Rajon Rondo will miss tonight’s game, according to Sean Grande. The team says his pinky finger will keep him out, but I’m pretty sure he just wants to sit in the locker room and watch Kentucky play in the Elite Eight.

Just kidding. Rondo’s obviously been hurting lately—mentally as well as physically—and many readers have suggested giving him a rest. Be careful what you wish for, though: with Rondo sitting out and Delonte West also hurting (though West will start in Rondo’s place), expect a lot of minutes for Carlos Arroyo. Arroyo hasn’t been bad during his brief time as a Celtic, but he’s definitely no Rondo.

The Minnesota Timberwolves, minus Kevin Love, await. Normally, I’d expect a blowout win. But tonight I’d settle for a little effort.

Last season wasn’t the same, at least according to Doc Rivers. The Celtics slumped before last year’s playoffs just as they are slumping now, but Rivers swears it was different.

“I shut them down,” he told ESPN Boston. “They were injured.”

But now he offers no such excuses.

As last season unraveled, Rivers maintained a marvelous sense of calmness. He was like a less lethal Jack Bauer—when all hell broke out around him, Bauer always knew exactly what to do. He knew when to fake dead, when to toss throwing knives at armed terrorists, and when to randomly bite through someone’s jugular vein. That was Doc. He didn’t use quite the same amount of violence, but as all hell broke out around him, as the 5-52 Nets strolled into Boston and walked away with a victory, Doc saw a vision and kept to it.

Celtic fans everywhere hit the panic button as Boston limped to a 27-27 finish to the season, but Rivers’ faith never waved. Once the Celtics got healthy, he understood, they’d cause hell for opponents. The plan was always to get ready for the playoffs, seeding be damned. If it looked bad to all the analysts and fans, Rivers didn’t care. Kevin Garnett was ole’ing Kris Humpries to the hoop, fluid was squirting out of Paul Pierce’s knee, and the Celtics had no chance if they entered the playoffs so wounded. So Rivers took his foot off the gas pedal, and told his team to idle into the playoffs. As the losses piled up—and they certainly piled up, and each one seemed more embarrassing than the last—Rivers kept a cheery outlook. Once the playoffs came, Doc always knew, his team would cause hell.

Which is why his reaction to yesterday’s loss—the mounting losses, really—was so alarming. This year isn’t the same as last year, not to Rivers. It’s worse, far worse even. Rivers never calls out his players to the press. He prefers to handle his business behind closed doors, to discuss his players’ faults in the privacy of their locker room, to chide and prod and discipline his players without the media knowing. Calling them out, based on everything we know about Rivers, must have been his last resort, his last option to reach a team that has dreadfully underperformed in recent weeks.

“The way we’re playing shocks me,” Rivers told reporters after the loss. “Our attitude shocks me. We’re just not ready to win any games right now the way we play, the way our approach is to basketball games. I told them that with about five minutes left. I said, ‘If we win great, you find your own way.’

“Right now, I just think we’ve become very, very selfish. Not as far as trying to get our own, but everything is about how we’re playing individually instead of how the team is playing. You can see it, a guy struggles, he pouts, he moans. Everything is ‘me, me, me’ on our team right now, feeling sorry for themselves instead of giving themselves to the team and playing.

“You can just see it manifest throughout the team. Until we can get through that we will continue to have results like we had tonight. Clearly we should have won the game. I thought the starting unit in particular came in casual in the fourth quarter, assuming they were going to win the game — no urgency. Then, all of the sudden, when the game got [to a 1-point contest], their butts got tight. When you [don’t have] that 11-point lead, the shots aren’t easy anymore. I always say it, ‘You screw around with the game, and the game will screw around with you.’ Either I’m doing a terrible job getting to them or right now they just aren’t there. I don’t know why. It’s my job to figure it out though.”

When Rivers called his Celtics soft the other night, he noted that it was the first time he’d done so since the Big Three Era began. Now he’s calling his team—which prides itself on being egoless, on making sacrifices to win, on making the extra pass and rotating to help teammates regardless of the circumstance—selfish. In the past week he has now used the two words he knows will hurt his team the most, two words the Celtics should cringe to hear associated with themselves, two desperate words he hopes will serve as sniffing salts for his struggling team.

Rivers isn’t calm, not like he was last year. His team is (at least relatively) healthy, and it’s their effort rather than any injuries which is causing the current skid. Things aren’t the same as they were last year, they’re worse. Even if they were the same, noted Rivers, “Last year, we lost Game 7 on the road.”

The Celtics should have learned from that lesson. They should know the formidable challenges the Bulls and Heat pose. They should play with urgency, not just because they desire home-court advantage but because they know first-hand how important it is. Yet they play without passion, losing to teams that shouldn’t be able to share the floor with them, allowing a depleted and untalented Bobcats team to steal a win the Celtics truly needed.

After the game, I couldn’t sleep. I picked up Bill Simmons’ “Now I Can Die In Peace,” and began to read. The passage, though it was about the Red Sox and though I don’t know whether to blame the Perkins trade for any of this recent mess, seemed perfect.

“Like so many other Red Sox fans,” wrote Simmons, “I never understood the wisdom of shaking up a championship team that succeeded because of personality and chemistry over anything else. Every post-2004 move was defensible on the surface (Pedro wanted too much money, Lowe needed a change of scenery, Roberts wanted a chance to play every day, Cabrera’s OBP wasn’t high enough, and so on) but the franchise failed to heed the biggest lesson from the season: namely, that some baseball teams succeed for reasons that transcend statistics. The 2004 Red Sox were definitely talented, but more importantly, they were unflappable. They enjoyed playing together. They rolled with the punches. They understood how to survive and prosper in a rabid baseball city like Boston. That’s why they won the World Series.”

Does the Perkins trade have anything to do with what’s happening today? Truthfully, I don’t know. I’d like to hope not, because Perk’s not coming back. I’d like to blame the struggles on the complacency of a veteran team just waiting on the playoffs. But really, I don’t know why the Celtics suddenly look so bad. I don’t know why Rondo looks disinterested, or why the Celtics don’t seem even slightly intrigued by the top seed. All I know is that the Celtics, for whatever reason, have gotten away from what made them a great team in the first place—the effort and unselfishness, the chemistry and the “Ubuntu,” the fire and the passion and the toughness—and Doc Rivers agrees they’re in a bad place.

Rivers is beginning to show desperation, grasping for straws, reaching deep within his bag of motivational tricks to try to reach his suddenly comatose team. All the losses resemble last year. But Doc swears things are worse.

Delonte West doesn’t just have a sprained ankle. He also has a chipped bone, which he first revealed about ten days ago and still causes him grief. West says has caused recent swelling and kept him from getting the lift he normally does. He added that he “should be good to go next game,” and won’t use the ankle as an excuse. But a chipped bone’s no good. (ESPN)

“I keep trying to downplay it, I’ve had a sprained ankle before, it normally take 2, 3 days and you’re back in action,” said West, who has appeared in Boston’s last six games after missing 39 contests due to a fractured right wrist. “I’ve got a chipped bone in [the ankle] and I think I kind of overdid it a little bit in practice [Thursday]. I was going super hard and the ankle swelled back up on me.

“I did two hours this morning of treatment. I didn’t shoot around before the game, just two to three hours of treatment, just to get ready. I said once I step on the court, there is no excuses. I’m still going to play defense, but with my shot, I noticed that it was all in the takeoff and the landing. It was throwing my shot off. That last play I felt like I barely left the ground.”

West had helped the Celtics gain a 13-point lead, and was one of the only Celtics (the only Celtic?) who exhibited a pulse last night. But Doc Rivers didn’t want to keep him in the game, because he feared the consequences.

“That was a tough one for me,” said Rivers. “I looked at [team trainer] Eddie [Lacerte] and he was [on the fence], so I just didn’t want to take the chance. That was on me.”

West showed his pain the most on one play. He drove to the hoop with his left hand. No help defense came, and normally West would “throw it down, small man.” But he tentatively made a layup instead, and then looked like he was either A) shocked he could barely get off the ground, B) dismayed with his sudden lack of hops, C) feeling legitimate pain, or D) all of the above.

I’m sure he’ll play with the injury. He’s a tough guy. I just don’t know how much it will affect him. Damn, West has had a rough year.

I don’t know what to write about. I honestly don’t.

I’m looking at a blank screen and thinking about D.J. White dominating, and I don’t know what the hell to type. I’m thinking about the Celtics getting outscored 30-15 in the fourth quarter, and I’m thinking about when the camera panned to Doc Rivers and he looked like someone attending a funeral. I’m thinking about how Rajon Rondo didn’t have an assist in the entire first half, and about how he has seemed completely bored with basketball the past few weeks. I’m thinking about Dante Cunningham (Dante Cunningham!) hitting a game-winning jumper, and I’m thinking about Ray Allen missing a wide open three that would have won, and I’m thinking about Kevin Garnett’s futile last-second heave, and I’m thinking about how it never should have gotten to that point.

When the Celtics led by 13 points, I was already cursing their effort. That they lost, blowing that entire lead in the fourth quarter, was only appropriate. They deserved to lose. Even playing against a team that started Kwame Brown, Boris Diaw, Dominic McGuire, Gerald Henderson and D.J. Augustin, the Celtics deserved to lose. They didn’t care. They didn’t care to do the small things, like boxing out and sprinting in transition. They didn’t care to do the big things, like defending or playing offense. There’s something seriously missing in Boston right now, something that’s quickly knocking them out of contention for the East’s top seed, something that has even put them in danger of losing home-court advantage against the Miami Heat. What’s missing, exactly? I don’t know. But whatever it is, it has the Celtics playing like zombies.

I don’t want to overreact to one game, but it hasn’t just been one game. It’s a growing pattern which is manifesting itself just like it manifested itself last year, back when Kendrick Perkins admitted the Celtics were bored with the regular season. Maybe they’re bored now. Maybe they’re more hobbled by injuries than we know. Maybe they miss Perkins, or gave up trying for Lent, or have been watching too much NCAA basketball to concentrate on their own play, or really hated the movie “The Adjustment Bureau” and are trying to boycott it by showing they can lose on their own free will.

I don’t know. I have no idea what’s bothering the Celtics, and that’s what’s most troublesome. I can point to Rondo and blame him, but the problems go far beyond Rondo’s oddly disinterested play. I can point to the Kendrick Perkins trade, but that was actually supposed to improve the offense, not make everything a bloody mess. Plus, the trade shouldn’t make the Fab Four so much less productive. Maybe there’s something to the “loss of Ubuntu” theory; in other words, maybe the loss of Perkins hurt chemistry in ways John Hollinger’s formulas could never account for. But I thought—I think—the Big Three are too professional for that, too driven by winning. Aren’t they? Additionally, these losses remind of last year, when Perk was around and healthy. So maybe it’s something else. Or maybe not. As you can probably tell by my rambled thoughts in this paragraph, I’m confused.

The sky isn’t falling. The playoffs will come, and Boston’s energy will improve, and the Celtics will still (rightfully) be considered contenders for the NBA championship, and no team will want to play the Celtics in the postseason, no matter how many times they lose to sub-.500 teams during this slump. But these losses are frustrating, and they should piss us off as fans, and I can only hope they infuriate the Celtics as much as they infuriate me.

At one point, almost despite themselves, and I’ve already mentioned this but it bears repeating, the Celtics led by 13 points. The lead should have been about somewhere between 30 and 40 points at that point, but it wasn’t. They just didn’t seem to care enough to build a big lead, no matter how badly the Bobcats, a 28-42 team missing two of its best players, sucked. The game shouldn’t have come down to the final twelve minutes, and it shouldn’t have come down to the final two three-pointers.

But it did. Eleven games until the playoffs. The proverbial switch remains off.

The Celtics host DeSegana Diop’s Charlotte Bobcats tonight, in a game that’s being hailed “The Potential Return of Von Wafer, who may or may not make Boston’s playoff roster.” In lieu of a more appropriate game preview, I offer you a few links to whet your Celtics appetite.

1. Kevin Garnett sees Kobe Bryant’s “shooting jump shots after a game,” and raises him “running suicides at practice, just because.” (ESPN Boston)

2. Boston’s offense has been struggling. As in, “significantly worse than the worst offense in the league four times in the past ten games” struggling. Zach Lowe explains. (Sports Illustrated)

3. Austin Rivers, Doc’s son, responds to the “Uncle Tom” controversy between Jalen Rose and Duke basketball. Rivers, who will play basketball (and, presumably, attend classes) at Duke next season, seems like a class act. He also loves his father: ”But if you had a chance to have a great father, great parents, wouldn’t you take that? Everybody would. I’m very blessed to have my mom and dad. I could care less about the money situation. I don’t even live off my parents like that. We have to earn everything in our house because that’s how my dad was raised. He just doesn’t give us $500 a day and say, ‘Hey, go spend this.’ That’s not how our family was raised.” (ESPN)

4. Shaq, on whether he’ll be healthy enough this postseason to make a difference: “Yeah. Gotta be.” (ESPN)

5. As the Celtics collectively attempted to decide how to donate $50,ooo dollars, they were told the certain public schools were considering cutting recess. “Rondo was aghast about that,” said Jeff Green. (Boston Globe)

6. From where former Celtic (and protagonist of the great book “Fall River Dreams”) Chris Herren once was, it’s amazing that he now has his life back on track—or, even that he’s still alive. (EastBayRI.com)

I doubt I need to tell you, the Celtics could use a win tonight. But at this point of the year, the Boston Celtics are like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get.

I had just watched Jimmer Fredette’s final game as a magician, and had settled into watching my favorite team (Duke) get pimp slapped by Derrick Williams and Arizona. The Butler-Wisconsin game briefly tempted me, but I, like the loyal fan I like to consider myself, stayed with Duke as the ship sank (iceberg, strai—err, Derrick Williams, straight ahead).

While watching the end of Kyle Singler and Nolan Smith’s careers, I read a tweet from Magic Basketball’s Eddy Rivera (who, I should note, writes phenomenally and seems like a wonderful person). “This is seriously flawless basketball from Arizona in the second half. Gee, it’s nice to see a college b-ball team execute,” he wrote. The tweet was entirely harmless, but it echoed a certain level of snobbishness I’ve seen from NBA aficionados lately. I love the NBA, too. But I can appreciate competitive basketball at any level.

***

I’ll admit, I grew up a college basketball apologist. My childhood was spent falling in love with Miles Simon; practicing Ed Cota’s floater in my driveway for hours; learning every crevice in Shane Battier’s head; and worshiping Kevin Pittsnogle. I wanted to name my dog “Toby Bailey,” but my parents weren’t feeling it, and I would have cut off both of my legs to meet Mateen Cleaves, if just for ten minutes. The name Shaheen Holloway sends me into reminisce-mode, though I will admit Ty Shine replaced him more than capably against Temple. And please, don’t get me started about Trajan Langdon: I could wax poetically about him for years. As you can probably tell, college basketball’s lost heroes (and Dawson’s Creek, which I have not yet mentioned) dominated my youth.

I didn’t just wait until the NCAA tournament to watch college basketball; given the choice between a regular season NCAA game and a non-Celtic NBA game, I picked the NCAA eleven times out of ten. There was something exciting about knowing most of the NCAA players were in their glory years; that the NBA wouldn’t be kind to them, but they could excel for four years of their lives; that Juan Dixon wasn’t good enough to stick in the NBA, but could still lead Maryland to an NCAA title; that Khalid El-Amin looked like the black Pillsbury Doughboy and clearly had zero NBA future ahead of himself, but could still score the final four points to win the 1999 championship; that Bryce Drew could go from unheard of to immortalized in the span of 2.5 seconds. There was something about 40-minute games which made the contests seem more urgent, and it helped that college players were (mostly, at least in my perhaps-naive eyes) not yet jaded by fame and money.

I knew, of course, the competition wasn’t as good. But the stories were just as compelling, perhaps even more so because we knew many of our heroes could only star for a small window of time. Gerry McNamara, God bless his soul, kidnapped the Big East tournament during his senior year. Yet the whole time he did, we knew his time was limited. Anyone could see that McNamara had no chance to excel in the NBA. Maybe he’d be drafted, maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he’d make an NBA team, maybe he wouldn’t. But at six foot nothing with hardly a speck of athletic ability, McNamara’s star was destined to burn out the day his Syracuse team was eliminated from the NCAA tournament. After that, we knew, only memories of dagger threes and a considerably lesser professional existence would remain. Not that a poor professional career could take away what McNamara accomplished; for a brief time, just a few weeks of his life, he was a golden god. As Norman Dale once noted, “Most people would kill to be treated like a god, just for a few moments.” McNamara, like many other college studs who leave school to find obscurity waiting, catapulted himself into the public’s eye with feats that will forever remain etched in college basketball’s history.

Then there are the upsets. In the NBA, where needing to win a series rather than just one game lowers the probability of upsets, George Masons (or, the Raptors) don’t reach the Final Four. Butlers (or, the Timberwolves) don’t make the Finals. Almost as a rule, the better team wins a seven-game series. Only once has an eighth seed made the NBA Finals; the New York Knicks, in 1999. And that was during the funky, weird, shortened lockout season. The highest seed ever to win the NBA Finals was the 1994-1995 Houston Rockets (a sixth seed); it would be tough to call a team featuring Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler and Robert Horry a Cinderella story.

But the NCAA gives us Cinderellas, and plenty of them. Morehead St. advances to the second round, ousting Lousiville and the fabled Rick Pitino. Northwestern St. beats Iowa, on the heels of a 25-foot, fadeaway prayer. It doesn’t take big names to win come March; it takes one game of execution, forty minutes of effort, and some well-timed luck. March Madness reminds me of the halftime speech in The Little Giants. All it takes is one time.

“One time at Randy Cooper’s swim party, I did a back flip off the high dive, and my brother chickened out.”

“Roger chickened out? He’s a marine!”

“Ah, that’s nothing. One time, at spring carnival, I beat both my brothers in a cow dung toss.”

“You beat Matt and Brad in a turd toss?!?”

“One time I went fishing with my entire family, and I was the only one who didn’t throw up.”

“Cool.”

“So what? That still doesn’t make us good football players.”

“Wait a second, guys. Who ever said you had to be good to play football? You play football because you want to. You play football because it’s fun. You play football so you can go out there and pretend that you’re Joe Montana throwing a touchdown pass, or Emmit Smith going for a long run. And even if those Cowboys are better than you guys, even if they beat you 99 times out of 100, that still leaves…”

“One time.”

“One time.”

“Yeah! One time!”

Never mind that the Ice Box’s football career fizzled out, and she ultimately became a soft core porn star. No, really. In the NCAA tournament, all it takes is one time. And the players aren’t just out there pretending to be Michael Jordan or Larry Bird or Lebron James or Kobe Bryant; for one day, at least, they can actually become bigger than those guys. In just one day, NCAA players can make their names remembered for a lifetime. That’s what happens when the winner goes on, the loser goes home, and every buzzer beater means the difference between advancing and going fishing. In the NCAA tournament, every game’s a Game Seven.

***

But, as I said earlier, the competition isn’t as good. There’s a reason McNamara could dominate the Big East tournament, yet couldn’t even play one second in the NBA. There’s a reason Adam Morrison scored six billion points at Gonzaga, then became the NBA’s laughingstock within no time. There’s a reason Jimmer Fredette will never become an NBA superstar, and a reason Nolan Smith—despite nearly becoming the first player ever to lead the ACC in assists and points—will become a role player, at best, when he reaches the next level. NBA players are bigger, better, faster, stronger, more skilled and smarter. Fredette will go from playing against Erving Walker and Kenny Boynton to playing against Rajon Rondo and Ray Allen.  The difference is daylight and darkness.

We are also allowed more time to learn about our favorite NBA players. As a Duke fan, I hardly knew Kyrie Irving, but he’s probably gone already. Even four years, like Nolan Smith played, are hardly enough to grow familiar with a player. Players play brief careers, they graduate or declare early for the draft, and the next batch of freshmen arrive to campus, ready to carry on the program’s tradition. There’s something to be said about the urgency of a college career. But there’s also something to be said about it being too short to really get to know the players you root for.

At this point, I feel like Paul Pierce is my brother. I’ve watched him as a young player, when he wrapped his head in bandages, dominated the ball too much during crunch time, and generally played the part of “pampered, spoiled, immature athlete” perfectly. I’ve watched him grow up, embrace the team concept, and become a champion. I’ve watched him win, I’ve watched him lose, I’ve watched him struggle, I’ve watched him persevere, and now I feel like I know him. I know that when a game’s on the line, he wants to dribble once to his right, then step back for a jumper in his wheelhouse. I know he occasionally grows odd patches of facial hair. I know he looks more athletic this year than he has in the past couple years. I know he relishes playing the Lakers, talks a whole lot of crap, and will go to the Hall of Fame as one of the greatest Celtics ever.

College careers are more fleeting. Jimmer mania swooped the world this year, but somebody else will captivate people’s imaginations next season. Kevin Durant owned college basketball one year, but Michael Beasley did the next. Players come, and if they’re good enough to wow everyone one year, they’re almost always in the NBA the following season. Only rarely, like when Steph Curry came back for his senior year, do college superstars return for another run. Just when we start to know them, they bolt. But not NBA stars. They’re around for awhile.

And they’re so good. Kobe Bryant’s footwork is impeccable. Carmelo Anthony’s jab step series is almost perfect. Lebron James has world-class speed combined with world-class strength combined with world-class vision combined with world-class leaping ability, all packaged in a 6’8″ frame. Blake Griffin carries a trampoline underneath him at all times. Ray Allen does. not. miss. NBA defenses are more advanced than their NCAA counterparts, NBA offenses execute far more flawlessly, and NBA players are the best in the world. Remember, even Brian Scalabrine was a stud in college.

The NBA playoffs aren’t as dramatic as the NCAA Tournament, but it’s tough to beat (almost all of) the world’s best basketball players, playing each other night after night. If the NCAA Tournament is checkers, the NBA postseason is chess. Actually, maybe it’s more like boxing. It’s a series of punches and counter-punches, with a seven-game series providing some of the world’s best basketball minds time to make adjustments and improvements. One game (one quarter, even), the Paul Pierce-Rajon Rondo pick-and-roll might work; the screen forces a switch, leaving Pierce with a mismatch in his sweet spot—game over. The next night (or quarter, even), the  Celtics might try it again. Suddenly, a double-team comes Pierce’s way, and the Celtics are forced to try plan B. Adjustments—the best players, coached by the smartest coaches, playing basketball at a level that is like Hoosiers to the NCAA’s Air Bud.

Confession: When Kobe Bryant plays, I watch. Not just his team, but him specifically. He’s not the NBA’s best player anymore, but he’s its most refined. Hardly anything he does is without purpose. Each step, each ball fake, each dribble—all calculated attempts to free him, or his teammates, for a shot; all calculated attempts to give his team the best chance to win. Sometimes Kobe shoots too often. Sometimes he isolates when he should instead run the offense. But when you break basketball down to a subatomic level—when you look at just the moves, just the footwork, just the elements that make up a good basketball play—Kobe’s almost flawless.

***

Jimmer’s not anywhere close to flawless, not like Kobe is, and neither are Derrick Williams, Kemba Walker, or anybody else in the NCAA ranks. Maybe one of them will become a superstar some day, and work on their craft like basketball fiends, and provide more proof for Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 Hour Rule”—the theory that says people can become an expert at almost anything, as long as they spend 10,000 hours practicing that thing. For now, the thrilling entertainment they provide is more than enough.

Whether it’s Celtics-Lakers at the TD Garden, BYU-Florida at New Orleans Arena, or Longmeadow High School-Amherst High School in some dark, musty gymnasium that fits 1,500 people, my view doesn’t change:

I love this game.