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. . . and then there’s the Celtics

BY CHRISTOPHER YOUNG

Intentionally or not, Thursday’s Boston Globe sports-section layout was an accurate microcosm of where the area’s sports teams rank in local fans’ consciousness right now.

In the symmetrical set-up, a seven-by-10-inch photo was framed by five stories: two separate pieces side by side across the top featuring Super Bowl coverage; down the left side, a game-recap of the Boston College men’s hoops team’s 17th straight victory; down the right, a Red Sox piece outlining the recent trade of Doug Mientkiewicz to the Mets; and spanning across the bottom of that front page, wa-a-a-ay below the fold, we present to you your first-place Boston Celtics, 100-86 winners over the Indiana Pacers on Wednesday night.

And this is what it’s come to. The Celtics, winners of 16 NBA championships and playoff qualifiers each of the last three seasons, barely make the sports section’s front page despite first-place standing and being the only pro team playing this week.

BC, one of only three remaining undefeated Division I basketball teams heading into the weekend, certainly deserved its spot on the page, but it says something about the totem-pole status in this town when a group of twentysomethings who rarely even sell out their own 8600-seat arena can get more prominent ink than the legendary Sons of Red Auerbach. Also usurping the Celts’ domain was a story detailing an innocuous trade by a baseball team (albeit a championship one) that hasn’t played a meaningful game in exactly three months and won’t play another one for another two.

Never has a first-place team been so ignored by the local fandom than this edition of the Green and White. And there’s good reason, too. Heading into Friday’s NBA slate of action, the Celtics were just 20-22, and just three days removed from putting the kibosh on a nine-game road losing streak. How can a team be two games under .500 and sit atop its division, you ask? Simple, Keds-breath: because the four other teams in the mighty Atlantic Division are even more wretched — hard as that may be to believe in the mediocre Eastern Conference.

The Celts have a half-game lead over the 19-22 76ers at this point, but if Doc Rivers’s lads were in the East’s Southeast Division, they’d be in fourth place, eight full games behind first-place Miami. Almost the same deal in the Central: placed in that division, Boston’s mark would be good enough for fifth place — a full game behind the aforementioned fourth-place Pacers, who at least have a good excuse for being only 20-20 (half their starters were suspended in the infamous Palace at Auburn Hills brouhaha back in November).

Nine of the East’s 15 teams are at .500 or below, and two of its members — 8-30 Charlotte and 8-32 Atlanta — are truly pathetic. That, of course, didn’t stop the expansion Bobcats from nearly knocking off the Green on Tuesday, and didn’t prevent the putrid Hawks from actually rallying from a 17-point second-half deficit to stun Boston, 100-96 last Saturday to notch their all-important eighth win.

The C’s are doggone lucky they’re not in the Western Conference, because they certainly wouldn’t have that coveted third seed in the upcoming playoffs if they resided out there. No sirree, Bob Cousy, they wouldn’t (they'd be tied with the LA Clippers for the 10th slot in the conference); put them in the West’s Southwest Division and they’d be a whopping 13 games out of first place, and ahead of only 7-34 New Orleans — a team which earlier this season lost 19 of 20 games at one point. The only Western division where Boston would be higher than fifth place would be in the Northwest, but they’d still be a solid nine-and-a-half games in arrears of pace-setting Seattle.

Oh, the Celtics have done some good things this season, and their 14-6 home record and earlier victories over the Sonics, Cavs, and Magic attest to that, but to consider them a playoff team — much less a division winner — at this point is a joke plus one. And of the Green’s 20 victories, only six have been against winning teams. In addition, the inconsistent squad has inexplicably dropped contests to such bottom-feeders as the Warriors, Nets, Raptors, and Pacers (in a game played two days after the brawl, when Indy was missing its three best players to the commish’s edict). Had the C’s not pulled away at the very end in Charlotte this past Tuesday, they would have returned to the FleetCenter enduring the shame of dropping back-to-back games to the first-year Bobcats and the Antoine Walker–led Hawks — two teams with all of 16 wins between them.

Oh, it’s not the Celtics’ fault that they’re not the world-champion Patriots or Red Sox right now, nor are they a top-10 NCAA hoops entity. But one would think that with such veteran leadership on the roster as Gary Payton, Paul Pierce, Mark Blount, and Ricky Davis, they would be a little bit better than 20-22 in such a second-rate conference. On top of that, one could argue that the only reason the team is not worse than it is already is because of the efforts of rookie standouts Al Jefferson (who will now probably miss a month with a high ankle sprain suffered on Wednesday), who was in high school last year, and Tony Allen, who led Oklahoma State to the NCAA’s Final Four last March.

Even more disheartening for the Celtics is that they’ve had the FleetCenter all to themselves all fall and winter, and still haven’t been able to take advantage attendance-wise of the NHL’s enduring lockout. (Maybe it’s because when the franchise reached out to hockey-deprived Bruins season-ticket holders to sign up for Celtics packages instead, single-game seat prices averaged over $100 apiece.)

At any rate, in another 10 days the local hoops juggernaut will have the pro-sports limelight all to themselves, if only because they’ll be the only ones left playing.

The question continues to arise, though, first place or not: does or will anybody really care?

Sporting Eye runs Mondays and Fridays at bostonphoenix.com, and Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com

 


Issue Date: January 28, 2005
"Sporting Eye" archives: 2005 | 2004 | 2003 |2002
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