Boston Celtics: The Definition of Overrated

(WARNING: This post is long, but nothing compared to the ink that has been given to the other side of this fairy tale.)

I cannot tell you how sick and tired I am of hearing about how great the Boston Celtics are. When Bill Walton (an ex-Celtic) joked (I hope) about them going 82-0 during Wednesday night's NBA telecast, I almost e-mailed ESPN.

Before I begin, I must admit that I have never been much of a Celtics fan. It might have something to do with their location in Boston. Nothing wrong with Boston itself, but the people there are as racist as in any southern town that people think has more racism. I remember one particular visit when I was about 8 years old. While I waited in the airport for a relative to arrive, I heard two white males letting the n-word fly fast and free when referring to an African-American member of the Boston Celtics at the time. At the time, the Celtics had one of the "whitest" teams in the NBA, which was pretty much their hallmark, especially in the '80's. I was fairly young but I knew enough to be appalled by what I heard.

Then, in college, when I heard about them hanging monkey in bars in "honor" of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I knew I had had enough of Boston.

Boston's race issues are well documented, from the days when Bill Russell brought them 11 NBA titles, and there is at least one book written on the topic. Even this website that says the Celtics' racism is a myth is forced to acknowledge:

Certainly, there was--and still is, sad to say--rampant racism in Boston. When Bill Russell was helping the Celtics win unprecedented numbers of championship banners as a player and a coach, some ignorant fools--including alleged Celtics fans--called him names I won't repeat here. You've probably heard them in some context or another, and all of them were used at some point.

And that's from a writer who said it was a myth. Not only that, but the Boston press virtually ignored Russell, and he got nowhere near the attention that Larry Bird and the boys received in the '80's.

Now we come back full circle to the modern day Celtics, who are not only leading the team but are being celebrated for doing so. There's irony for you.

The hype around this team is almost deafening. People are saying they're going to go to Eastern Conference Finals, or win an NBA championship. Is that so?

And this was before the season started. Now that they're 7 games in to an 82 game season, and they've played against 6 teams (one team twice), they're the champs? Let's look at who these 7 wins have come against:

Washington, Toronto, Denver, Atlanta, New Jersey, Indiana, New Jersey again.

Of those teams, only Denver has a winning record. Two of those teams - Washington and Miami - are off to a downright atrocious start.

Their games for the rest of the month of November include Miami (1-7), Orlando (7-2), Golden State (0-6), Lakers (4-3), Charlotte (4-4), Cleveland (4-5), New York (2-5), and Miami again.

So after facing 6 teams, only one of which has a winning record, and with a pretty weak schedule for the rest of this month, we're supposed to believe that this team could . . . go . . . all . . . the . . . way?

Well, I'm sorry, I just can't get down with that. Not only are they less than 10% of the way done with the season, but they haven't even played 80% of the other teams in the league. They haven't won any championships. They haven't even been to the playoffs yet.

Individually, the so-called Big 3 have pretty weak playoff histories. To wit:

• This is Ray Allen's 11th year in the league, and he has been to the playoffs 4 times, 3 with the Milwaukee Bucks, one with Seattle Supersonics. The furthest he made it was one trip with the Bucks to the conference finals 7 years ago, losing to the Philadelphia 76ers

• Celtics Captain Paul Pierce has been in the league 9 years, been to the playoffs 4 times, all with the Celts, and made it to the conference finals in 2002, losing to the New Jersey Nets.
  

• Kevin Garnett is in his 12th year in the league, and he's been to the playoffs 8 of those years with the Minnesota Timberwolves, where they lost in the first round every year except in 2004 - their last playoff appearance - when they fell to the L.A. Lakers in the conference finals.
  

So, we have none of the Big 3 who has even been to a) the conference finals or b) the playoffs within the last three years. Not to mention that there are, like, 11 other people on the team, two of which also need to contribute to the team at all times. The playoffs have as much to do with endurance as they do with talent. You must have a solid bench or you can hang up your chances of winning any kind of ring.

Now, they do have some talent in Eddie House and Rajan Rando. And all it takes is one time to win a championship, no previous ones required. Got it.

But they haven't won anything, may not have the tools to compete deep in the playoffs, haven't played any of the real contenders, and most of the teams they have played and will play this month have at or below .500 (50% wins) records.

What if the Celtics are just last year's #1 seed Western Conference Dallas Mavericks, who performed well in the regular season only to lose to a team like the #8 seed Golden State in the first round of the playoffs?

This is not to say that the Celtics won't make it deep through the playoffs, but I think it is entirely too early to start prognosticating like we have any idea at what level this team is capable of performing. They haven't even really been tested like that. Anyone saying that they're going to "take the East," and how great a feat 7-0 is for this team is only further contributing to rating the Celtics higher than they deserve to be rated, which would make them - you guessed it - overrated.

With Kobe-watch fading out of style, I'm sure the NBA wants a story and they chose this one, but let's wait until they actually show us what they've got.

All this bandwagon jumping is getting sickening.