Jackie goes multimedia

The text is largely from the piece MacMullan wrote the other day, but this slideshow adds photos to all the lousy moves the team has made in the last decade.

Jackie weighs in

Jackie MacMullan provides her first post-lottery commentary with the rather appropriate message: suck it up

Boston is cursed, all right -- with bad decisions. The blame can be shared among many. Former CEO Dave Gavitt drafted Earl. M.L. Carr presided over the Montross years. Pitino hastily dumped Billups and a list of others. Wallace pulled the trigger on the Baker deal. Even the master, Red Auerbach, erred by insisting on drafting Smith in 1989 and Joseph Forte in 2001.

Every team makes mistakes. Yet Boston's peers have recovered much quicker.

The Lakers, dominant in the '80s alongside the Celtics, won three additional titles from 2000-02. The Detroit Pistons won back-to-back championships in '89 and '90, reloaded, and won again in 2004, thanks, in part, to the Celtics, who arranged a three-way deal that delivered Rasheed Wallace to the Pistons and netted Boston Chucky Atkins and a draft pick.

After Michael Jordan retired, the Bulls endured rocky moments, but made it to the Eastern Conference semifinals this season and are encouraged by a young nucleus that includes Luol Deng, Ben Gordon, Tyrus Thomas, and Kirk Hinrich.

The Celtics have a young nucleus, too. Danny Ainge's finest moment was in the 2004 draft, when he grabbed Jefferson, Delonte West, and Tony Allen, all in the first round.

But Ainge's questionable trades have hampered his team. The addition of Wally Szczerbiak left Boston with a high-salaried, injury-prone shooter whose game is incompatible with that of Pierce's and makes the Celtics dangerously deficient on the defensive end.

Ainge's fascination with Sebastian Telfair has been disastrous. He acquired him from Portland along with Theo Ratliff and traded Raef LaFrentz, Dan Dickau, and the No. 7 pick, which turned out to be Brandon Roy, who, in case you missed it, was Rookie of the Year this season.

Roy went to Secaucus this week to represent Portland in the draft lottery. His team had a 5.3 percent chance of landing the No. 1 pick, and he brought it home.

You might say Roy is a very lucky young man.

You might believe the Celtics are cursed for passing on him, then watching him win the Oden sweepstakes for his team.

But good teams don't rely on luck. They make their own luck.

It's long past the time for the Boston Celtics to do just that.

Well put

You want a reason for hope?

This is all I got right now:

1. James
2. Milicic
3. Anthony
4. Bosh
5. Wade

Let's not talk about the NBA draft.

Some fun with Excel.

Here are the teams in AL, ranked by winning percentage:

BOS 0.689
CLE 0.643
DET 0.614
LAA 0.609
CWS 0.537
OAK 0.500
SEA 0.488
MIN 0.467
NYY 0.455
TOR 0.455
BAL 0.444
TAM 0.409
TEX 0.391
KAN 0.378

Now, here are the teams ranked by runs scored/runs allowed differential:

BOS 241 165 76
LAA 211 169 42
OAK 200 163 37
CLE 233 197 36
DET 240 211 29
NYY 236 209 27
MIN 204 202 2
TOR 201 206 -5
CWS 168 182 -14
BAL 192 207 -15
SEA 180 203 -23
TEX 232 257 -25
KAN 183 227 -44
TAM 195 262 -67

And now, here are the AL teams ranked by the degree to which they're outperforming their differential:

CWS 0.075
CLE 0.052
DET 0.045
SEA 0.045
TAM 0.037
LAA -0.015
BAL -0.020
KAN -0.025
TOR -0.033
MIN -0.038
BOS -0.041
TEX -0.060
NYY -0.110
OAK -0.113

Got that? Based solely on runs scored and allowed, the Red Sox should be winning even more games. But so should the Yankees and A's.

What a miserable night

Having gone through this with Duncan ten years ago, we now get to go through it again with Oden and Durant.

Can we finally fire Ainge?

Which of the following odds are now greater:

- Pierce demands a trade this summer, his value tanks, the Celtics are forced to move him for pennies on the dollar (e.g. Corey Maggette and drek), and we're all handicapping the odds of drafting OJ Mayo in twelve months

- Ainge drafts the Chinese Darko Milicic with the 5th pick and we watch him turn into a borderline starter at the only position where we already have an above-average young player

Why am I still a Celtics fan? How much abuse do we get to take before this turns around?

So, what qualifies as failure?

This last season Doc Rivers led the Celtics to the second-worst record in franchise history, oversaw a franchise-record 18 game losing streak, failed to implement anything like a coherent offensive scheme for yet another year, ran a team that played lousy defense most nights and failed to significantly develop any young player other than Al Jefferson.

So the team gives him an extension.

I'm really curious here: what would be grounds for getting fired?

When Pete Carroll was fired from the Patriots, Bob Kraft stood up at a semi-emotional press conference and spent the entire time talking about how much he admired Carroll as a person and as a coach. 80% of what came out of his mouth was positive things about Carroll. But he also said very clearly: this is a result-based, accountability business and the Patriots had put together three straight years of declining win totals. Kraft made it clear: if you don't deliver the results, you're gone.

The Celtics just finished their third straight year of declining win totals, with this last being a historic train wreck. Who is accountable? I gather the team doesn't consider the coach responsible for the team's performance, since they just extended him.

Here's an easy prediction: conspiracy theorists will say this was Doc's pre-arranged reward for throwing games this season and increasing the team's lottery chances. The sad thing is that this almost casts ownership in a better light than the alternative.