The Pitters' Place

Cavaliers vs. Celtics.

Kelly Olynyk, Celtics Center, twisted the arm of Kevin Love, Cavaliers Power Forward, enough to dislocate his shoulder and cause Love to miss the rest of the game and at least the next two games and possibly more due to injury. In the same game, Kendrick Perkins, Cavaliers power forward in the lineup due to Love's injury, threw an arm in the face of Jae Crowder, Celtics Small Forward, and knocked him to the floor. Crowder immediately got up to try to fight Perkins with no serious injury. Later J.R. Smith, Cavaliers Shooting Guard backhanding Crowder, again sending him to the floor but without any serious injury. Guess which two incidents are getting the most attention. If you're not familiar with the NBA and its players: Love and Olynyk are white; Perkins, Smith and Crowder are black. Now guess which two plays have been questioned the most as far as possible suspensions are concerned.

On a semi-related note, the Celtics are considering trying to sign Love if he only stays in Cleveland one year. The reason should be obvious, Boston is the most racist franchise in the NBA. Whenever Boston reaches the upper echelon of the NBA they almost always try to do it with at least three white starters. Not that trying to sign Love is a bad idea, he's one of the best power forwards in the league, but Boston's motives should always be questioned.

Note: checking reports online of the Cavaliers/Celtics game seems to show more balance in talking about the three flagrant foul incidents. So maybe it's just ESPN that is assisting in the racism.

I heard a radio show a couple months ago talking about the double standard with fighting in Nascar and fighting in the NBA. I guess a couple Nascar drivers punched each other, and everybody on the internet loved it, but when Ron Artest retaliated after getting assaulted by some dumbass fans, everybody called him a thug.

I'm the only white guy in the South who doesn't watch NASCAR.

The TNT guys(Shaq, Chuck, etc) were also downplaying Olynyk's actions, saying that getting linked and twisted up is a part of the game, but that he wasn't trying to dislocated Love's shoulder. And that the other plays with Perkins and J.R. were the really dirty ones. I disagree. They were all dirty/borderline dirty plays.

Speaking of Celtic's racism. What do you think of Larry Bird? He's obviously a great player, but do you think white privilege has over hyped him?

I'm sure he's overhyped to some degree. But having been an NBA fan during that era and a Boston-hater, I can't say that the hype was undeserved. For his style of play, Bird was phenomenal. For somebody 6'10" to play small forward is already an anomaly (even more so then than now), but he couldn't play power forward because he wasn't muscled enough and there were few small forwards of his era who could match up with him. James Worthy was the only one who could even somewhat slow him down consistently and he still usually outplayed Worthy one-on-one. I'm not sure how Bird's style would fit in the game today. Bird was difficult for anybody to guard at the time because he had a shooting guard's skills with a power forward's height and a small forward's build. That's a large part of why the Lakers often tried to have Magic (the small forward playing point guard) matched up against him when Bird had the ball, but that left the Lakers at a disadvantage in other matchups, namely Worthy couldn't guard Dennis Johnson and Scott couldn't take on DJ and leave Worthy to guard Ainge.

The last time the Celtics were good their head coach was Doc Rivers and their "Big Four" (Rondo, Allen, KG, Pierce) were all black.

Did they win a title?

Yes, 2008.

sikax wrote:Yes, 2008.

In other words, they haven't been good since I moved from Boston. Coincidence?

Yeah, I forgot about that one anomaly.