The corporatization of sports, mouth loads, what the Celtics should do next

Wednesday 5/6/26

I wonder if we're going to have a couple of cake walking babies from home--to use an old jazz term--in the Colorado Avalanche and Oklahoma City Thunder as they coast to championships. They haven't met much resistance yet. The Avalanche poured on another five goals last night and the Thunder won again against zero postseason losses. It's still early and things can change fast.

I'm starting to wonder, though, if the Thunder can have a 16-2, 16-1 type of postseason. There's always a point where I start paying attention as to a possible history. I'm on history alert, I guess you could say, with them. The Pistons, meanwhile, appear to have righted their ship.

The East is interesting. The Knicks are talked about like this behemoth of a team, which isn't how they've been talked about at all in recent years. Actually, in a many years. When was the last time? The 1970s? You thought they could beat the Bulls in the early 1990s, but they didn't, of course. Those were some intense tilts.

The Red Sox have won two in a row. Rafaela with the big game last night. Finally got a non-horrendous performance from Bello who came entered in the second after an "opener" got the official start and went seven. Odd. The team's record sits at 15-21. That's closer to "average" in this league--it's a bad league right now, with lots of bad baseball--than one would think.

There are many poor teams. The sport is worse than it's ever been on account of how it's played. In sports, you have these mega-rich owners, many of whom inherit teams. They don't know sports at all, they're not going to learn, they aren't going to put people in place who know and then trust them.

They're lazy, unintelligent, fat cats, without imagination, who've never worked or strove. What those people do is turn everything corporate. That means hiring the analytics people and having those people dictate how the players will play and that in turn determines how the game overall will be played because that's how every owner does it and it's not like someone is going to say, "Halt! We're doing it this different way!" because people all just do the same thing. There's no individuality, no courage, no vision or visionaries. There's me, and look at how that goes. Not fun, right?

So while it's a silly thing to look at Wild Card standings on May 6, if you do so you'll find the Chicago White Sox are the third wild card in the American League with a 17-19 record, and that the Red Sox are two games out.

I hate the wild carding of sports, by the way. The wild card padding. Three wild cards is too much.

Roman Anthony didn't play again. I'll tell you right now: this guy is brittle. He's also not a serious competitor. He's a "Eh, compete when you can" kind of guy. I'm not liking this player. I know, it's tough to be really good in the big leagues at twenty-one. Guys who are in the league that early usually take a few years before you see the numbers unless they're Al Kaline. But still...

Jarren Duran had gone over .200 thanks to a mini-hot streak, but he went 0-for-5 in the leadoff spot last night to go back under. Lou Merloni had said that this Red Sox offense isn't going anywhere without Duran and, unfortunately, he may be on to something there.

If the Red Sox somehow get back to .500 by the end of the month, you'll have to listen to Breslow and company praising themselves and trying to tell you that this was what they expected more or less all along--a slow start with the new guys and young players, after which they'd be in the thick of it with most of the season left. "Plenty of run," as Robot Breslow would say.

The parasocial fans will happily swallow this, of course, "I really like how your loads taste, I swear I do" style. Then they'll all happily unload on each other on message boards. This is me saying in advance not to be fooled. Being fooled just sets you up to be fooled for the time after and the time after that, ad infinitum. This Red Sox group has been trying to fool people since 2018.

Jaylen Brown went on his stream the day after the Celtics were eliminated (and look at this guy with his, what, "crew"? How do you not laugh? I like how two of his be-garbed hangers-on had to stand) and made various odd comments, though not odd for him. Like that he liked the approach to Game 7, with Joe Mazzulla's dereliction-of-duty style starting line-up and the fun that was had, etc.

As I said, I think it's shake-up time for the Boston Celtics. Fortune favors the bold in the NBA. Which doesn't mean it also favors the stupid. It's a league where it can really pay off to get things done early, because if you wait too long, you can be mired in mediocrity for many years or faux-contender territory (the Cavs may fit this bill). I've seen enough of this Celtics core--which really means Tatum and Brown--to believe that they won't win another title.

You can sell high, so to speak, on either guy. I really don't like either of them that much as players, but you can't move both. I don't like Tatum because he slows the game to a crawl. He's the basketball version of a Dead Puck era hockey player. Needs the ball so much, isn't the guy when you need the guy, is too happy go lucky, live and let live for someone to be truly great at something as I think of as truly great. He isn't competitive enough.

I think there's a chance they move Brown. This is a recent development. I hear rumblings, though, and you can tell when the chatter has this different quality to it. And when it's coming in from other places, with this trace of other voices in the mix. Voices of decision makers. You're not getting their voice, per se, but you can kind of tell that it's in there.

I watched Tatum hugging Sixers players and smiling seconds after the defeat, in his street clothes. He looked to me like a man leaving church on a pleasant Sunday. He looked fine and happy. Mellow.

I don't get that and I certainly don't like it.

I think many of these current day players--and Tatum and Brown are typical in this regard--treat championships as being well down the list of things they care about. Especially after they win one. Guys like Tatum and Brown want to win a championship for their brand. This gets that proverbial monkey of "But he hasn't won" off their back. They don't have a black mark against them. "Champion" is forever, whether you've won one or six.

You see it in publishing. Someone who is a bad writer like Paul Harding lucks into a Pulitzer, which is never given on the basis of quality, and then that becomes his whole thing. It's not a gateway to more things. He coasts, because he was never all that in the first place.

These players, contrastingly, have skill. But with the championship in place, it's about their brand, their business-brand, their comfort, their ease, their reputation, their docu-series, their sneakers, their public perception, their marketing, their PR. People don't know it, but Connor McDavid has a considerable amount of this kind of thing in him, too. He lacks for the one championship. Why do you think he wants it? It isn't so he can then get his second. It's this monkey-on-the-back thing.

These guys are curating a reputation. They're not good at that. They think reputation is about all of this stupid shit. The corporate type of shit. The bland shit.

Tatum and Brown have their championship, they're always going to be considered champions in their minds, and they each want other things a lot more now. A championship is something in a to-do list that gets checked off to get the really prized stuff.

There aren't many guys driven to win as much as possible. The guys who are like that keep it under wraps some, because this isn't "chill" or cool in our world. It's discouraged. Which is one reason why we're all weak-ass losers who don't strive, don't risk, don't risk failing if we don't have to, and who are unhappy in our mundane gray and beige lives.

I found it interesting/telling that "Joe Mazzulla will be back next year" was a news item yesterday. That's only reported when it wasn't a given--a given for the powers that be. He's on shakier ground after that display and his decisions and that's the first time you can say that during his Celtics tenure.

What do I expect the Celtics to do? I'm not sure. I could see them running it back again. Telling themselves, organizationally, that they had a really good team and that was without Tatum, and now Tatum will be back to where he was, maybe even better, so they're in a nice spot.

But the Brown stuff may be too hard to keep ignoring. If he's pushing to be free, so to speak, they might not offer resistance. Because as it stands they may have to sell him somewhat on being a Celtic, not being the guy, but rather one of the two guys, and I think that would be a half-truth at best, because the Celtics don't regard him like they do Tatum, in part because Tatum is so bland, so corporate, and that's what organizations favor.