celts center 12/29

["Ozersky, Joshua A" <OzerskyJA@corning.com>]

Thinking the Unthinkable

Were we wrong?  Years of confident optimism are ebbing away from me as I write 
this, and many Celtics fans are likewise feeling dazed and doubtful, like the last man 
in a plane wreck to accept that help is not on the way.  The team has lost 
nine of the last ten games.  They have lost to the Clippers.  They have lost to 
Houston.  They have played atrocious basketball.  They got Paul Pierce back at full
 strength, and it still didn't matter.  Kenny Anderson is playing the way he did two 
years ago, with better defense, and it still doesn't matter.  The press is in hiding.  
Antoine Walker is averaging something like 7 rebounds a game.  Is it possible? 
Were they right?   Is the the team really mediocre?  Were Peter May and all the other
 hack writers who picked the Celtics to finish last in the division not merely evil and 
perverse?  The events have raised that possibility, along with an even worse one:  
that Rick Pitino might not be the one to lead us out of the wilderness.

I find this very hard to swallow.  No one can doubt Pitino's brains, experience, work
 ethic, or track record.  Why then does this team play so poorly so often?  Why do 
they take stupid shots, give up layups, blow leads?  The first year Pitino had a team 
not of his own making, and managed to win thirty odd games by what seemed to be 
sheer force of will - that, and the secret weapon the Celtics, alone in the NBA, 
seemed to posess:  the mighty press.  Last year was excusable on account of the 
inability of coaches to coach and of the team to practice.  To what can we attribute 
the current losing streak?  Pitino has all his guys; the team is loaded with talent, speed,
 size, versatility, and ambition; and we exchanged the one-dimensional Ron Mercer 
for the player whom we felt we could count on for 12 rebounds a night.  Danny 
Fortson is still getting his rust off after spending the first months of the season on the 
IR, but who would have thought that Eric Williams would forget how to score around 
the basket?  Or that Tony Battie would go several games without a single block?  That
 the press would be shelved in order to develop half-court defense, and that we 
would end up as just another half-court team, executing sloppily?  Who would have 
thought that the Cleveland Cavaliers would be giving us lessons in how to fast-break 
- along with the LA Clippers, the Utah Jazz, and everybody else we play on the 
road?  At first, there was a built in excuse - you can't be expected to beat San 
Antonio, Utah, and the Lakers without three fifths of your starting lineup - but now 
everybody is back and we are still playing like shit.  Most of us actually expect 
Denver to beat us Friday night.  And this after we shredded them by 20 in the Fleet 
Center just weeks ago.

I am not too worried about our record, which currently stands at 5 games under 
.500.  If you play .500 ball for a few weeks, and put together two or three wins 
twice, you're back at .500.  .500 is striking distance for the playoffs with another short 
win streak.  But that kind of thinking is based on the idea that we have a talented 
team, primed to explode on the scene, coached by a man smarter and more intense 
and right where his critics have all called him wrong.  If they were right about Pitino,
 and if the Celtics' early season success was a fluke, then what kind of nightmare are 
we in for?  Can we wait for another crop of players, another administration?  Can we
 watch Paul Pierce go to another team?  Judas Preist!  The one ray of hope in all this 
has been Pitino's steadfast refusal to talk trade.  He has his team.  They're good guys.  
They just have to play better, but this is the team.  Think of Paul Newman in The Verdict: 
"There are no other teams, this is the team.  There are no other teams, this is the 
team."  You're not going to get a stronger, faster, tougher center than Vitaly 
Potapenko, nor one with a better scoring touch, without moving Pierce or Walker. 
 Upgrades at the other positions are equally unlikely.  No bench player is going to 
make a difference.  The team has to start to play better.  There are no excuses left. 
 Right now they are simply a bad team.  I don't know why the Fred Hoibergs and Ty 
Nesbys of the world have career games against us, other than bad defense.  I don't 
know why we can't execute simple high school basketball plays.  I don't know why 
we aren't practicing five hundred free throws a day.  I don't know why the press is a 
crutch that we dare not take up for fear of being exposed as man-to-man pushovers. 
 I don't know.  I don't need to know.

I need some wins, bad.