Category: Boston

Is Yesterday’s Patriots Win a Dead Cat Bounce?

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The Dolphins beating the Patriots with a Miami Miracle in Week 14 was a dead cat bounce. The Steelers beating the Patriots 17-10 in Week 15 was a dead cat bounce. The Vikings beating the Lions in Detroit in Week 16 was a dead cat bounce. That was not what we witnessed in Foxboro yesterday afternoon.

Of all that was said, written and Tweeted about the Patriots in the last 24 hours, this might be the most ridiculous.

What we witnessed in Foxboro yesterday was the systematic dismantling of a very good football team. The Patriots absolutely manhandled the Chargers. Tom Brady completed 34 of 44 pass attempts for 343 yards. Sony Michel rushed the ball 24 times for 129 yards and three touchdowns. Julian Edelman looked the best he’s looked all season and caught nine balls for 151 yards. James White caught 15 balls for 97 yards.

The Patriots defense held Philip Rivers to 25 of 51 on pass attempts. He did throw for 331 yards and three touchdowns, but much of that damage was done late in the fourth quarter when the game was already out of reach.

This is not to say that the Patriots will beat Kansas City on Sunday. It will be a very tough game on the road against a team that has already demonstrated that it can handle playoff pressure in the elements. But don’t tell me that the Chiefs are going to run the Patriots out of the building. That’s not going to happen. This will not be a repeat of September 29, 2014.

The Patriots may be underdogs on Sunday, but they’ve got a chip and a chair. Time and again, they’ve shown us that’s all they need.

 

Former Red Sox Third Baseman Will Middlebrooks Retires. Lets Revisit His Career

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Though in a much, much smaller sample size and not nearly as popular a player as No. 5 ever was, I could never shake the parallel between the two guy’s careers. Just like Nomar Garciaparra, Will Middlebrooks was a young, homegrown talent that raked when he got to Fenway as a rookie in 2012. Hit for power, hit for average, looked like a staple in your lineup for years to come. Until a fastball caught them both in the wrist, vastly altering the projection of their careers. Nomar rebounded and made a few more All-Star teams, but was never again the same player as the one who flirted with hitting .400 before the injury.

Middlebrooks effectively fell off a cliff after the broken wrist. Before the injury Middlebrooks was hitting .288 his rookie year with 15 home runs and 54 RBI in just 286 Plate Appearance. His emergence at third base was part of the reason the Red Sox traded fan favorite Kevin Youkilis just two months before.

Thankfully Middlebrooks locked down a ride or die woman in Jenny Dell because he was never the same player. In 2013 he hit 17 home runs, just 2 more than he had in his breakout rookie campaign with nearly 100 more Plate Appearances, and his average dropped 61 points. Unfortunately he never hit double digit home runs in a season again, plagued by injuries, as his Batting Average hovered around the Mendoza Line for the rest of his career.

It’s a damn shame because I remember watching him and seeing huge potential.

Either way, Will Middlebrooks will always be remembered as a key cog in the 2013 World Series winning team as well as party to one of the weirdest plays in World Series history.

Can’t take away that championship ring though. Congrats Will, enjoy retirement.

Will The Mass. Pike Overhaul in Allston Lead Red to Finally Have a Mental Breakdown?

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Boston.com – After years of debate, state transportation officials Thursday announced the final design on the biggest highway project in Boston in a generation: rebuilding the Massachusetts Turnpike at ground level in Allston and elevating a section of Soldiers Field Road along the Charles River onto a new viaduct above the highway.

I think one of the cooler daily blogs (I think it is the only daily blog) that we put out here at The 300s is Red’s #RushHourRap blog. It’s always sweet to learn about some old school hip hop you don’t know about.

What you may not have gathered from that blog is that the reason Red has a knack for musical discoveries is that he spends half of his waking life stuck dead in traffic commuting to and from work, surfing satellite radio for anything that will entertain him enough to keep his finger off the detonator of a suicide vest. It is the brutal, tedious way so many of us go through our Corporate American life. It is especially draining in the avant garde design of the Boston commute infrastructure. It is the bottleneck of the rat race.

And now, the state is sure going to make it worse. Not only are they going to conduct construction in around the areas Red has to navigate Monday through Friday, but Massachusetts has a rich history of completely fucking these kinds of problems up. So not only we staring down the barrel of typical construction traffic, we are looking at a full fledged clusterfuck of heavy equipment, detail cops, and broken dreams that will for sure go about 100x over budget, which currently stands at $1.1 billion.

So is this it? Is this the “improvement” that finally sends our Founder and EIC over the edge? Is he going to be found Kony 2012’ng down Storrow Drive after having moved 100 feet in three hours? I hope not, but I won’t hold my breath.

T’s and P’s old friend, T’s and Ps.

Time Lord Robert Williams Doesn’t Know What Day It is Because Time is Just a Social Construct

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Yahoo –  Boston Celtics rookie Robert Williams, sidelined the past five games with a groin injury, offered a refreshingly honest admission about the early days of NBA life.

“This might sound funny but I literally don’t know the days of the week,” Williams said after practice on (take note, Rob!) Sunday. “I promise, I couldn’t tell you what today is. I forget the days of the week. And with the traveling, mix up the hotel room numbers from the previous [night] – it’s a lot man. It’s a lot. It’s worth it though.”

Williams isn’t revealing anything that most rookies haven’t already experienced. The grind of NBA life, particularly with the heavy travel, makes it tough to keep the calendar straight. But in admitting it, Williams probably only strengthened the chances that his “Time Lord” nickname will stick.

Robert Williams doesn’t live in the same timeline of reality as normal human beings like you and me so he doesn’t know, nor need, the days of the week. Thats just how a Time Lord operates. So to that I say, forget these social constructs like “Monday” and just go out there and block some shots into the rafters, Robert.

Now go buy a Time Lord shirt!

Or better yet, a Time Lord clock…

The 300s Top 10 Blogs of 2018

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2018 was a banner year for The 300s as we saw our readership grow exponentially, we rolled out a ton of new swag, and we brought some new writers onto the staff. We appreciate everyone who takes a few minutes out of their day to read a blog or watch a video or listen to a podcast. With that being said, it’s the last day of the year so we had to break down the Top 10 Blogs of 2018.

1.) David Price Continues Good Will Tour, Rips 69-Year-Old Red Sox Reporter Jonny Miller

2.) Apparently Jon Gruden’s Son, Deuce Gruden, is the Goddamn Hulk

3.) RIP Mac Miller, Dead at 26

4.) Nike Deserves Applause for Choosing Colin Kaepernick as New Face of “Just Do It” Campaign

5.) Boston Celtics NBA 2K19 Ratings Predictions

6.) The Marlins Are Replacing the Ugly Home Run Statue With Irony

7.) Tough Break for Malden Men Who Recovered Red Sox Banner

8.) Terrible News: Ed Hochuli is Retiring. Better News: His Son is Replacing Him

9.) I LOVE This Quote From Rick Porcello

10.) Brock Lesnar Possibly Playing Ivan Drago’s Son In “Creed 2”

 

 

Just When I Thought the Patriots Were Out, They Pull Me Back In

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To paraphrase the great Vin Scully the Patriots are not only alive, they are well. As Dan Fouts said on the broadcast of yesterday’s game, reports of Brady’s (and the Patriots’) demise have been greatly exaggerated. While the 2018 Patriots team is not the steamroller that past teams have been, they still have a chip and chair. Looking around the table, there’s no one here they can’t beat.

That’s not to say the Patriots are the favorites. They’re not:

They’ll find out their divisional round opponent next week, and will host them on Sunday, January 13 at 1:05 PM. The Sunday game is a bit troubling, as the Patriots typically make better playoff runs when they open on a Saturday. Since 2001, the Patriots have always opened the playoffs at home and are 10-0 when opening the playoffs on a Saturday. They are 3-2 when opening the playoffs on a Sunday.

Prior to this season, the Patriots received first-round byes in 12 of their 15 playoff appearances since 2001. They have opened the playoffs at home after a bye week on a Saturday in nine out those 12 playoff runs. The Patriots won all nine of those Saturday night games. With an extra day of rest, they also went on to win the AFC Championship in seven of those nine seasons. The Patriots are just 1-2 in Brady Era AFC Championship games that come after a Sunday victory in the divisional round.

Still, it wouldn’t be shocking to see this team make a run. Would a Chiefs, Chargers or Texans slip up surprise anyone? The Ravens are 6-1 with Lamar Jackson at QB, but does anyone expect the Ravens to make a run with a rookie QB? Are the Colts with Andrew Luck the team to look out for? It’s the Anything Can Happen AFC!

I’d be just as hard pressed to predict who will come out of the NFC, but if forced to make a pick I would pick the Saints. Who ever comes out of the NFC, though, I’d have a hard time picking the Patriots to beat them in the Super Bowl. While it’s technically a neutral-site game and not a road game, I have a hard time seeing the Patriots going into a hostile environment and keeping up with the Saints (or Rams).

Of course I’d rather the Patriots be a 14-2 juggernaut heading into January, but this could still be a fun run to watch. While they’re not underdogs, they’re not the favorite either. With Brady 41 years old and Gronk possibly playing in his last few games as a Patriot, this could be last call for the Patriots Dynasty. If they could cap it off with another championship this year it might be the most impressive one, and most fun to watch.

Yet.

James Harden Took 18 Three Pointers Last Night and No One Batted An Eye

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Okay, granted he hit half of them, but James Harden took EIGHTEEN threes last night and no one even batted an eye. No one except my man, Chuck.

Eighteen three pointers is absolutely insane. It was more than double the amount anyone else on either team took last night. Again, yes he hit 9 of them so he shot .500 from behind the arc and scored 45 points but holy hell what a stat line. He only made TWO shots inside the three point line all night. The reigning MVP scored 4 points inside the arc. Analytics will probably say he was taking the best available shots based on his shooting percentage, but thats still mind boggling to think about. Getting 17 foul shots and hitting 14 of them helps alleviate that a bit, but damn. It’s not like he’s JJ Reddick who can only score when he’s out deep away from lockdown defenders either.

Harden leads the league in 3 point attempts and 3 pointers made despite not even being in the Top 100 in 3 Point % among players with at least 50 3 point attempts. Daniel Theis has a better 3 point % than Harden!

But hey, 45 points is 45 points. If it’s such a crime against humanity the Celtics should have, ya know, guarded the 3 point line a little better.

I touched on this phenomenon a little bit when I blogged about how, unfortunately, Kendrick Perkins saw the game pass him by as everyone became a three point shooter. You could blame Steph Curry, but the game had been trending this way for a while.

“[From] 2010-11 the average 3 point attempts per game around the league have nearly doubled from 18 attempts per game to 31.3 per game this season. In the previous 8 seasons before that, average 3 point attempts per game had only increased about three from a low of 14.7 in 2002-03. So no one could have predicted the game completely changing the way it has.”

Somewhere Charles Barkley just shakes his head in disbelief.

 

 

The Robert Williams Time Lord T-Shirts Are Here and They Are Fantastic

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Update: Buy Time Lord shirts here!

So Robert Williams is finally starting to get some burn off the bench with Al Horford out and he has ran with that opportunity. The Time Lord has been rewarding Mattes and I for all the hype pieces we wrote before he even clocked into an NBA game. So we decided now was the perfect time for Bob to get his own shirt. Robert Williams’ time is now. The Time Lord shirts are here and we’ll be taking pre-orders on them starting today!

Here’s the backstory on the Time Lord nickname via MassLive if you aren’t constantly on Celtics Twitter:

“The Celtics, of course, selected Williams at No. 27. When Williams was late for a conference call and absent for the team’s first Summer League practice, the media reaction was intense.

“I’m irony poisoned, but to me it was hilarious,” Hebert said. “Manny Ramirez is the first athlete I loved and it was very Manny. And like, local writers and talk-radio people overreacted, and the whole point of Weird Celtics Twitter is to make fun of them and media in general being too uptight. …

So (we) started joking that he wasn’t late, he was operating on a different timeline concurrent to the one we are in, as evidenced by the fact that I knew he was a Celtic two years before he was a Celtic. And we would do it with people taking themselves really seriously and they’d get very mad at us for thinking they were too uptight. So from there he became a T I M E L O R D, like the characters in Doctor Who whose time travel can tie together terrible holes in the plot of a shoddy script.”

Kyrie Irving Said He Meets With a Mystical Board of People for Advice

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This quote came courtesy of Chris Forsberg, in which Kyrie said he meets with a mystical board of wise people for advice.

He is literally describing the Jedi High Council.

So is Kyrie Irving a Jedi? It would explain the insane handle and ball control in traffic; dude’s been using the force this whole time. It would also explain his overly elaborate and theatrical style of speaking. Kyrie is simply stuffed to the gills with midichlorians.

The Celtics’ Robert Williams AKA Time Lord Put on a Show Last Night

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Update: Buy Time Lord shirts here!

With pretty much everyone of note sitting last night (Kyrie, Hayward, and Horford) there were plenty of minutes to go around. Enter Robert Williams AKA Time Lord, who got his first taste of legit NBA time with 26 minutes last night and boy did he put on a show. The Time Lord finished with 7 points and 11 rebounds, but for a young, raw player he was a force on the glass. Before last night Williams hadn’t played more than 8 minutes in any game this year so it was great to get an extended look at the 1st round pick. He was even a couple of inches away from being No. 1 on SportsCenter as he muffed an alley oop attempt. The highlight of the night for my young neighbor in Brighton though was this absolutely devastating block of arguably the best player in the game Anthony Davis.

Davis still finished with 41 points so nobody was shutting AD down, but that block was Williams making a statement. He actually had 3 blocks on the night as he made his presence known.

The kid can play and he may be the “rim defender” the Celtics have been looking for all these years.