The years of devotion eventually pay off, although AFTER I move 100 miles away from the Fleet Center and can’t afford to go anyway. One game I managed to convince my father to attend with me during the Antoine-Pierce-O’Brien years was against Minnesota. We lost and Garnett was primarily the reason – rebounding on both ends and managing to will his team up a notch higher than its talent would put it otherwise. Back then he was running with Joe Smith, Troy Hudson, Wally…but they could beat us more often than not whether in Minnesota or at home.
Now he’s playing alongside Paul Pierce and Ray Allen. Nothing could convince me that it was a done deal until today, and even then I was anticipating some sort of letdown. I suspect this is the real deal, and somehow from the Draft Lottery to today, Danny Ainge has pulled off something the ping pong balls were determined to deny us. Of course, Bill Simmons puts a perfect column together on this deal, so I’ll leave it at that and direct you to his words. (McHale adds another notch to his Celtics legacy)
Yeah, Congrats man! I was pretty disappointed that we let “The Big Ticket”, KG, go. He’s been the single reason for a few years now I would attend a game at the Target Center.
I do like Gomes, Jefferson, and some of the cap relief we are getting, but still think we got screwed and have given the Celtics the Eastern Conference and a good shot at an NBA Title.
Have fun watching KG, he’s been a pleasure to watch for 12 seasons!
You’ll really like Al Jefferson’s ability to score down low. His repetoire is already better than 95% of the league down on the box. Questions about Al center around his conditioning and how injury-prone he’ll be.
Ryan Gomes is a gamer, and you’ll like him. Telfair is a loser…he had a golden opportunity last season, and it seemed like he was nervous, with his shot especially. He didn’t seem to know when to put one up.
Cap relief is a valuable thing, but in the NBA (being a Boston fan, I know about this) the free agents don’t sign with teams that have no chance. I’m not sure that the draft picks that came back are going to do much good, although, one was a conditional pick for your own team, so not losing that will be a big plus.
I’m not really sure about McHale as a GM, but I’m loving the fact that he is one right about now!