Five straight wins, and the Celtics look like the team we’ve gotten to know over the past year and a half.
Even Steve Nash sounded flustered Monday night. From the Arizona Republic.
BOSTON – The Suns could not avoid error. Judgment was askew. They moved like they were lost and could not identify situations to plan a next move.
“We weren’t in our frontal lobe,” said Suns guard Steve Nash, who acknowledged that he was angry and humiliated.
During the third quarter, a sleeping fan appeared on the TD Banknorth Garden video screen, but the Suns were way ahead of him. The Celtics are the NBA champions, but they had not defeated a good team in the past month. It’s questionable that you can call the Suns a good team, considering their 3-8 record this season against the NBA’s top eight teams.
“Good, ol’ fashioned (butt)-whupping,” center Shaquille O’Neal said. “Our days of excuses should be over. In a game like this against the champs, you’ve got to man up.”
“This was embarrassing on national television to get ripped like that,” forward Grant Hill said. “We acted like we didn’t even know each other out there.
“It looked like they had six against five. They were more aggressive, played with more intensity. They were faster, beat us to loose balls. They wanted it more. They looked like a team fighting for jobs.”
Big day for the basketball world. NBA players across the country — including several Celtics — talked about watching the inauguration. As we all know by now — I’ve read about a dozen stories about it by now — our new president loves hoops. Played in high school. Idolized Dr. J. Is still a pickup game staple.
While the angle has officially jumped the shark, I gotta say, the first story I read about the topic, which appeared in the Dec. 24, 2007 issue of Sports Illustrated, was the best. And probably the most prophetic.
S.L. Price played one-on-one with Barack Obama. Here’s what happened:
Here’s the beauty of pickup basketball: You may be a U.S. senator, a living symbol of racial healing and perhaps even the next President of the United States, but if you’re gliding in for an easy layup and each point is precious, I’ve got no choice then, do I? You’re getting hacked. So, yes, I’m hammering that arm and crashing headlong into your whippet-thin frame; and, yes, it’s a foul so flagrant, so absurdly desperate, that all you can do, body buckling, is laugh. Hey, it’s pickup. Everyone, even you, uses whatever he’s got to win.
“Believe me,” Barack Obama says, walking to the top of the key, “you can get shot for doing that.”
He’s not serious. I think. But he wants me off his back, and invoking jumpy Secret Service men is a wise ploy. With the race for the Democratic presidential nomination whisker-close, Obama can’t afford to show up for some Dubuque meet-and-greet with a mysterious fat lip. His wife, Michelle, warned me, “Don’t break his nose, give him a black eye or knock his teeth out. Or I’ll have to come find you.”
…
Obama hits two jumpers to go up 3-2, and I remember what Michelle told me: “He’s very good at the last minute.”
“All right,” I say coyly, flipping him the ball. “This is for the presidency….”
He drills a 19-footer, heels barely leaving the ground. “Did you hear me?” I say.
“Why do you think I hit it?” he says.
I back him down twice to tie 4-4. He drains two more, but I swish one to cut it to 6-5. Now Obama closes in, blocks my last shot, grabs the ball. He shuffles out wide, turns and sets, face blank. I thunder toward him, arm outstretched, feeling suddenly like Hillary and Edwards and anyone else in Iowa trying desperately to stop Obama’s rise.
The ball drops through the net like a stone.
