Sports Guy on the NBA East

["Berry, Mark S" <berrym@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://espn.go.com/page2/s/simmons/021029.html
<http://espn.go.com/page2/s/simmons/021029.html> 

Interesting stuff. I know many of you don't care, but I love SG's NBA stuff
because he's an NBA fanatic. He watches more NBA basketball than Peter May,
Shira Springer and Steve Bulpett combined. He knows what he's talking about.
I'm not saying he's always right (some of his predictions here I disagree
with), but he's not going to just regurgitate the usual season preview crap
about every team.

Anyway, he places the Celts sixth in the East. Here's what he has to say:

6. Boston
Bottom line: It's a weak conference. I don't care if Vin Baker rolls over
and plays dead for the next four years, it won't change the fact that (a)
the Celts have two of the top 20 players in the league (Antoine Walker and
Paul Pierce), (b) those same two guys play hard every night, and (c) they
are astoundingly durable. 
If you surrounded them with 10 average and below-average players, they would
still win 42-45 games in the East. Unfortunately, that's exactly what the
Celtics front office has decided to do, and it didn't have to be that way,
and to be honest, I don't even feel like talking about this.