It’s St. Patrick’s day, when we honor the life of the patron saint of Ireland by drinking gallons of beer and whiskey and eating salt-cured meats.
This would also make St. Patrick the patron saint of the gastrointestinal tract because it’s a miracle anyone survives a day of self-abuse like that.
Nonetheless, today’s a day of celebration. And I bet you didn’t realize there's an Irish connection with your local professional basketball club. Yes, “Celtics” is actually Irish! Who knew?!?
So let’s raise a few pints in celebration, or at least to drink away the memories of the last couple of weeks. Nothing some Guinness and Jameson can't get us through on a Friday evening.
- Let’s raise a pint to Jaylen Brown, for telling it like it is.
“Let's play with a little bit more urgency, let’s play with a little bit more fire. Because those are the moments that matter the most, in my opinion. Everything's cool when everything's fine, when everybody's hitting shots. But when the boat is going down, who's gonna step up, who's gonna be ready to go?”
I’m no fan of canned answers with the media. Now, obviously, you might say ‘of course not, John. You’re the media and you want juicy quotes!’ And of course, yes, we all love a quote machine like Evan Turner or Marcus Morris. But also, I just want someone to be honest with us. It doesn’t have to be bare-your-soul kind of honesty, but we can also tell when we’re being lied to.
I think there's a nice balance between being honest and revealing too much. Brad Stevens is really good at that. This quote from Brown lays enough on the line to call people out without saying ‘hey, specific teammate, I’m tired of your crap.’
Though I will say his post-Rockets comments about arguing with the refs while someone scores is clearly directed at Marcus Smart, who spent time arguing with a ref while his guy, Kenyon Martin, Jr., ran down the court for a dunk.
And there's nothing wrong with that either, so long as Brown makes sure he’s not guilty of that himself. If you’re going to call out a teammate, you’d better be pretty unassailable yourself.
- Let’s raise a pint to Marcus Smart, for exhibiting some self awareness
He was asked in Minneapolis by the Boston Globe to evaluate his season.
“It’s mediocre. We all see it. I see it. It’s tough … It’s tough, but you’ve just got to keep going. But, it’s mediocre for me.”
I think Smart’s season started out pretty well. I just think production has dropped off over the past month or so.
I think one myth has to be dispelled here. A lot of people think Smart wants to shoot a million shots and “thinks he’s Steph Curry” when in actuality he just wants to be a point guard running the team. The problem is that the Celtics run a lot of offense through Brown and Jayson Tatum’s hands, so that pushes Smart off the ball and he gets a lot of wide open shots. Joe Mazzulla wants guys to take open shots, so Smart takes them. If he doesn't take them, he becomes Ben Simmmons, and we don’t want that.
There's plenty to gripe about when it comes to Smart’s performance, but I don’t think it has anything to do with him wanting to be more than who he is. I think Smart just wants to be who he actually is.
- Let’s raise a pint to the Indiana Pacers, for doing Boston a favor
The Pacers basically erased Boston’s horrible loss to the Rockets by beating the Milwaukee Bucks last night. That puts the Bucks up two on Boston with 12 games to play. If Boston can beat Milwaukee later in the month, then they just need to be one game better than the Bucks the rest of the way.
Of course, if the Celtics had won in Houston, they’d only be one game out, but we’re three beers into this whole exercise and that seems like less of a concern now.
- Let’s raise a pint to Grant Williams, for making plays when they mattered (and do a shot for every missed call on the last two minute report related to these plays)
It hasn’t been a great month for Williams, but I have to acknowledge him sticking with it at the end of the Minnesota game to make two critical plays to seal the win. The offensive rebound and jump ball win were huge at the end of another rough game for him.
Okay, now let’s have the bartender line up some Jamo shots because we’re four beers deep and judgment is out the window. Let’s hit that L2M report
Shot #1: 00:05.4 - McDaniels (MIN) and Gobert (MIN) initiate contact with Williams' (BOS) left and right arm, respectively, which causes Williams to lose control of the ball in the lane.
Williams gets the offensive rebound and is fouled twice. No call.
Shot #2: 00:03.7 - Stoppage: Out-of-Bounds, Rudy Gobert
Gobert has the ball and is out of bounds. No call.
Shot #3: 00:03.1 - Foul: Technical, Celtics
Joe Mazzulla was bounding onto the floor trying to call a timeout. No one saw him so he was another second away from hopping onto a ref’s back, piggy back-style, and yelling timeout into his ear. Maybe the refs should pay attention to someone trying to call timeout.
Shot #4: 00:03.1 - Violation: Jump Ball, Grant Williams
Williams (BOS) tips the jump ball prior to it reaching its apex.
The lesson here, apparently, is whenever your only chance at success is doing something illegal, do it. Maybe they won’t notice.
But the first two missed callstell us it never should have come to that, though. Just like we shouldn’t already be four beers and four shots into the day. But it’s St. Patrick’s day, so it’s cool.
Sláinte!
