How did that happen?
How did the Celtics play almost perfect defense and lose? How did they make 2010 Kobe Bryant look like rookie chucker Kobe Bryant for most of the game and lose? How did the strategy of "make Ron Artest beat us" backfire so soundly? How is it that the Lakers are celebrating this morning and we're feeling like this?
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Results tagged “rasheedwallace”
For five games in this series, the team on the losing end could look back and say," if we had just done this {better defense/better shooting/Tonya Harding'ed the refs}, we easily could have won this game." Not last night, brother.
The Boston Red Sox love them some Philadelphia Phillies. For the third consecutive game with Philly, the Sox earned a convincing win with a 12-2 rout. The Sox wasted no time in dismissing Philly with 12 runs in the first three innings after a five-run barrage in the first inning. The 12 runs came with 17 hits, eight of which were for doubles.
We've seen some surreal sights in our time as Boston sportswatchers. And honestly, we thought "Gagne getting a ring" would never be topped. But there we were last night, watching as Doc Rivers sent two and a half future Hall of Famers to the scorer's table, then called them back to the bench, in crunch time in the Finals, because he didn't want to take Glen Davis, Nate Robinson and Tony Allen off the floor.
Two caveats: (1) Most of your half-assed, ill-informed sports bloggers will be making all sorts of gleeful references to the Bruins' recent collapse and acting as if they're cracking the code of the Knights Templar by comparing it to the now 3-2 series lead the Celtics have. We will not be among them. (2) It's unseemly to complain about refereeing, unless you're a Lakers fan. We will therefore try to keep that to a minimum.
When the 2010 Boston Red Sox are finally buried for good (and you might have noticed a backhoe or two headed towards Kenmore Square this morning, possibly with a shock of curly red hair flopping out from under a hard hat), May 17th is going to shine out as a key day in their march towards the grave.
Remember when the Celtics used to blow double-digit leads as a matter of course? If you do remember - and we can't blame you, with the words "epic collapse" thrown around town so freely in the last 72 hours - you were probably as nervous as we were in the fourth quarter yesterday afternoon, when a rusty, inept Orlando team suddenly turned a 20 point lead into a nailbiter. But the Celtics held on, and won 92-88 for a 1-0 series lead.
The Celtics don't play Cleveland again until Friday night at the Garden. Essentially a four-day gap between games is ridiculous unless Boston wins, and then it's pure genius. We're bored until then.
Wow. A lot happened this weekend. Some of it good. Some of it bad. Some of it inexplicable. Let's start with the good news.
The Red Sox have found their offense! On a rainy day in Minnesota (the crowd chanted "Out-door Base-ball", which is very cute and Minnesota), the Sox got some spark from Dustin Pedroia and company to beat the Twins 6-3 and set up today's rubber match.
Lots of small, easy to remember numbers in the local sporting world today. Let's start with the bad-ish news.
Somewhere between "walkoff HR by Julio Lugo" and "26 points, 15 rebounds for Rasheed Wallace" lies the recent clutch performance of the Bruins' Dennis Wideman. Having spent the whole year in a funk beyond funk, booed off the ice multiple times, Wideman suddenly has the announcers raving about his energy, and suddenly has a big time goal to his credit.
You can blame it on the rain. Or the refs. Or whatever. But the Celtics were just flat-out beaten last night, by a spunky Oklahoma City team and its superstar shooter.
Maybe this will be the one that gets to them. The collapses against Orlando and Cleveland didn't do it. The close loss to LA didn't do it. The having to struggle just to get by Detroit and Washington didn't do it. And the loss to New Jersey didn't do it.
Well, that was something. Coming after a shaky stretch and an embarrassing collapse against Cleveland, the Celtics delighted a home crowd by playing their signature brand of tough D and opportunistic offense, taking advantage of a historically bad Nets team and rolling off their biggest blowout of the year.
It wasn't pretty, but the Celtics will take an unpretty win over an unpretty loss any day of the week.
Another loss. Another first-half lead thrown away. Another Rasheed Wallace fine. At least this time, it was on the road.
The Celtics, who once dreamed of 70+ wins, are now under .500 in the year 2010. In fact, they've been winless since the Patriots were knocked out of the playoffs, except for that charity game against New Jersey high schoolers. Kevin Garnett's due back tomorrow, and we need him.
We've dealt with worse. We know that you woke up this morning to a world you don't recognize, where our glory days are indubitably behind us, where you don't know if you can trust your neighbor anymore, where living in Boston doesn't feel any better than living in Cincinnati or Oklahoma.
We are talking about sports here, by the way.
The only way yesterday could have been more shocking and more sudden? If Nicolas Cage, dressed in a bear suit, had come out and slugged Tom Brady on the way out of the tunnel (see this clip, at 1:19, for what that may have looked like). At least that would have had the blessing of being over in a second and letting us flip over to a satisfying Celtics win.
Boston team's lost two games on Friday that both could have been won. Each team led early and then fell behind before losing in the end. Philadelphia stopped the Celtics' 11-game winning streak with a 98-97 decision. The Bruins lost to the Chicago Blackhawks, 5-4, in a shootout.
Rasheed Wallace collected another technical, and will be donating a lot of money very soon, which we'll talk about in a second. Rajon Rondo (as seen here) had a lot on his mind, and so did Pierce, and KG, and Doc, and everyone else in Green. And the refs heard it all, and somehow only T'd up Rasheed. We don't quite understand it, either. But when it mattered most, the C's let their defense and clutch shooting do the talking, and held on after some wild moments to beat Miami, 92-85, to start their road trip.
Superficially, it looked like the old rivalry again. The Sixers have brought back the old logo, the old floor from the Spectrum (more or less) and uniforms that hearken back to the days of Dr. J and Andrew Toney. But the team that Philly put on the floor last night was no match for the early 09-10 Celtics. The '83 Sixers might not have been.
The Celtics are beating good teams by double digits. They're ticking off All-Star opponents. They're 4-0 after dispatching the Hornets last night at the Garden. And most importantly, they seem to have locked up their point guard for a few more years.
So says Doc, and it's a little easier to say now, after the Celtics withstood an early barrage from the Cavaliers and came back to win their season opener, 95-89.
Mother Nature was as sick of it as you were.
Josh Beckett was a very late scratch with back spasms, so the Sox sent young Michael Bowden to the mound with about 15 minutes' notice to try to stop the Blue Jays. Five innings later, Bowden and reliever Hunter Jones had both been sent to the showers with ERAs over 10. Two innings after that, the skies opened up and put the Sox and the Fenway crowd out of their misery. Final score: 11-5, Toronto, in seven innings.
The newest Celtic hit town yesterday. With his three-man recruiting committee by his side (we wonder how much guts it would take to turn down a job when Paul, Ray and Kevin come to your interview), Rasheed Wallace met the press and said everything we like to hear when a new guy comes to town. WEEI has a transcript of most of those things. He says he felt Boston gave him the best chance to win, he's looking forward to playing with KG every night, he (for the moment, anyway) doesn't care whether he starts or how much he plays. Sheed will wear #30 for the Green, which has had a really rough stretch since M.L. Carr took it off in 1985. Mark Blount and Sebastian Telfair were the latest to wear it. We hope Wallace does better things, but frankly, we don't see how he couldn't.
We're gonna go ahead and declare this the Summer of Wake. Sure, we noted yesterday that Josh Beckett's the anchor of the rotation. And we're not going to forget to spread the love around when guys deserve it. But in his first start since learning his All-Star status, Tim Wakefield hung around long enough to get graced by a Sox comeback, earn his 11th win, and be carried off the field on a metaphorical wave of cheers.
Wakefield's been pitching out of his mind. Penny and Lester have been good, for the most part, but not great. Smoltz is still a giant question mark. Dice-K seems to have been rightly sent on the "Julio Lugo Not-Really-Injured Tour Of The World". The one constant, with apologies to Terence Mann, is Josh Beckett.
Jason Bay. Dustin Pedroia. Jonathan Papelbon. Kevin Youkilis. Josh Beckett. All have been to All-Star Games before. All are young, and will probably go again. So congratulations to them, but we know and they know that they aren't the headline on this All-Star Selection story.
The Red Sox staff had no answers for the bottom of Seattle's order as Rob Johnson and Ronny Cedeno combined to go 5-10 with five RBI in a 7-6 Sox loss in 11 innings. Johnson's two-run double in the 11th inning was the deciding hit in the game. Ramon Ramirez took the loss.