No Lollygagging Allowed

One thing you gotta love about Tommy is how obscene he can be without hardly trying. His first quarter "lollygagging" remarks, compounded by rugged defense, made last night's game seem a tad dirty; although Posey didn't slug anybody, as he is wont to do in the United Center. Two good defensive teams going at it, and it was one of the more fun games of the year. The main reason was Rondo, let us praise him so, who showed you what the future of Celtics basketball is gonna be all about. Rondo as a positive misfit hellion is always providential fun, and we caught more than a glimpse of it yesterday. He should be more important to this team than Ray Allen by the end of next season. But on to the present campaign - I would like to quickly revisit some of my 70 win remarks made yesterday, maybe not to clarify as much as to conjecture.

First, let it be known that I don't think the C's will win 70 games, but I no longer think you can laugh at people who say they will. The Celtics are giving a historical pounding to people, and I don't care that they have yet to play Detroit, S.A., Phoenix, Dallas, Houston and Utah. Let's say they lose all those games (if we're gonna be ridiculous, let's be ridiculous.) That's all of 13 losses, or two less than the Miami Heat have right now. What I mean is that the C's are not losing at a regular pace for a great team. They're giving everybody the finger, and opponents in general just don't have a clue. It's reminiscent of when the Suns got Nash, totally revolutionized their play, and started 31-4. No one knew what to make of them, and no one knew how to handle it. I remember being in a hotel room somewhere down south and Ric Bucher saying that they were gonna win 70, and you couldn't scowl at him like you usually could. That's the vibe I'm getting from this C's team. Now, as we've been saying, do we really want to be that Suns team? Or the Pistons of '05-06, or the Mavs of last year? The answer, frankly, is no. We want a championship, we want to be like the Spurs and lollygag some during the regular season. But with this current band of brothers in Boston I'm afraid we can't hope for such attentive focus solely on the playoffs.

The reasons for having to destroy everybody in the regular season, even if it ultimately leads to burn out, is that the Celtics really know no other way. No player or coach has recently tasted that Championship experience, and knows it, with the exception of Posey. And just having Posey is not enough experience to get guarded about how to treat the regular season. As has been exposed everywhere, KG goes hard all the the time, and at all costs. You can't tell that guy not to win 67 games, ever. Pierce and Allen have never been past the Conference Finals, and have no idea how to temper the rigors of the season to make it so they crest in June. Glenn is Glenn, and I am just thankful to God that he has them winning, period. "There's no success like failure, and failure is no success at all." So fuck it folks, we're winning 65 games, there's nothing that can be done about it, and we will let the chips fall where they will. Maybe the whole operation is gonna run out of energy, or run into too much tested mettle, but we got no choice but to let things run their course. All we can do is be reasonably cautious, and hope that our greatness is such that it shines through despite our inexperience. That means don't play Ray 44 minutes in the second night of back to backs, Glenn. And as fans we have to just enjoy this utterly new experience, and praise it for happening.