The Celtics formally extended a qualifying offer to Jeff Green, making him a restricted free agent in the state of limbo we also refer to as the NBA.

Extending the qualifying offer does not automatically mean Green will play for the Celtics next season. Rather, it will give the Celtics an opportunity to match any contract offered to Green this summer. Green could also choose to play next season under Boston’s one-year tender (worth $5,908,640), after which he would become an unrestricted free agent. You know, if next season actually exists.

Another option for the Celtics would be using Green in a sign-and-trade deal. This would allow the Celtics to receive assets in return for Green, preferably a capable player (or capable players) in the final year of his (or their) contract(s).

In other news, the Celtics picked up Avery Bradley’s 2012-’13 contract option. Wake me up when the lockout ends.

A week ago, Glen Davis said he wants to go anywhere Glen Davis can be Glen Davis. At the time, he seemed like a goner. But his comments yesterday were a lot more level-headed and mature. He even told the Boston Herald he would like to return to the Boston Celtics. I’m not sure whether that means anything or he just finally decided to show some diplomacy.

Neither Davis nor Rivers publicly admit to having a problem, though Ainge said he wants the men to talk out their oft-emotional differences if they are to spend another season together.

If that opportunity arises, anyway.

Davis, at least, asserts that he wants to return.

“Man, I do,” Davis said yesterday. “Do you know how much I’ve grown and learned with those guys? I want to keep playing with Ray (Allen) and Paul (Pierce) until they leave.”

Maybe he meant to include Kevin Garnett. Maybe not.

During a chat with reporters, Davis discussed “adjusting my approach to food now.” He claims to recognize the need to change his lifestyle and also understands he needs to “eat for being healthy.” Not just because of basketball, either, although that would obviously become a beneficiary of Davis’s alleged health kick.

“I want to be with my kid forever,” Davis added of his 10-month-old daughter, Amari. “You can’t be 360 pounds and expect to play with your grandchildren. I have to be the player I can be.”

Davis said he just recently realized his own potential as a player, and wants to reach his ceiling. He has hired a sports psychologist, allegedly begun to diet, continued to work out as usual despite the likely lockout, and doesn’t actually hate Doc Rivers as much as it occasionally seems.

“Me and Doc have a good understanding,” [Davis] said. “My name’s Glen and his name’s Glenn. But Doc is Doc. I love the way he coaches. It’s just that me, as a player, didn’t adjust to him. When I first came here, my role was different than it is now. More importance on the team means more adjusting, and sometimes this year I had trouble with that. Mentally, it interrupted my game.

“So I got (the sports psychologist) because of the way I played in the postseason. It helps me to deal with Doc, and why I didn’t play well. Mentally it just became hard for me to see things. Just learn to be myself. I have to be in a zone all the time.”

Glen Davis’s summer is beginning to mirror his season. Ups and downs, peaks and valleys, times he makes me smile and times he makes me scratch my head.

Full (and perhaps slightly conceited) disclosure: I consider myself a knowledgeable basketball fan. A lot of people I know call themselves “students of the game,” but I—at least in my opinion—fit the bill.

I don’t just watch basketball; I study it. I re-watch games and I dissect what went right and what went wrong, what plays worked and what plays didn’t, or even such minutiae like “why does Paul Pierce’s stepback jumper free him from his defender every single time?” I read every article I can about basketball. I try to smell the game’s aroma through my nose, breathe its life into my lungs and then type whatever bits I can discover into my computer to publish on my website. Even when I’m wrong, my opinions (and I have opinions about mostly everything) are at least educated.

But there are times when I understand there are limits to my basketball knowledge. There are things I will never quite comprehend, partially due to personal shortcomings, but also because I have limited access to NBA players and coaches. I can see what happens on the court. I can see when Paul Pierce makes a sharp cut to the hoop for an easy layup. But I cannot hear if Rajon Rondo whispers into Pierce’s ear, “He’s over-playing you, Paul. Cut backdoor.” I can see what plays Doc Rivers calls, and I can determine which ones succeed and which ones don’t. But I cannot hear if Rondo says in the huddle, “Doc, I think we should run a pick-and-roll with me and Paul because the Bulls are switching ball screens.” Sometimes, on lucky days, a player will offer me a window to the inside, will tell the media a story about the secrets that occur between the baselines, the stuff TVs can’t portray and microphones can’t pick up.

Yesterday, Brian Scalabrine christened Rondo the smartest player he has ever played with. Being Scal’s smartest teammate is no small feat. Scal played with Jason Kidd, one of the best lead guards ever, when Kidd was the NBA’s best point guard. He played with Derrick Rose when Rose won the MVP. He played with Kevin Garnett, who quarterbacks defenses and never stops teaching his teammates. He played with Paul Pierce, one of the craftiest scorers of his era. Yet even when compared to Scal’s other elite teammates, Rondo stands out.

“Rondo is conceptually smarter than both of those guys,” Scal told Comcast, referring to Kidd and Rose. “He thinks the game like a coach. He thinks of the different types of offense that [he] can use early, that he won’t use late. He’s just on—intellectually, he’s just on a totally different level than any player I’ve ever seen.

“When he was young and he was doing that, he was deemed uncoachable. As this thing’s going along and he gets older and we see how it all plays out, now people are starting to think, like, ‘Maybe he was just right.’ In his rookie year, his second year, he was making adjustments on the fly, and he was telling guys, like, ‘This is what we need to do to win.’ And this guy’s a second-year point guard, and it—it works.

“And that’s the thing you have to understand. He’s one of the smartest—I’m just gonna go out there: he’s the smartest basketball player I’ve ever played with, as far as understanding what he needs to do to run that position and what he needs to do for us to score in the fourth quarter. He’s not thinking about the second, he’s not thinking about the first. He’s thinking … ‘Down the stretch, where am I going to go, what am I going to pull out of my back pocket that I know I can go to to win a game?”

Scal’s opinion is exactly why we cherish secondary access to athletes and coaches, why we yearn for their thoughts. Sure, I can watch Rondo nightly, observe his masterful no-look passes, marvel at the way he runs a team, and thank the basketball gods that the Celtics chose him with the 21st pick in the 2006 NBA Draft. But without Scal, I would not possibly be able to compare his intelligence to Jason Kidd’s. Of course, I could have compared Rondo’s IQ to Tony Allen’s IQ without enlisting Scal’s help; those two players’ intelligence are distant enough for Stevie Wonder to see the difference.

But for me to rate Rondo’s intelligence against Kidd’s would have been ludicrous; they’re too close in basketball IQ for somebody like me—armed with an admittedly limited scope of information—to accurately determine which player is smarter. Kidd is one of the all-time greats, a savant who used smarts (and elite skill, and great athleticsm) to dominate during his youth and now uses his guile to adapt,  to fill a role, and to counteract the aging process. Watching Rondo play, I can easily notice comparisons to Kidd—specifically, their court vision, ability to excel without a jump shot (before he became an above-average standstill shooter, remember, Jason Kidd was known as Ason Kidd), rebounding acumen, and gift for making teammates better. But I would never have, could never have, compared their intelligence.

Without listening to Doc Rivers, Scal and other Celtics rave about Rondo’s basketball brain, I could never understand the full extent of it. Hell, even after listening to their opinions, I only get an occasional inside look into the Celtics—I will still never fully understand Rondo’s basketball mind. But after Scal’s words, I can imagine Rondo dictating plays to Rivers in the huddle. I can envision him whispering to Pierce about where and when he should cut. I can picture him interrupting a scouting report to argue it, and actually being right. I can see him studying film and tendencies and pouring over stats.

Today, I know a little more about Rajon Rondo than I did yesterday. While my knowledge remains imperfect and always will: thank you, Scal.

Antoine Walker pleaded guilty to felony bad check charges yesterday morning, two years after a criminal complaint alleged that Walker failed to pay back more than $75o,000 worth of debt owed to three casinos.

Under the plea agreement, Employee Number Eight will likely face no jail time. Let’s all Walker Wiggle to that. Nonetheless, Walker’s day in court yesterday was a not-so-fun reminder that there are no four-pointers in signing bad checks. The former NBA All-Star has been put on probation and will have a court order to pay his restitution to the casinos.

In the meantime, Walker will presumably continue his struggling basketball career, making one last attempt to make the NBA. I was fortunate enough (or unfortunate enough, if you prefer) to cover Walker’s D-League game in Springfield last season, and his skills are still easily evident. He’s still a guard in a power forward’s body, capable of running a pick-and-roll, zinging no-look passes right into a teammate’s shooting pocket, drilling a picture-perfect jump hook over a center’s outstretched arms, or running off long strings of made three-pointers.

But like always, he was short of perfect. He thrilled the crowd the day I saw him, made six trifectas, scored 27 points, and even unleashed the Walker Wiggle after a late (and clutch) three-pointer. But the extraneous 30 pounds hanging from his waist operated as a symbolic reminder of why Walker’s NBA career fell short of expectations. He always possessed the skills. He always loved basketball. He always showed a fierce competitive spirit. But there was always something holding him back, and even now, during the final, desperate act of his basketball career, that hasn’t changed.

I know why I dislike Jeff Green, and it’s not just because he underwhelmed last season in Boston. Considering that he entered a vastly different role, played the understudy to a whole slew of All-Stars, and learned both a new offense and a complicated defense on the run, his relative failures should have been expected (at least to an extent).

No, I don’t dislike Green because he played poorly last season. Hell, I don’t even dislike him because the Celtics relied on him and he failed to provide much (or sometimes any) help. I don’t dislike him because some people still overlook his advanced statistics, which say and have always said that Green’s a mediocre, inefficient player.  I don’t dislike him because he shames Antoine Walker’s old number eight (alright, that’s just a joke) and I don’t dislike him because the Celtics traded away one of my favorite players to acquire him.

I dislike Jeff Green because he never seems to try. A rebound ricochets off the rim and Green might watch it fall, almost as if the rebound were a rain drop and Green were standing underneath a balcony trying to avoid it. The rest of the Celtics rotate seamlessly on defense, but there’s Green, hugging his man. He doesn’t always miss rebounds and he doesn’t always miss rotations, but Green does so enough to let us believe he’s not putting in the required effort. To make matters worse, we can see talent in him, we can see his potential, we can see that he possesses a lot of the skills to become a stud.

But everything Green does on the basketball court—whether he rises into the stratosphere to slam down an alley-oop dunk or falls to the floor after being bullied for a rebound—comes equipped with the same blank stare. The lack of facial expressions doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Tim Duncan, except for his incessant whining to officials, rarely shows his emotions on the court. Derrick Rose’s face looks almost vacant most of the time. And the next on-court smile you see from Rajon Rondo will be his first. But when Green couples his “dear in the headlights” look with his “out for a morning jog” pace of play, his startlingly nonchalant disposition makes you wonder if he really doesn’t care.

Last night at an awards ceremony, Larry Bird discussed the tail end of his career, when Kevin McHale broke his foot, Robert Parish suffered nagging injuries and Bird himself was barely healthy enough to walk to the team bus after games. Knowing what Bird knew—that his body wasn’t ever going to improve, neither would his teammates’, and together they would limp into retirement (or, in Parish’s case, a form of semi-retirement that allowed him to play a limited role for several more years)—a reporter asked Bird if he would have broken up The Original Big Three sooner in an effort to rebuild.

“Absolutely not,” Bird was quoted by ESPN. “That’s what Boston stands for. Respect. If you give it all you’ve got, play as hard as you can, [the fans] will come out and support you. Not only for that game, for your whole career. I know, I lived it.”

If you give it all you’ve got, play as hard as you can, we will support you. That’s why I still adore Eddie House but feel disgusted on a regular basis while watching Jeff Green. That’s why I can put up with Jermaine O’Neal but couldn’t stand Rasheed Wallace. That’s why James Posey became a faux legend and its why we can overlook Delonte West’s personal struggles and its why Ryan Gomes will still get an ovation every time he comes to Boston.

The best experiment to test Bird’s hypothesis might have been conducted by Nate Robinson. From a “rooting for the Celtics” standpoint, I should have loathed a lot Robinson offered. He loved shooting bad shots; in multiple cases, a three-on-one fast break became Robinson’s latest 27-foot pull-up jumper. He often got tortured on defense. I can vividly recall one five-minute span when J.J. Barea made Robinson look like a blind kindergartener.  In retrospect, after Barea played a crucial role for the NBA champions, Robinson’s humiliating stretch doesn’t seem quite as bad. But believe me, Robinson got a free clinic that day in how to succeed as a Lilliputian. Perhaps even more frustrating, Robinson didn’t know how to run an offense, he was 5’7, and the most lasting thing he has ever done in basketball (and I imagine the most lasting thing he will ever do) was win three slam dunk championships. He can fly into the sky, he can score, but winning basketball? It was, and is, largely foreign to him.

But he played hard. Even when Robinson failed to make his way over a screen, he tried. Even when he missed a layup, he bounded off bigger, stronger defenders just to get there. Even when he pulled up for a three-pointer on a fast break, I got the sinking feeling he actually thought it was a good idea. And so I didn’t mind him. I never loved him, but I couldn’t find it within myself to dislike a player who A) played his pants off every time he stepped on the court, and B) cheered for his teammates like a 13-year old fan no matter how many successive minutes he sat on the bench.

In December, I compared Nate Robinson to a troublemaker I dealt with during my lifeguarding days. (Celtics Blog)

The third troublemaker, I didn’t hate. Not at all. Maybe I should have. This kid would break every pool rule, every single day. I would tell him to walk, and 0.2 seconds later he’d be sprinting full speed. I’d tell him to stop splashing, and the next thing I knew his friends would be under a barrage of splashing water. I’d tell him not to do a back flip, and — wouldn’t you know it? — his next dive would be a back flip.

But there was a difference to the third boy’s troublemaking — it was all in good fun. He wasn’t annoying, and he wasn’t choking out any of his friends. Mostly, he didn’t harm anything or anybody at all. He just broke a lot of rules because he was a free spirit, because he was so excited to swim in the pool he couldn’t contain himself. Every time he broke a rule, he’d get a look on his face, like, “Oops. I can’t believe I just did that. I’m so sorry.” And he always had a smile on his face, so I couldn’t stay mad at this kid. I just couldn’t, no matter how many rules he broke. It wasn’t entirely his fault. He just couldn’t help himself.

In case you are still wondering, the third boy is the swimming pool equivalent of Nate Robinson. Nate does some really stupid things on a basketball court. He loves pulling up for threes on 1-on-3 fast breaks. He occasionally makes dumb passes, and his height can hinder him defensively. There was one play Sunday when Robinson took a shot, over his head, literally without even looking at the hoop. It hit the side of the backboard and bounced off, and I imagine Doc Rivers sat on the sideline shaking his head in disbelief.

But I can’t stay mad at Nate. Because on that very same play, Nate chased down his rebound and somehow passed it to Ray Allen in the corner, who made a bucket. The play after that, Nate made a nice defensive play which resulted in a fast break lay-in. A quarter or two later, a loose ball bounced on the court, and three differentIndiana Pacers were in pursuit. Naturally, Nate, farthest away from the ball, dove on the floor and beat all three Pacers to it. Two or three plays after THAT, Nate dove into the first row of the stands, after a ball he probably never had a chance of reaching.

What I’m trying to say is this: Nate Robinson is not the world’s smartest basketball player, nor is he anywhere close to it. But I can live with his occasional brain farts because I know everything he does has the right intention, because he does it all with a smile on his face, and because no matter how many times he screws up, I know he’s actually trying as hard as he possibly can. He loves basketball, loves being part of a winner, and plays with the exuberance of Pool Troublemaker #3.

I imagine players don’t care very much whether a young blogger for some fan-run website called “Celtics Town” appreciates their style of play. But if for some reason Jeff Green did care, I would tell him to play with more passion. I would tell him to chase down rebounds like they were the girl of his dreams. I would tell him to defend opponents like his next meal depended on it. I would tell him to smile, to scream, to display emotion, to dive on the floor. The smiling and screaming part doesn’t actually have anything to do with success, but at least it would show us he cares.

There was a scene in “Jerry McGuire” when sports agent Jerry McGuire tells his football-playing client Rod Tidwell why the Arizona Cardinals haven’t offered him a big contract.

“I’ll tell you why you don’t have your ten million dollars yet,” Jerry said. “Right now, you are a paycheck player. You play with your head, not your heart. Your personal life, heart. But when you get on the field, it’s all about what you didn’t get, who’s to blame, who overthrew the pass, who’s got the contract you don’t, who’s not giving you your love. You know what, that is NOT what inspires people. That is not what inspires people. Just shut up, play the game, play it from your heart. And you know what? I will show you the ‘coin’ (money). And that’s the truth, man. That’s the truth. Can you handle it?”

How am I going to support paying Jeff Green this summer when everything he does tells me he’s a paycheck player? Play the game, Jeff, play it from your heart. And then I will feel comfortable showing you the coin.

I once had a girlfriend (we’ll call her Beth) who mispronounced my friend Dan Potito’s last name every time she said it. At first, I corrected Beth whenever she made the mistake.

“Pah-tee-toe,” I would say before muttering, “Damn it, what a moron” under my breath.

A day later, a week later, or sometimes even just a couple hours later, she would make the mistake again. This time I would slow my speech down, like I was trying to teach a pre-schooler how to read.

“Pah. Tee. Toe,” I would correct her. “Pah. Tee. Toe.”

Depending on how frustrated I was with her shortcomings, I might even add a four-letter word rhyming with tuck.

Inevitably, my lessons failed. Beth had some type of road block prohibiting her from saying Potito. No matter how many times she screwed up, no matter how many times I corrected her, she kept inserting an ‘N’ into his name. Where the ‘N’ came from, I will never know. But she kept saying Pontito, and I kept rolling my eyes, and finally I decided to ignore her mispronunciations altogether. I could think of better ways to spend my time than correcting somebody who could not possibly be corrected.

During the past two seasons, I reached that point with Boston’s rebounding. I could either rip the poor rebounding during almost every game recap and offer advice to correct it (Pah-tee-toe, damn it!), or I could blissfully ignore it, pretend it didn’t happen, and continue as if the recurring problem did not exist. Just to clarify: by rebounding problem, I almost solely mean offensive rebounding. The Celtics rated 9th in the NBA in defensive rebound rate (the percentage Boston grabbed of all defensive rebounds available), but dead last in offensive rebound rate (the percentage Boston grabbed of all offensive rebounds available). Overall, they were the 19th-best rebounding team in the NBA last season according to rebounding rate, tied with the Toronto Raptors and only one spot ahead of the New Jersey Nets. Of all the serious contenders, the Celtics were the only team to haul in less than 50% of available rebounds. But I rarely addressed it because, well, what was the point? The Celtics were a below-average rebounding team, they were consistently that way, and if I complained about rebounding night in and night out, I would have sounded like an MP3 player on loop.

Still, the problem persisted.  Looking at Boston’s roster, there’s no easy fix for the offensive rebounding issues in regards to next season. But there is hope, if just a glimmer. The Celtics will enter this summer knowing full well that their offensive rebounding needs a serious boost, and there are a few options to address the issue.

One way they could address rebounding is through roster changes. As of now, the Celtics currently have three big men under contract. Two are creaky veterans (Kevin Garnett and Jermaine O’Neal), and one is a pinky-finger thin rookie not known for his rebounding prowess (JaJuan Johson). Danny Ainge will undoubtedly address Boston’s lack of size via free agency, whether by re-signing Glen Davis or by adding free agent big men from other teams. But with the Celtics already committed to a boatload of salary and the NBA potentially looking at a hard cap (no mid-level exceptions), adding quality size will prove difficult, if not impossible. WEEI’s Ben Rohrbach examined the crop of free agent big men yesterday, concluding that Boston’s best outcome this summer would be to luck into Greg Oden on the cheap and add a role player like Nazr Mohammed in addition. Needless to say, when the best-case scenario includes adding Nazr Mohammed and Greg Oden’s body bag, options are limited.

Oden, at least if he could stay on his feet, would address Boston’s rebounding problem. But even after playing only 82 games through four professional seasons, he might still be out of Boston’s price range. In fact, price issues could become a pattern this summer. Samuel Dalembert’s rebounding percentage would have led the Celtics this season, but even Dalembert should be out of Boston’s price range. Tyson Chandler would help Boston immensely, but he’ll probably be too expensive. DeAndre Jordan should find more money elsewhere, too (although, in retrospect, the Celtics probably should have drafted him rather than J.R. Giddens—and by probably, I mean Danny Ainge should fall asleep each night with regrets).

Rather than sign a franchise-altering center this summer, the Celtics will likely have to target the Kurt Thomases and Nazr Mohammeds of the world; in other words, players who are closer to getting their AARP cards than they are to being in college. Those players would provide a rebounding upgrade, yes, but they would also play smaller roles that would limit their minutes and thus hinder their effect. With monetary limitations and limited options, the Celtics will find adding rebounding through free agency difficult. Even if they decide to re-sign Glen Davis or Jeff Green, neither rebounds the ball well.

Another option would be a trade. But there are problems with that. The Celtics have limited assets and the best assets they do have will be difficult to trade for fair value. Their most valuable trade pieces still include Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, two of whom (Allen and Garnett) aren’t just All-Stars but also possess expiring contracts. Trading one or two of the Big Three for Dwight Howard would be magnificent, but trading them for a merely serviceable center might cause a riot in Faneuil Hall. Ainge could also choose to move Rajon Rondo, which might not be intelligent because Rondo’s a young, All-Star point guard who makes Brendan Haywood money—those are difficult to find.

If Ainge decides not to move any of the Fab Four, his trade bait would likely consist of Green (whose value eroded toward the end of last season), Davis (ditto) and some combination of recent draft picks (something tells me very few teams want Avery Bradley) and future draft picks (the Clippers’ pick is a nice trade chip, but it’s top-10 protected).  Or, a pu-pu platter. When you add that Boston has built plenty of cap space for 2012 and Ainge has already stated his intentions to use it only on the right players, the Celtics are handcuffed not only by their limited assets but also by who they can and cannot trade for due to future cap implications.

All of which means the Celtics will struggle to add any significant rebounding through roster additions. Any improvement they make could have to come internally, or by addition through subtraction. Strategically speaking, Doc Rivers should change his team’s philosophy on offensive rebounding. In the past, he has intentionally foregone offensive rebounding in order to set up a stiff transition defense. But Boston’s defense has been at or near the top of the NBA for the past four seasons. Lately, it’s the offense that has slipped, and a crucial part of the slippage has been Boston’s lack of offensive rebounds.

Believe it or not, the Celtics were only the 17th most efficient offensive team last season. They managed to accomplish offensive mediocrity even while leading the NBA in field goal percentage. How? Four main reasons: the Celtics were 22nd in fewest turnovers, 25th in three-pointers made, 24th in free throws made, and dead last in offensive rebounding. Improving in any of those four categories would increase Boston’s offensive efficiency. But the improvements could prove difficult. Outside of Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, the Celtics have very few shooters. The lack of free throws was an effect of aging players who can’t get to the hoop like they used to, a problem that seems unlikely to change. And the offensive rebounds? The Celtics game plan deserves partial blame, but the aging, perimeter-oriented roster also contributed to the rebounding dearth.

In an October 8, 2009 study, Basketball Prospectus’s Kevin Pelton examined the correlation between age and offensive rebounding. He found that a player’s offensive rebound rate (ORR) normally drops very early in his career and remains lower later in his career. This could be entirely a function of age. Or it could be something else. “My presumption,” wrote Pelton, “is that as [players] expand their game and add range, they are pulled away from the basket and spend less time securing second chances.”

Whether decreasing offensive rebound totals are a function of age or perimeter-oriented big men, last year’s Celtics were damned. Their big men were old, raggedy and perimeter-oriented. The old: Kevin Garnett posted the second-worst ORR of his career. Shaq posted the worst of his. Jermaine O’Neal wasn’t much better. Glen Davis’s ORR decreased by more than 50% in one season. All the rebounding offenders were old (except for Davis, who is big-boned). All were perimeter-oriented (except for Shaq, who missed more than half the season due to injury). When including Nenad Krstic and Semih Erden (whose youth did not make him more than an average offensive rebounder), the Celtics entire frontcourt was saddled with poor-to-mediocre offensive rebounders. And the two worst—Garnett and Davis—received the majority of playing time.

Next year (assuming there is a next year), Garnett will presumably still start and play the majority of minutes at power forward. Because he has not been a good offensive rebounder since relocating to Boston, we can comfortably assume he will still rebound a small percentage of his teammates’ misses. But Davis is likely a goner, meaning his minutes (and his putrid 5.7% ORR) will be gone.  Jermaine O’Neal will likely get some of those minutes (if his body can handle it), and he should be an upgrade from Big Baby in terms of crashing the glass. But he’s not Zach Randolph or Kevin Love—he won’t manufacture four or five extra shots for Boston on a nightly basis. The rest of those minutes should go to offseason pickups (again, the Celtics don’t have much of an opportunity to add serious talent) and JaJuan Johnson (who did not rebound particularly well even in college). Chances are, no spectacular offensive rebounders there.

Cutting Glen Davis loose would help the Celtics make improvements on the offensive glass. But those improvements will be meager unless Rivers decides to change his coaching philosophy. Considering that the team’s offense was last season’s problem, Rivers should seriously consider changing his ways.