badly they were dominated by the Heat (yes, I think they were overwhelmed in that series).
It's also occured to me that each of the old guys still have lots of ball left in the tank, not as primary guys, but complimentary players on a contending team - the kind that can make a real difference...so "setting them free" for another run or two with a legit contender might be nice way for them to ride into the sunset...
Can't wait to see which road Ainge will take.
Excellent point.
The big 3 have plenty left in the tank -- as role players, and, maybe, even as big game players, once in a while.
C's faceoff against K.McHale tonight
Yeah, Matty, the good old days when the Cs were road warriors!
Lex long ago compared Rondo to DJ:
Magic Johnson: Rondo's the Best Player on the Court
There's been a lot of talk about whether Rajon Rondo will earn a berth on the All-Star team. Screw the All-Star team. Rondo's got a shot at the MVP. The campaign has begun. Today is the New Hampshire primary. Rondo needs to put in a good showing in the second half. I've spent some time comparing Rondo to DJ, and I still think it's a fair comparison. But if Rondo's early days are comparable to DJ, then perhaps his later days will be comparable to that other Johnson from the West Coast.
My most recent thought is that Rajon Rondo probably needs to be out there. Here's why. If Rondo's gonna be the second coming of DJ, we need to let Rondo find his inner DJ on offense, which means we need to let the kid see if his J can be money when it counts. Rondo's field-goald percentage is pretty high, but his jumper remains a weak spot. So was DJ's, unless it was the last five minutes of a close game, in which case DJ didn't miss. If Rondo's jumper didn't improve over the summer, maybe his crunch-time jumper did.
More DJ-Rondo Comparisons
http://lexnihilnovi.blogspot.com/2008/12/rondos-last-five-games.html
http://lexnihilnovi.blogspot.com/2008/11/rajon-risin.html
Rajon Rondo: Most Destructive Celtics' Guard Since DJ?
http://lexnihilnovi.blogspot.com/2008/11/rajon-risin.html
It takes the rest of celticdom a while to catch on, but they eventually do.
: )
As for Rondo's performance, what man better to assess such a stratospheric triple-double than the one who helped foster the very concept in the first place?
"That kid," said Larry Bird, a spellbound televiewer, "is unbelievable. I got a text during the game from someone who works for us and he said, 'How in the hell can they think about trading him?' How much better can you play? You can't. I know I'd take that stat line any day of the week
outrebounded by 20 against hous
Rockets coach Kevin McHale is not offering advice to the Celtics. But he believes the team's current stars are in better physical shape than the Celtics' Big Three of the late 1980s and early '90s
"Getting old in the NBA is not for the meek or the mild," McHale said before the game.
McHale and Larry Bird began to slow down soon after the Celtics won the 1986 title. But the Celtics did not go into rebuilding mode until it was too late. Now, Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge is faced with a similar scenario with Ray Allen, Garnett, and Paul Pierce
"It's tough, because your mind is as sharp as it's ever been," McHale said. "Sometimes, athletically-wise, you just can't do some of the things you could, or maybe injury-wise, or stuff like that
"But, for the most part, Kevin, Paul, and Ray have been able to stay fairly healthy. I think they're playing better than we did. I think at this point of our careers, we were all beaten down and had injuries and had a lot of other stuff going on. It was hard to deal with but, look, it happens to everybody and it's just part of the game
"If you're honest with yourself - it depends if you're delusional or not. You wake up in the middle of the night and go, 'I suck,' you know. But some people can't do that
"There are nights when you played your best and it's like, 'That's all I got.' I never appreciated, you know, enough, guys who just ground themselves to a nub and got little accomplished until I became one of those guys and it was like, 'It's hard out here.'
"Because playing NBA basketball is fun. It's not hard, it's fun. It's just the competition's fun, playing hard's fun. You go out and play hard, you get things accomplished."
McHale's opinion of these Celtics?
"Danny will make the right decision," McHale said.
Post a Comment