Peter May has this advice for the current Celtics: shoot for the lottery. He makes many of the same arguments that have been made in this space, but in essence echoes RM's thoughts about it being better to tank with grace than to over-achieve for a first round playoff exit. Towards that goal, he recommends benching Raef and playing the young guys more (no doubt either giving B an aneurysm or a profound sense of vindication) so as to give the C's a lot of hard fought, close losses. It's an interesting read, but there's at least one unnecessary dig: "Maybe Ainge should bring in the master, M.L. Carr, to steer the ship the rest of the way." Ouch.
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The central point of May's column is hard to argue with: the Celtics are, as of this writing, equally distant from the #8 seed in the East and the 5th pick in the draft. To make up or lose the 5 games it would take to reach either goal seems highly unlikely, so let's give minutes to players that we'd like more out of in the future and let the chips fall where they may. That looks strongly like it would be somewhere between #6-12.
Still, this is the kind of column that really makes we wonder what Peter May actually does all day. He can't seem to be bothered to pay attention to the details of his chosen profession.
For example: he repeatedly mentions the Celtics current projected #9 draft slot. Apparently neither May nor anyone else at the Globe can be bothered to fact check or they would notice our current projected draft slot is #8.
May suggests shutting Raef down, which would make sense if only he hadn't been relatively healthy for two years. I know they're both big and white but it's Wally Szczerbiak that has knee problems that may require off-season surgery. The other injured player you're trying to remember the name of is Tony Allen, who's been playing through his own off-season knee problems.
May's whole job is to follow basketball and cover a rebuilding team, right? Yet he's only watched one of the top draft prospects in college basketball once. And that's such an exhaustive amount of research that he features his opinion in a column. This begs the question: has he ever seen Gay or Morrison play? I've seen LaMarcus Aldridge play twice this season and I have a ~60 hour/week day job.
I could go on but it gets old. For a long time I gave sports journalists the benefit of the doubt and assumed both intelligence and competence. Then I started to pay attention to sports in any detail and realized my mistake.
To defend Peter May, when he said:
"If it means shutting down someone like Raef LaFrentz, so be it. We all know what he can do."
I didn't take this as a suggestion that Raef is hurt, except in the sense that he always will be, but that he's a known commodity, and Rivers should be playing the pups. And he did go on to suggest cutting Wally's minutes, albeit for the same, non-injury-related reasons:
"You keep Pierce, LaFrentz, and Szczerbiak out there too long, you might actually win more than you lose."
The knee thing is an even better reason to cut his minutes.
Also, when he said he saw Aldridge play once, I assumed he meant live. Once you're a big-time sportswriter, I'm pretty sure you don't watch sports on the teevee anymore.
"Also, when he said he saw Aldridge play once, I assumed he meant live. Once you're a big-time sportswriter, I'm pretty sure you don't watch sports on the teevee anymore."
If so, this is a somewhat sad commentary. An old professor of mine was fond of saying that you would never do better at a job than other people if you didn't love it. I would think that one of the first requirements of hiring or keeping someone as a basketball analyst would be that they love basketball enough to want to watch it all the time. See new post on the main page in minute.
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