green with envy, or nausea?

it's funny, but as i sit here and sweat like some sort of farm animal and like it - come on now, it's nice and hot two, maybe three months of the year around here and cold and shitty all the rest of the time - i sort of can't believe the hold that basketball has taken over the local sports discussion... shouldn't people be talking more about the sox and how good they seem to be? or the pats and how with training camp less than a month away, they look like the odds on faves for another ring? or how sad it is for arsenal fans everywhere that the magnificent henry has been sold to barcelona (ok, that was a blatant shout out/plea for readership to two specific buddies and my english second cousin who has season tickets to all gunners games)?

nope... it's nba draft or bust this week, much to the chagrin of my handful (if that) of readers who can barely stand it when i talk baseball... moreover, it's what the celtics are going to do - a topic that on the surface appears to have as much relevance as paris hilton's disdain for her orange jail jumpsuit... but the celts, a team whose annual futility is threatening to soon make them as much of a laughingstock as the bruins, are buzzworthy right now... truth be told, a lot of the buzz surrounds what they can possibly do to completely screw up this time around, as they've becoming so adept at screwing up over the last 10-15 years or so... but at least people are talking about them and that - for a moment anyway - makes me feel ok about my very first favorite team...

all right, that moment was fleeting... in all honesty, it seems hard to muster the faith that danny ainge will make the right move by the celtics... if he does, i'm also skeptical that doc rivers will be able to make it work... the bottom line here is that with a little less that 48 hours left until the draft and with the celtics in full-on panic mode for over a month now thanks to openly tanking the second half of last season in an effort to get one of the first two picks in this draft, then not getting a chance at either, one of two things is going to happen... either a) the celtics will trade their first round pick (no. 5 overall) and the best of their wealth of young players for kevin garnett, easily a first ballot hall-of-famer who is perilously close to the top of the hill and is not signed beyond next season, or b) they will draft the chinese kid who won't be ready to contribute anything meaningful for at least three years, then trade paul pierce (if his head hasn't exploded first) and continue to completely suck for the foreseeable future...

there are upsides and downsides to both possibilities... if they draft yi jianlian and trade pierce, rivers won't last the season... look, he's a nice guy, the press loves him and he seems to be a good pal to a lot of the players... but does that matter all that much? he hasn't won consistently, has never proven that he can and has gotten significantly worse record-wise since he got here three years ago... plus, it doesn't matter one iota if he's nice to reporters and a big brother to all the tykes on the roster... all that matters is that he wins and that the young guys get better and outside of al jefferson, who would have improved if i was the coach given his talent, who really is that much better than when doc took over? answer: nobody... no garnett trade equals another year of being lucky to win 25 games and doc being fired sometime before valentine's day...

if they make the deal for garnett (or get jermaine o'neal from indiana without trading jefferson or get andrei kirilenko from utah, both of which seem unlikely), the upside is that they will immediately be a playoff team and in the eastern conference, which is like the minor leagues, just making the playoffs could mean big, exciting things (though that is far from a given)... the downsides are that jefferson, who looks like he could be a great, important player down the road, not to mention the fact that all the other young guys except trick-or-treater gerald green have pretty much already reached their ceilings, will be gone... also, garnett will not necessarily be on the team for more than one year and if he isn't, it makes the potential deal not just bad, but unconscionable, given jefferson's enormous talent and the possibility that whomever goes to minnesota at no. 5 could wind up being pretty good...

so there you have it... i'm on record here as saying that i wouldn't do the deal, that garnett is an all-time great but will only help so much, that jefferson is too important down the road and that a lesser deal that won't cost as much is the way to go... i've heard/read several opinions in the last couple days from people in basketball whom i respect say the exact opposite - that the celtics must do whatever it takes to get the deal done... i'm not so sure... one thing that i am sure of, however, is that whatever decision ainge makes, it will a) be interesting, b) be dissected in print, on television and on the radio 200 times over, and c) likely prove at some point in the not-too-distant future to have been completely and totally wrong... and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the current state of your boston celtics... go green!