The return of Jayson Tatum, trading (please, please, please) Jeremy Swayman, the most underrated superstar in sports, yucks

Wednesday 4/4/26

If Jayson Tatum is going to return to the Celtics this year, it has to be now. There are twenty or so games left. He'd only be playing a dozen or so of them I'd expect.

The Celtics have won three in a row, the last two coming on a back-to-back. They rested Jaylen Brown and Neemias Queta in their last game against and still routed the Bucks. The game before, Queta had 27 points, 17 rebounds, 3 blocks, 2 assists, and a steal in 27 minutes. The best game of his career to date.

How good can he be? I know his minutes have gone down some with the acquisition of Vucevic, but the Celtics invested early in Queta's development and it looks like they were smart to.

The Celtic's 41-20 record is the fourth best in the NBA. They've exceeded my expectations, and I was someone who thought they could be a factor this year and shouldn't sit back and treat the season as a bridge campaign. But I didn't see them having the fourth best record in the league in early March. I know, it's just a record. Playoffs are different. Believe me, I'm mindful of that. But it's been an impressive year regardless.

Morgan Geekie is a better player than Auston Matthews right now.

I know it won't happen, but I'd love for the Bruins to deal Jeremy Swayman before the NHL's Friday trade deadline. Feels like a strong trade deadline market for goalies. Teams are wanting 'em. Deal Swayman to Edmonton!

The BC men's hockey team was drilled at home on Saturday night with the Terriers completing the weekend series sweep against their B line rivals. This meant that BC bounced right back out of the top ten to number thirteen in the rankings. It also means that BC isn't very good. I'd say they're outside the tourney looking in right now, but even if they do squeak in, they're not going far and likely nowhere. I say squeak in, because I can't see them winning the Hockey East tournament to land an automatic bid. The Friars are the favorite, but watch BU win the damn thing. Are they getting hot? Or is BC just that...crushable? To tell the truth, I'd rather not have Providence win the Hockey East tournament, because they're getting into the national tournament regardless, and I like surprise teams earning their way in. Basically any Hockey East team other than PC would qualify as a surprise in the big dance.

Bruins fans talk about the team's draft picks and young players like they're all future Hall of Famers. Red Sox fans do this as well, but Bruins fans more so, I'd say. Yesterday I came across a number of them talking about Matt Poitras as if he's eventually going to have a bunch of seasons in the top five in scoring.

He can't crack the NHL line-up and will be twenty-two in less than a week. I've never seen it with this player. Doesn't look like a top six forward to me, and isn't the type of player to skate on a fourth line, so that leaves the third line, and I don't seem him there either. Of course, I could be wrong.

David Pastrnak's offensive game has changed so much. He used to be a goal-first player, then a mostly even ratio goal-to-assist player, and now he's a 20-something goal scorer with fifty-something assists. The rest of his game hasn't changed much.

NHL MVP: Nikita Kucherov. The most underrated superstar in all of North American sports?

Nathan MacKinnon has that gaudy +53, which is a giant number for a forward at this time of the season, but he also has Cale Makar, among others, on his team with him. Kucherov doesn't have that kind of help.

While we're talking about the lightning: Andrei Vasilevskiy should be your Vezina winner.

The Panthers had eclipsed the Lightning as the prestige, Cup-contending franchise in Florida (sounds weird, I know), but this season it looks like the Lightning are trying to regain their spot and may well get themselves a Stanley Cup, too.

Puerto Rico ran out of players last night in a spring training game against the Red Sox, so the Sox gave them some of their players. Spring training is all about getting ready for the season. Reps, timing. Practicing the fundamentals. Not wins and losses, which I knew when I was, oh, three years old.

A post went up about this on Reddit of a mound visit by a Puerto Rican coach with a Sox pitcher, and this was one of the comments:

Mound visit: "I know you're wearing a Red Sox uniform right now but we want to BEAT the Red Sox, not LOSE to them."

Why do people who are painfully unfunny--which is just about everyone--keep trying to get others to think they're funny? You just go around debasing yourself because you're so desperate to be credited as being this thing you're clearly not? Which is what they're going for. It isn't "I must express myself!" No. People want to be seen as this particular thing. And it's like no one cares whether they actually are that thing, so long as they're seen as it.

How can you not know how unfunny you are if you're like this guy? People can believe anything about themselves, no matter how inaccurate that thing is, which is true. But still...really?

And you're just so socially awkward to share something like this. You can't self-censure? Override your impulse? No, you sit there, you type it out, you probably work on it a little--at least in your head--or a lot.

I wonder about people like this, so I'll check the bio. This grown man had one line in his bio, which said that he was the number one cat dad. I thought Wren Graves was the number one cat dad? How nebulous are these cat dad rankings?

Oh well. At least baseball number one cat dad spelled "lose" correctly, which is a rarity these days. Then again, he probably got some help from AI.