RB, WR, TE, FB, PK, OT, . . . .

So it looks like the Patriots are maybe concerned with their offense?

Great basketball

Those who have the chance this week are highly highly encouraged to watch two playoff series in particular.

Washington and Cleveland may easily go to seven games. In addition to seeing LeBron James become even greater before you very eyes you get treated to Washington's fantastic half-court offense. Neither team is built for playoff success. They can't defend nearly well enough. Cleveland has more talented post players and gets them involved. Their perimeter defense is sieve-like, however, and Arenas and company are all too happy to pour it on.

Denver and the Clippers may also go to seven games. I haven't seen nearly as much of either during the regular season. The Clippers high post offense is very similar to what the Celtics ran this past season, although it helps enormously to run your sets through an intelligent, veteran PF who can pass or score with his back to the basket or with mid-range jump shots. You have Carmelo Anthony looking to build on past NCAA tourney triumph. Sam Cassel in the post season again. The rehibillitation of Kenyon Martin's reputation took another step the other night when he largely shut down Lamar Odom on defense. Then he sat out a lot of the second half with more knee pain. Great matchups and subplots all over this series.

Most of the first round is a lobsided waste of time. Not these series. Watch while the watching's good.

Hot stove Celtics

Can't recall if we already posted this, but Gary Dzen put out the first trade winds of the off season a couple of weeks ago before the season even ended.

The end of lawlessness?

The washingtonpost.com reports that Ty Law is talking to the Patriots.

On the plus side...

...at least we're not Knicks fans.

Who will be the next Gary Payton?

Bob Ryan has the sort of column in the Globe this morning that often gets us all talking. There's a lot in there, but I think this captures his gist:

Of the 14 players on the roster, eight will start next season at age 24 or younger. They are Ryan Gomes, Tony Allen, and Orien Greene, 24; Dwayne Jones and Delonte West, 23; Al Jefferson and Kendrick Perkins, 21; and Gerald Green, 20. Of course, they may not all be here, but most of them will be, and they will pretty much determine the course of the season.

His conclusion:

It's this simple: Either these kids grow up or they don't. We cannot be having the same discussion a year from now.

Here's the problem. Barring personnel changes, here's the paragraph you'll be able to write at the end of next season:

Of the 14 players on the roster, eight will start next season at age 25 or younger. They are Ryan Gomes, Tony Allen, and Orien Greene, 25; Dwayne Jones and Delonte West, 24; Al Jefferson and Kendrick Perkins, 22; and Gerald Green, 21.

At some point, you figure Danny is going to want to bring the sort of veteran who will teach the young pups how to win. Put away your calculators and spreadsheets, and pull out your stethoscope -- who is out there to play this role?

Hot stove talk

All right, so we're officially in the actual baseball season. But the hot stove season is still in full swing. Tony Massarotti over at the Herald has dreams of a Beckett, Papelbon, and Dontrelle Willis starting three.

Wells to the DL.

David Wells hits the DL. Where is Bronson Arroyo when we need him?

Gomes watch, part 3

The following is from the transcript of Danny Ainge's most recent conference call with Celtic season ticket holders. No, I'm not one. Although I've thought about it. The emphasis in bold is mine.

Mike Gorman: This question comes in from Kim Malo: "How much of a surprise was it the way Ryan Gomes has developed? Now obviously you saw his potential and weren't taken completely by surprise but I think what has amazed most of us is his polished veteran maturity as a rookie. Would you agree?"

Danny Ainge: Yes. Ryan Gomes has had an excellent year. He knows how to play. You know, the four years in college make a difference. Ryan, he's had some ups and downs though. I mean I get a little worried when everybody gets too excited and puts too much emphasis on Ryan. Ryan has been inconsistent to some degree. He's still a little bit short at that starting four position and last night I thought that three or four of their offensive rebounds that got down the stretch were just because of Ryan's lack of height.

The thing I like about Ryan is his own offensive rebounding abilities and his shot is coming along; he's proven that he can make that midrange shot. And he just has a feel for where to go, you know, to get to the open slots. I think he does a really good job of feeding off of Paul and that is probably his greatest strength right now for us.

We're really excited about who Ryan is as a person, his work ethic, and his development. And so I think Ryan's going to be a fixture with us for awhile.

Mike Gorman: Along similar lines (Joseph Leary) asks, "Are you going to ask Ryan Gomes to bulk up this summer so he can better bang with the power forwards or ask him to trim down and continue to work on his midrange jump shots so he can run with the small forwards?"

Danny Ainge: Well, I always think speed is an advantage more than bulk. I mean its one thing to put on an extra five or ten pounds and maintain conditioning or stay at the same weight and lose your body fat and get faster. I prefer the speed.

I think our game is moving that direction more and more. If Ryan could bulk up...and grow three inches we'd like that. But I like the speed factor. You know, even if he's played before I still would like to have him have a speed advantage and a perimeter quickness advantage - [I'd rather him to be able to] beat [his man] to the ball and jump better than to have more power and bulk. So I would root for speed and conditioning over power.

This reads to me like Danny still sees Ryan's future at the 3, not the 4. As Danny points out, the things Ryan would need to get better at to play small forward(outside shooting, quickness on offense and defense) are things a player can improve. The things Ryan would need to get better at to play power forward (size), he can't.

Minor league basketball (cont.)

As might be expected, we are far from the only people thinking about the flawed incentives limiting the potential of an effective minor leagues for the NBA.

Yesterday's LA Times reports that the Lakers have received tentative approaval to launch their own NBADL team. The team, which would play some of their games in the Staples Center and others elsewhere in the LA area, would be wholely owned and operated by the Lakers.

Ownership would let the Lakers control who coaches and who plays on their minor league team, much as a Major League Baseball team controls personnel on its minor league affiliates. D-League teams select their coaches and players, with NBA franchises given the option to send first- or second-year players to a designated D-League team.

Forum Blue and Gold is not surprisingly positive about the whole thing:

The on-the-court reasons make a lot of sense — the Buss family will essentially own a minor league team, as has been done in baseball for decades. Not only would would this team have the players the Lakers have signed that they send down, they can essentially give guys just on the outside a D-League contract, like being on a scout team, and tell them “play well and you come back to camp with a better chance next year.” What’s more, with the current Lakers running the triangle, they could set up a minor league team to do the same, allowing players like Wafer to still grow in the offense while getting playing time.

The bigger question is will it make money? One of the struggles for the funky-little ABA when it had three-teams in the area (one in Los Angeles, one in Long Beach and one in the OC) was having the star power to draw fans. Why do you think they kept giving Dennis Rodman three-game contracts? Not his play, he was barely an ABA starter anymore. But he put butts in the seats. Same is true of the Summer Pro League in Long Beach — when they have someone like Andrew Bynum, who fans wanted to see, the Pyramid is packed. But other years it has been scouts, family, other players and some crickets in Long Beach.

HR Dept.

Bronson Arroyo -- 2
Wily Mo Pena -- 0

(Arroyo also has more wins.)

Warning: past performance predicts future results

It's always interesting to see someone go and put numbers to a long-standing belief. Sometimes conventional wisdom is overturned. Sometimes it is confirmed.

It's an old saw that in the NBA only 6~7 teams in the league have a real shot at the championship every year. In no other professional sport does success in the regular season so strongly predict success in the playoffs. In no other support are the gaps between 'good' and 'great' teams so large.

The pleasantly analytical folks over at lowpost.net have created a chart of the aggregate historic playoff results for each seed since 1984. The upshot? If you aren't one of the top 3 teams in your conference you probably won't be playing in the conference finals. If you aren't the best team in your conference, you're a long-shot to even make the finals. Win early and win often or you probably won't win what matters.

Coach Cal to NC State?

Why would you leave your position as the top dog in Memphis to become the shortest side in the Research Triangle? ESPN.com says John Calipari is considering the jump.

A penny saved is a penny earned

The pride of Concord, New Hampshire, hopefully makes lots of frugal granite state basketball fans nod appreciatively over this interview

But Toronto forward Matt Bonner, a spendthrift in a world of frequent excess, has put off investing in a set of wheels. The car-less Bonner, 25, prefers to get around Toronto by streetcars, the subway or his own size 16 feet. Fans and teammates call the 6'10" Bonner "the Red Rocket" -- the nickname of the city's streetcar system. "I'd rather buy something that appreciates in value than something that loses half of it when you drive it off the lot," says Bonner, who majored in business at Florida.

Traveling among the people has helped turn Bonner -- who'll often stroll the one mile from his home to the Air Canada Centre -- into one of Toronto's most popular sports figures. He truly does have the common touch. A Concord, N.H., native who's the son of an elementary schoolteacher (his mother, Paula) and a mailman (his father, David), Bonner spent the 2003-04 season playing for Sicilia, an Italian club so near to bankruptcy that he didn't draw a paycheck for half the season. Even though he signed a two-year deal with Toronto for $4 million last summer, he still needed a talking-to from Raptors coach Sam Mitchell, who advised him (it was pre-NBA dress code) to bring his wardrobe up to league standards.

Bonner, who averages 7.1 points a game, lives in a furnished, one-bedroom apartment in downtown Toronto and has used a portion of his earnings to move his parents from a two-bedroom condo to a three-bedroom house. But he hasn't splurged since -- not even for a little extra protein. "Just the other day I was at Subway and wanted to double the chicken in my sub," he recalls. "But it was $2 more. I was like, What a rip-off!"

Got scapegoat?

Basketball fans in Boston have found this a tiring, frustrating season. Most losing campaigns are. Fans in Indiana have even more reason to be frustrated, as the championship-contending campaigns they expected the last two years have each blown up in their faces.

At a certain point bitter, grumpy fans inevitably start looking around for someone to blame. Today the Indianapolis Star's Bob Kravitz takes shots at lots of folks, most pointedly Rick Carlisle.

A couple of years ago, Indiana Pacers president Larry Bird talked about the Three-Year Burnout Rule. It was like Al Davis' 10-Year Burnout Rule, except it applied to professional basketball rather than football. After three years of listening to a single coach's voice -- whether he was Miami's Pat Riley or Toronto's Sam Mitchell -- players stopped paying attention.

That, one suspects, is where the going-nowhere Indiana Pacers now reside.

They've tuned out coach Rick Carlisle.

They've tuned out the entire coaching staff.

And more and more, it seems like they've tuned out the season.

In classic smarmy style-- does he even know what he wants to say? or is he intentionally padding his criticism with token praise?-- Kravitz works in great little passages like this one:

Clearly, Carlisle deserves some of the responsibility for the decline of this season. He has too often coddled his stars. He has made some odd late-game decisions. And as long as he has been here, players have felt constrained by his paint-by-numbers offensive style.

And yet, I'm not ready to say he's at the heart of the problem, or that he should be in any kind of trouble with management. If anything, Carlisle represents the least of Indiana's problems.

Fact is, Carlisle took a good team to 60 victories and an Eastern Conference finals. He took a wounded team and did one of the finest coaching jobs in recent memory, leading them to the playoffs last year after the brawl and all its attendant fallout. As much as everybody wants to blame somebody -- and why not start with the coach? -- the fact is, injuries have forced him to use 30 starting combinations.

Kravitz may have no idea where he really stands on what Indiana ought to do but I do: Carlisle is one of the best coaches in the NBA. What he was able to do with a series of overachieving, undertalented Pistons teams in Detroit was very impressive. The same is true in Indiana. If for whatever reason the Pacers decide to cut ties with Rick I would count it a major coup if the Celtics could land him.

Indiana's last two seasons have been devastated by bad luck and horrible injuries. If the fans are dumb enough to call for their coaches head over it, and management dumb enough to listen, they'll only be making things worse. That ought to be the title of Bob's column.

Green Around The Edges

Gary Dzen has a nice "Boston.com only" item on Gerald Green.  In short, seems like the rookie is starting to put some of the pieces together.

Tebucky part deux

Seems like the Pats have re-signed Tebucky Jones and one of the Gramatica brothers.  Hopefully Jones has figured out how to take a good angle to the ball in his years with the Saints.  As for Gramatica, I'm betting he's going to have a little competition in training camp this year.

100 reasons to love Rasheed Wallace

The picture of a young Rasheed with Wilt Chamberlain is a classic. The rest of this post from Detroit Bad Boys is also a lot of fun. I especially liked this story of Rasheed's first practice at UNC going up against former lottery bust Eric Montross

First team scrimmage Ra's freshman year. Montross and Salvadori had been pushing Ra up and down the court, double teaming him down low, and talkin' shit the whole time. Evidently Ra went up for a turn around "J" in the lane only to have Montross and Salvadori club him and block his shot… each telling him to never bring that shit inside again. Next time down the court Ra caught a ball coming off of the rim at which time he did one of his backboard shaking monster dunks (a 9.5 on Pat Sullivan's grading scale) on Montross and Salvadori. Upon landing on his feet Ra pushed Montross into Salvadori and yelled, "You better recognize.. Motherf***er! Your job is mine!"

Another nice quote:

"We had some phantom technical fouls called when we had Rasheed. I know that. He'd just scream, he was so happy with a dunk and the next thing you know it's a technical foul. If I ever dunked, I would have screamed. If I'd go up and sky and dunk one, I'd scream too." –college basketball's all-time winningest coach Dean E. Smith

National champions

Florida deserves all kinds of props for their national championship. They played extermely well all tournament. Too bad last night's game was probably a marketing dud since it was so lob-sided as to be a boring watch for those who aren't hard core college hoops fans or NBA draftnicks. UCLA looks completely outmatched at every position except PG, which was a draw.

I don't have anything to add about Joakim Noah that hasn't been beaten to death in the press. Back at the start of the tourney when I wrote this post about him the Celtics were looking like they'd have about the 9th pick in the draft and Noah was just getting talked about as a possible lottery selection. Now it looks like the Celtics could end as high as 6th and have no shot at the guy.

Here's the question about Noah's draft prospects, though: if he plays as hard in the NBA as he did in the tournament his future is no worse than a great role player and decent starter. He's smaller and weaker than most NBA post players, though. If his motor idles back, how fast does his game disappear? Can he maintain the energy when he goes from two games on the weekend followed by five days off to an 82 game season with stretches of four games in five nights?

Returning, but not prodigal.

In case you missed it: "South Korea welcomed the return on Monday of its newfound sports hero Hines Ward, the Korean-American football star who left as a toddler."

Details, details

Bob Ryan, in today's ode to large college basketball players, manages to get the final four matchups wrong. And not in passing. He organizes a large section of his piece around a face-off that isn't happening.

Now, if you're a fan of the genre, boy, do we have a game for you. Make sure you tune in at 6:07 tonight, when contemporary college basketball's two best Certified Wide-Bodies -- one you probably know and one you might not be as familiar with -- will be playing each other.

LSU will feature sophomore Glen ''Big Baby" Davis, who stands 6-9 and whose own press guide lists him at 310. This, we are told, is down some 40 pounds from high school, where he was -- get ready -- a running back. Davis is a scary force who is almost criminally graceful for his size. He executed an up-and-under move to split two Texas defenders last week that would have made Kevin McHale proud. Then he stepped out and nailed a big three. Outrageous.

But George Mason has a CWB of its own. Jai Lewis is a 6-7 senior listed at 275. He is a hunk of young manhood, and it might take 35 seconds to run around one of his picks. This game might be the first time all season he won't necessarily be the most intimidating player on the floor. The idea of an occasional low-post joust featuring Big Baby and Just Plain Big Jai is an intriguing thought.

Do papers employ fact-checkers or editors any more? Does Bob bother to read and check his own work once he's done? There has been a solid week of non-stop hype around these two games and Ryan, as the Globe's primarily hoops reporter, has had nothing to do for 7 days but think about these games. Expecting him and the Globe to keep track of which team is playing which in the Final Four would seem to me a pretty easy bar to get over.

Perhaps its the rest of us that are fools for working for a living.