Tag: Boston

Did Enes Kanter Just Leak the New Celtics Jerseys?

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It sure looks like he did. Kanter just put this up on his IG Story, which The Athletic’s Emily McCarthy is speculating could be the Celtics’ new City Edition jersey.

The City Edition jerseys are basically a shameless cash grab by Nike and the NBA, which I’m okay with because I’m a self proclaimed jersey guy. But only when they’re good. These jerseys would seem to hit the right note with the Gaelic lettering, but I can’t say I understand the teal coloring? Unless thats a deep cut Irish reference (Saint Patrick’s blue?) that I’m missing, it actually looks more like a Charlotte Hornets jersey, at least from the back. Welp, either way looks like Kanter should just put Whistleblower on the back of his jersey for this leak. Appreciate the early look!

PS – I’m still holding out hope Nike brings back the NBA Christmas Edition jerseys that the league used to do. Nike did away with it when they took over the jersey contract, most likely so they could roll out the City Edition jerseys. But give me a new Christmas Kemba jersey and you can charge my credit card today.

Whats the Most Random Sports Shirt/Jersey You Own?

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I think to classify as a “random” shirt or jersey it has to be a guy that was elite for a short period of time, a cult hero in no way due to their actual athletic prowess ( I was *this* close to buying a Gabe Kapler Yomiuri Giants jersey in 2005), a player that was only on a team for a hot minute (I’ve seen two John Lynch Patriots jerseys in Allston over the years), or a jersey that is so obscure that it should not realistically belong to you.

I am an unabashed jersey guy so I have a closet full of obscure pieces beyond just the Boston teams. The Priest Holmes jersey I bought in a Connecticut Marshalls in 2007, Byron Dafoe, Antoine Walker (shirt and jersey), Tim Tebow Patriots shirt, Sergei Samsonov shirt, banana yellow Marcus Mariota Oregon jersey, JR Redmond Patriots jersey, Pedro Mets shirt, a literal blank Athletics jersey, the list goes on and on.

Ya know, now that I think about it, this $12 purchase at the downtown Minneapolis Marshalls may have to take the cake.

So I pose the question, whats the most random sports shirt or jersey you own?

Curt Schilling Wants to Be the Red Sox Pitching Coach and I Say Lets Do It

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One of the biggest reported issues with the Red Sox this season was the disconnect between the analytics nerds and the baseball guys. Ya know like every scene in the first hour of Moneyball.

Rather than completely axe longtime Sox employee Dana LeVangie, the team opted to reassign him to the scouting department instead. That leaves a gaping hole for a pitching staff that was an absolute disaster outside of Eduardo Rodriguez. The Red Sox seemingly want to make analytics a more integral part of their decision making, which sounds weird to say. I don’t know when it happened but the Sox seemingly fell behind the pack. This team lead the charge, along with Billy Beane, on OBP and sabermetrics. Hell, the team even still employs Bill James. So how did we get to this point? My guess is old school baseball guys like Dave Dombrowski didn’t exactly see eye to eye with the nerds.

So the Sox want to get back in the analytics game.

You think THIS guy has a problem with that?

Curt Schilling used to walk around the ballpark with a gigantic trapper keeper full of numbers every time he took the mound. That was before the analytics revolution that has led to every catcher now wearing a wristband or having an index card in their back pocket.

Schilling was also an A+ analyst on ESPN before he just could not stop himself from tweeting things his bosses explicitly told him to not tweet about. So theres that.

I think Schill would make a pretty good pitching coach even though he might get into a fist fight with David Price.

However, thats before we even get to the politics. John Henry has donated more than half a million dollars to various democratic campaigns over the years and Curt Schilling has been a very outspoken ride or die supporter of Donald Trump.

So while this has a zero percent chance of ever actually happening I think it’d be interesting to see. Now maybe you don’t want a guy that loves to talk in a typically behind the scenes role of pitching coach, but hey whats the worst that could happen they miss the playoffs?

Al Horford Says Celtics Weren’t “Going to Be Able to Coexist” With Kyrie Irving

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Boston Herald – As far as on the court, it’s certain Horford wasn’t interested in playing another hand from the same deck. I asked him if his decision would have been different if Irving had remained.

“I’m not sure that has anything to do with it for me,” Horford said. “I just think that if Kyrie would have stayed, I don’t know if it would have worked. There would have had to be some major changes as far as players, because it was just clear that the group that we had just wasn’t going to be able to coexist.”

And what about if he’d known Kemba Walker was coming. Horford paused.

“I don’t want to get caught up in the past,” he said, “but, yeah, that would have been totally different.”

Longtime Celtics writer Steve Bulpett caught up with old friend Al Horford and the big man had some interesting quotes on the dumpster fire that was the Celtics last year.

Horford reaffirmed what everyone has been saying for the past 6 months; this team just could not gel. Whether you want to blame that on Kyrie being a piss poor leader or on the young guys feeling themselves a bit too much is up to you, but the issue was real.

Kyrie is the guy that openly and bizarrely announced to the media that the Celtics needed a “15 year veteran” to help the team win. Maybe a Sam Cassell or Kendrick Perkins type at the end of the bench could have helped play the role of mentor/player-coach, but this group shouldn’t have needed that.

Lets just kill the Kemba/Horford talk right now too because of the way the NBA cap works in all its mysterious ways, it would have bene just about impossible for the Celtics to fit Kemba and Horford on the team. The only reason they were able to sign Kemba was *because* Kyrie and Horford left, not in spite of it. When one guy leaves it doesn’t automatically open up that salary space under the cap. Infuriating, yet true. The cap is not crap in this league.

The Celtic’s early playoff exit and subsequent gutting is all the more frustrating because of just how talented this team truly was last season.

“I just feel like we had so much talent, just a lot of talent, and we all wanted to do great things. There were just too many of us almost. I just feel like we had so much that it was very, very difficult to essentially keep everybody feeling good and focused on where we wanted to get to. And I do believe that that just kept getting in our way.”

You had 3 All-Stars in Kyrie/Horford/Hayward, a defensive POY candidate in Smart, a couple of future All-Stars in Tatum and Brown and a ton of excellent role players. Except Hayward was coming back from his injury and the ONLY way for him to get right was to play, which obviously took minutes away from Tatum and Brown. Sprinkle in the fact that Kyrie seemingly preferred to play with veterans because the young guys just didn’t “get it” or have the winning experience (despite Kyrie having a grand total of one title). Then you had guys like Terry Rozier and Marcus Morris in contract years playing hero ball trying to get paid. Plus you still had former first round picks like Robert Williams and Guerschon Yabusele trying to carve out roles. To top it all off was Brad Stevens who couldn’t get the team to buy in and Danny Ainge who refused to make any changes to the roster. Thats a recipe for a disaster in hindsight.

Appearing on Anna Horford’s podcast (yes, Al’s sister) Cedric Maxwell actually blames the Celtics more than Kyrie.

“I think the Celtics, for the most part, babied Kyrie too much,” Maxwell said. “When you baby a player for so many times and you’re kissing his ass the whole time, I think, for the most part he has no recourse.”

I mean, he’s not wrong, but still Kyrie is a grown ass man. This isn’t like blaming the parents for spoiling a 5 year old kid. Kyrie is a 27-year-old Duke graduate participant with eight seasons in the league.

Goddamnit what a waste of an opportunity. The Warriors were on their last legs, Giannis was a one man show, the Sixers weren’t deep enough, LeBron was broken down and in the West, and the C’s just could not get their shit together to make a run. Kawhi Leonard won the title almost singlehandedly in Toronto and I firmly believe a cohesive Celtics squad could have taken the Raptors. Unfortunately that team never figured it out and here we are.

The Celtics aren’t a favorite, a top 5 or even a top 10 pick to win it all in most polls this year because of the talent that left town. The C’s acted swiftly and made the best of a bad situation by bringing another elite talent in Kemba Walker to town, but now Boston goes back to being a plucky underdog rather than a pre-season juggernaut. Maybe thats for the best.

I’m Not a Tall Person, But What the Bruins Have Done to the Seats is Criminal

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This is criminal. Unless you are planning to sit up in The 300s with myself and the mutants over at Table 9, you and your knees are in for a rude awakening.  Apparently as part of the new TD Garden renovations the Bruins and Celtics have eliminated the antiquated idea of “leg space.” I am a card carrying member of the 5’8″ Brigade and even I was getting anxiety just seeing the above picture.

As you probably are aware, TD Garden removed all of the old yellow seats in the Loge section and replaced them with these new black seats.

Oh they also somehow added 500 more seats. How?

Well they clearly weren’t blowing out any walls so they had to stuff those seats somewhere. Well it looks like they shoehorned them into the Loge section so all you rich people are getting shafted. Personally, I never sit down with the fancy folk in Loge so this probably won’t affect me all that much, but its still a pretty blatant money grab that the Bruins and Celtics should frankly be above, but hey honors in the dollar kid.

True to Form the Red Sox Bullpen Blew Eduardo Rodriguez’ 20th Win

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Thats 31 blown saves on the year for anyone counting, solidifying my position that the Closer by Committee analytics bozos can go shit in a hat. The 6th inning is not the same as the 9th inning, even if your calculator says so. The Red Sox struggled all year long and not having a lockdown closer waiting in the bullpen was a huge reason why. Sure there were massive injuries to the starting rotation and major letdown seasons from a host of players, but those are things you can’t necessarily plan for. Having a bullpen is something you can plan. Now I’m not saying I would have given Craig Kimbrel the gigantic contract he wanted because he hasn’t been very good this year either, but I would have brought in someone who actually has “Closer” on their resume. Thats just smart business. But the Red Sox punted on smart business the day after winning the World Series last year and once again falling into the trap of thinking they’re smarter than everyone else. Its a goddamn cycle in this town.

TLDR; My guy Eduardo Rodriguez got screwed out of the only accomplishment that would have given me a little optimism heading into what will likely be a nuclear winter for the Sox.

Tacko Fall: Hooper, Swimmer

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Boston.com – Alongside the children taking swim lessons at the Charlestown Boys & Girls Club Wednesday afternoon was none other than 7-foot-7 Celtics center Tacko Fall.

Nearly twice the size of his comrades, if not taller, Fall fully participated in the session, practicing introductory exercises like kicking and pushing off the wall. A round of “Marco Polo” capped the 30-minute lesson.

There are many people who walk this earth who are good at something. There are even some that are great. There are a small few though, who are truly excellent, transcending 99% of the population in that one activity or area of interest.

For most of those that have found that one thing they are truly extraordinary at, that’s it. They stick to it, continue to get even better, and beat the drum of their remarkable skills over and over and over again.

Why? Well for one why the hell not? You have found something you can do better than almost anyone. Even if it doesn’t bring you money and fame, which it almost certainly does, especially in this day and age of internet sponsorships, etc., it brings you an overwhelming amount of personal satisfaction for sure. You feel fulfilled.

But the other reason that lurks in the dark recesses of someone like that’s mind is simply this: the fear of starting over in something new. Being a beginner. Having to start from the bottom, among the 99%, and figure a whole different lane as if you’re just another average human. Case in point John Wayne Parr. The greatest non-Thai Nak Muay in the history of Muay Thai. Absolute savage. But as MMA made it’s way into the mainstream and Muay Thai continued to toil in relative obscurity, JWP was not among the many top shelf fighters (from not just Muay Thai, but many other single-discipline martial arts) to make the leap. Why? Well, many speculate that for someone as skilled standing up as he is, he didn’t want to start over. He simply didn’t want to put on a white belt and learn how to defend himself on the ground from scratch. He had too much pride, and I don’t question him for it. He earned it.

On the other side of that equation we have Tacko Fall, shot blocking and rim running extraordinaire. Unheralded athlete of the century. Possible All NBA center with a little greasing of some gears. He has made it to the pinnacle of professional basketball with one of its most storied franchises and took quite the road to get there. So does he rest on his laurels, work hard in the off-season to just perfect his basketball skills, and go hunting in Faneuil Hall for undergrads fresh off a Pumpkin Spice Latte high? Nope, he seeks greatness in another field.

Tacko has taken to the water. Already elite at standing on dry ground and participating in modern athletics, he is now zeroed in on becoming just as good aquatically. With that wingspan I can only imagine he’ll be treading water for 2 hours straight come November. Backstroke? Well one wave of the arm and he’ll be at the other end of the pool. Marco Polo as this article alludes to? Please. Only sub in the nominal phrase with “SWITCH!” and little Billy will be tagged out quicker than he can splash the lifeguard. Games set match Fall.

I look forward to seeing what becomes of this endeavor. Will he take his talents to the professional level? Will he save a heart surgeon’s trophy wife from a great white in Chatham? Who knows. The sky, or should I say the seabed, is the limit.

-Joey B

The Red Sox Front Office is a “Miserable Place to Work” Just Like Your Job

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Yahoo – The last two men in charge of baseball operations – Ben Cherington and Dombrowski – were shown the door quickly after winning championships, and those moves are painting the Red Sox in a very bad light, according to ESPN’s Buster Olney.

“These decisions loosely frame the industry perception of the Red Sox as a chaotic company, a miserable place to work. Boston owner John Henry needs to understand this, because it is why some of the people he’d probably love to consider as possible replacements for Dombrowski privately dismiss the idea out of hand.”

Olney writes that some potential candidates have no interest in working for Henry, because they “doubt he’d have the patience to back his next general manager through the difficult crossroads ahead.”… A wide-held view in other front offices is that the highly respected and well-liked Red Sox president Sam Kennedy stands as a thin buffer between the team devolving to the level of the Mets, the team generally regarded by rival executives as baseball’s model for dysfunction. “If Sam ever walked away,” said one official, “the whole thing would be a complete mess.”

Well thats sobering to read for a team with 4 titles in the last 15 years. Are the Red Sox a complete mess of a franchise that wins in spite of its values, philosophy, and culture, not because of it? 100% Thats what happens when you have finishes of 1st, 1st, 1st, last, last, 1st, last over the previous seven years. So that is two World Series titles and three last place finishes across two GMs and three managers in seven years. Not exactly a model of consistency. In fact, the Sox have finished 15 or more games out of first place four times since 2012 (including 2019), which is the first time they had achieved that level of mediocrity since 1998.

But even with all that said for Buster Olney, one of the most well respected baseball writers in the country, to report that Fenway has become “a miserable place to work” is still startling.

I feel like I’m living in Groundhogs Day. Didn’t this same exact thing already happen a few years back? Am I the only one that read Feeding the Monster? Or the Francona book?

Those two books could not depict the highs and the lows of this organization any better than they already did.

Now for as much as we dump on the Mets for being an absolute circus:

It would seem the perception of the Red Sox, despite all their success, is not far off. That is ENRAGING as a fan of this team because it has been and should be one of the top 2 or 3 jobs in all of baseball. You have more money than almost any team to spend, a fan base that shows up and pays through the nose to support the team, and a roster built around home grown talent. Yet somehow we’ve arrived at a point where nobody of note even wants the job.

That all leads us to the most pressing question of all; who the hell is going to take the reigns for the Red Sox moving forward? I think we’re all in agreement that Theo Epstein returning would be a wet dream for everyone in town….but that ain’t happening. Olney makes it sound like nobody wants the job because John Henry has created an absolute shitshow of dysfunction at all levels, which is ironic because it all started when Henry chose a nearly 70 year old Larry Lucchino over Epstein all those years ago. During the Epstein era the Red Sox were a team of efficiency and consistency. The team boasted one of the best farm systems in baseball for years and supplemented homegrown guys like Jon Lester, Jonathan Papelbon, Dustin Pedroia, Jacoby Ellsbury, Clay Buccholz with high priced free agents. There was always a balance and the team rarely pushed all of its chips into the middle of the table to sacrifice the future for the present. Sure, what Dave Dombrowski did was exactly what John Henry brought him here to do. I don’t fault Dombrowski because we knew who he was when he got here. The Sox won a title, but absolutely ravaged the farm system to do it. Boston now has the worst farm system in Major League Baseball. He’s basically the baseball equivalent of Thanos.

Now Peter Abraham is making it sound like the Red Sox are very aware of this negative perception around the league and are resigned to promoting from within. According to Abraham it looks like the Sox are positioning the pieces that would point to an internal candidate being the next GM.

Maybe thats a good thing who knows. Maybe having a guy thats been with the organization for years and already understands the internal workings on Yawkey Way will benefit the team in the long run. Instead of slapping a band aid on things with a big name. However, the Sox better have a plan in place. Don’t just promote someone from within just because you couldn’t do any better. Pick a guy, develop a philosophy, and stick to it. Most importantly, give the guy the power to make the tough moves. The last thing this team needs is another puppet that just does the bidding of his bosses.

Just don’t tell me you’re letting a homegrown ace walk because you don’t sign pitchers over 30 and then sign a pitcher over 30 to the biggest contract ever given to a pitcher a year later. Your move, John Henry.

Team USA Better Assemble the Next Dream Team After This Disaster at the FIBA World Cup

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ESPN – The U.S. will leave the World Cup with its worst finish in a major international tournament, assured of finishing no better than seventh after falling to Serbia 94-89 in a consolation playoff game Thursday night.

The previous worst finish for a U.S. men’s team in 45 tournament appearances was sixth at the 2002 world championships. The Americans — the top-ranked team in the world — will be either seventh or eighth in China, depending on the outcome of their consolation finale Saturday.

Just a couple of days after getting bounced by France in the FIBA World Cup (Team USA’s first loss in 13 years, snapping a 58 game winning streak), they were officially embarrassed today, losing to Serbia in the consolation game. So no gold medal, no bronze medal, now not even a 5th place finish for the most disappointing Team USA in my lifetime.

I understand its just FIBA, I really shouldn’t care. Maybe I care more because half the team is made up of Celtics and it reflects poorly on my hometown team’s chances this season. Sure. Or maybe its just embarrassing for the US to send a team of kids and scrubs to represent the country before getting their teeth kicked in. This ain’t the 1980 USA Olympic Hockey team.

This team was in trouble from the second that Turkey game ended last week and we all knew it.

I also get that its become more and more popular for NBA stars today to obsess over their bodies and to manage their workload. The NBA season is long and LeBron can’t lead Team USA every single year, but where was James Harden or Anthony Davis? Steph Curry? Kawhi Leonard? Russell Westbrook? Kyrie Irving? Paul George? Klay Thompson?

Even guys like Kyle Lowry, Jimmy Butler, and Damian Lillard could’ve carried this team to gold. So its a tough spot to be in because the US is expected to win gold every single year, but we invented the damn game and have more than 90% of the best players in the world. I don’t think being the best is asking all that much.

USA Basketball better look at this as more than just a down year; its am embarrassment to the sport. I have enough embarrassment to go around from the US Mens Soccer Team, but at least they’re just not very good. The basketball team can and should dominate. So bring me the next Dream Team. Bring me an outrageous collection of talent and just run other teams out of the gym. Its time for the USA to re-establish its dominance on the hardwood.

Tim Thomas, 2019 Hockey HOF Inductee, Speaks Publicly for the First Time in Forever

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Boston.com  – Retired NHL goaltender Tim Thomas broke a years-long public silence Wednesday after being named as part of the United States Hockey Hall of Fame’s class of 2019.

The mercurial Thomas, who led the Boston Bruins to the Stanley Cup in 2011 and made headlines for refusing to visit then-President Barack Obama at the White House, has avoided the spotlight since walking away from hockey in 2014……“Everybody probably knows nowadays I don’t actually have all that much to say, at least publicly,” Thomas said on a conference call with reporters.

For all the legends, urban myths, and just plain strange anecdotes ingrained in Boston sports lore, the saga of Tim Thomas somehow goes largely unnoticed, at least on a day-to-day basis. Sure, if you were to sit around with your buddies and begin regaling each other with tales of Bruins fandom, particularly in the years surrounding the 2011 Cup win, Thomas and his eccentricities would come up. But otherwise, the two-time Vezina winner and his peculiar behavior is just a footnote in a big book that details pitchers who talked to the ball and offensive linemen who decided they were aerodynamic enough to stage dive.

Make no mistake about it, this isn’t just a post-playing career story. Thomas was always a bit of an odd duck. This of course is understandable as he is from Vermont and people from Vermont are a bit out there. I guess when your identity is half-Canadian, half-New Hampshirian and your atmosphere tests for pot like the air in Hong Kong tests for smog, you’re going to come out a little wacky. There’s also an accepted hotbed of communism in Vermont, which of course Thomas was a huge fan of as well. There he was, a stand out player in a bro-y, popular professional sport and his personal life resume read like someone who may try and overthrow the government.

Then Tim Thomas left hockey in 2014 and that was that. He’s 45 now and is said to live in basically a bunker in Colorado, following a survivalist’s lifestyle. While it would be easy to dismiss that as just as another example of how the B’s old netminder is just a bit of a space case, he actually gave some insight into why he lives the way he does when discussing why he doesn’t make appearances in Boston:

“With the state of my nervous system since I retired, I wouldn’t be able to hardly handle the energy of the crowd in Boston,” Thomas said. “So it isn’t as simple as it may seem. Having said that, you never know what the future may hold. I’m just taking life as it goes.”

Kind of makes you feel like a a bit of a traitor no? All this time we’ve been poking fun at “Timmy” for being some anti-government loon, while all along he just didn’t care for the attention to begin with. It would actually seem like he might have a touch of social anxiety, and as someone who is prone to ingesting a tiny quantity of special brownie in order to function in a large crowd, I can dig that. It gets overwhelming for some people.

But Thomas touched on one other reason for his departure from the hockey world.  Something we kind of forget about. However, it is a reason we’ve seen more and more frequently in the NFL as the risk-reward for playing has been put under the microscope: the love and passion for the game just isn’t there and is outweighed by that for other things.

“I have other interests. I have a totally other focus. I live in a totally different world than the hockey world that I lived in before. I live a long ways away from Boston, and it’s not that fun for me to travel anymore…”

The guy kind of…..just doesn’t give a shit about hockey anymore. And he kind of has that right, right? He gave hockey his entire life up until he was 40. He gave Boston some of his best years as well as a cup. What more can we ask for? We definitely don’t deserve anything.

So cheers to you, Tim. We appreciate the explanation. Congrats on the induction and enjoy whatever the hell it is that you do.

-Joey B,