The DNP - Coach's decision Boston Celtics, the losing player that is Connor McDavid, the return of Boston sports to the outhouse, feel good years

Friday 5/1/26

The Edmonton Oilers were eliminated last night. Connor McDavid had zero points and was a -3. I just think, and have long thought, and long said, that this is who he is. Not a winning player. The Oilers should get a goalie and hire Jack Cassidy as their coach. I'm not someone who'd have McDavid as a top ten all-time player and maybe not top twenty. Yes, I understand that no one else would hold this view.

The Knicks eliminated the Hawks in Atlanta, being up by more than sixty at one point. The most lopsided first half score I've ever seen. How does that happen? How does it happen at home? How does it happen in a series in which you were good enough to win two games?

The Celtics were drubbed last night by the 76ers and now I'll be surprised if they win at home in a Game 7. Philadelphia looks like the better team, the team in command, the team with better match-ups, the team with bigger stars on their game.

Even if the Celtics do advance, it's hard to envision them going that far. I was wrong. I thought before the season that without Jayson Tatum, they'd play differently, play better in some ways, shoot less threes, win 47 games or so, get Tatum back, incorporate him into the kind of game they were playing, and could emerge from the East.

And it looked like I was really on to something there for a while...

But now I just see the same old, same old Tatum-Brown Celtics. This team is ultimately going to just have that one title, and all of these moments of futility and frustration. Taking the foot off the gas against the Warriors in the Finals, falling behind 3-0 to the seventh-seed Miami Heat only to come back and then get destroyed at home in a game that determined who went to the the Finals, falling behind 2-0 to the Knicks last year at home after blowing two 20-point leads, and now this 3-1 collapse after a feel good year.

Because that's what it was--a feel good year. Classic feel good year. What's a feel good year? 2013 Red Sox. 2001 Patriots. 1988 Red Sox. 1987-88 Bruins. Obviously the 1967 Red Sox. A feel good year doesn't mean you're awesome and going to win it all. It means it makes people happy in this organic and surprising way, usually because you overachieved, you did things the right away, you showed character. It can even be like you did something for your community, as with those 2013 Red Sox.

These Boston Celtics look like one big, de facto, team-wide DNP - Coach's Decision. Might as well be, given how ineffectual so many of these guys have been. Joe Mazzulla is as blameworthy as his players. His teams blow leads, don't finish off opponents/series, lack edge, relapse into bad habits, rely too much on spreadsheets, math, analytics, and the three-point shot.

And just like that...Boston sports is back in the outhouse. I expect the Bruins to be ousted tonight, the Celtics to be gone soon, the Red Sox are a 100 loss team in the making that was dead in the water two weeks into the season, and the Patriots are revolting to me with the piece of shit that is Mike Vrabel and the piece of shit that is Robert Kraft running cover for him.

I'll get into Vrabel and Russini/The New York Times later--I have a lot of things about corruption at The New York Times to address--but Vrabel better win. If he wants to keep his job, I mean.

You can't be busted for the type of person he is, with your whole hypocritical platform/philosophy being about accountability and family and good decisions and retain your job if you aren't stacking the W's.

In publishing, you can rape, you can get away with everything, because the publishing system operates in darkness and no one cares, which protects evildoers. That's the trick--to pull it into the light and have people care. Then careers topple, because you can't do those sorts of things and continue on when there are people to see and care.

Football is already in the light, and people care. True, because they normally live lives without substance, perspective, or the capacity to have deep and rich interests, and things of consequence are lost on them/they're indifferent to, but all the same, once you're busted here, you got a problem.

Football is a gross sport. All sports are. Everything in life is now, really. As we get dumber, more base, football will only become more popular, if possible.

I could be getting ahead of myself. Of course. The games need to be played. Watching the Knicks and 76ers, I think that would be a better series than the Celtics and Knicks. And do you want to see the Celtics lose to the Knicks two years in a row?

Derrick White is killing the Celtics. They have too many guys giving you nothing or not nearly enough. I thought Nikola Vucevic was going to add something to the team, but he might as well be a DNP - Coach's Decision. His contributions are so paltry. White was a -25 last night. Brown--the team's leading scorer with only 18 points--a -23. They jacked 41 three-point attempts.

It could be, too, that the 76ers have the three best players in this series right now. Or the two best, anyway. And if that's the case, the Celtics are in trouble, because they're such a Dynamic Duo type of team. That duo isn't some all-time great pair. That's why I've always thought this Celtics would have the one championship, which they were fortunate to get, when all is said and done. They needed everything to line up for them that one year, and it did.

There's also the matter of timing. Some teams come together at just the right time. You see it in the NHL playoffs. Things synch up--health, career arcs, guys working towards a common goal who find a style of play--both at the individual and team levels--that drive the bus forward. You see it with baseball teams that find their stride mid-summer and then they're taking series after series on into October.

I feel like you don't see this as much in the NFL as you used to, because the NFL has become increasingly watered down and it's kind of chintzy league now. A video game league, an over-officiated league, a stylistically manipulated league, more of a bloated cash cow without nuance for fat, dumb Americans on their couches than a sport as it had previously been a sport. Look at Vrabel. He's a dumb guy. He isn't some master tactician. The job title is coach, but it really might as well be "the leader meathead."

I'm sure someone would wish to try and counter what I'm saying about the Celtics by exclaiming, "The 2008 team went seven games against the Hawks in the first round!"

True. And that was disappointing at the time and ultimately a blemish on that team's legacy. Not a huge one. The 1995-96 Chicago Bulls--arguably the best team in the sport's history--had a hard time closing out the Seattle Supersonics in the Finals.

But you didn't sense that Game 7 of the first round back in 2008 with the Pierce/Garnett/Allen Celtics would end up being a dramatic affair. The home team won the games in that series and the Celtics were better. They had one of those "We got it going on" years. Those years have a different feel to them. They're rare.

This is the good thing about sports, though. Reputation doesn't settle things, nor cronyism, nor log rolling. Again, this isn't the publishing industry. You jump it up, and the teams play, and you have to earn your victory. There are different games within the game, a different season within the season. The game against the Raptors on a Wednesday night in November isn't the same thing as a playoff game on the last day of April. Winning the one can involve different skills and a different mindset and a different make-up than winning the other.