Tonight's game was just like the game pictured above, minus the intensity, the implications, and several of the best players. Basically the same.

So that wasn’t a lot of fun. But let’s be honest, worse things have happened, and I’d be remissed if I didn’t make a list of them.

For example:

• Any music critic who calls Taylor Swift’s latest single “bratty” and means it as a compliment.
• Any internet Laker fan who gloatingly crows “Wait until Kevin Love plays for us in 2015!”
• Catching a perfect pass from Peyton Manning, then tripping and falling all over yourself in an open field.
• Spencer Hawes scoring 17 points and leading his team in scoring.
• Turning the ball over 20+ times in a game.

Except those last two happened in tonight’s game. So while I’m sure there are worse things, I can’t think of any right now.

Are there positives we can glean from a gross blowout like tonight? Absolutely. Paul Pierce looked great, scoring 16 points in 21 minutes, including 2-2 from behind the 3-point arc. Jared Sullinger continued to look impressive. Some will point to his 3-point range as encouraging, but I’d point to the play a couple possessions after his 3 when he passed up on an open field goal attempt from downtown,  a decision which, one pass later, led to a dunk by Darko. High basketball IQ, plays within himself, blahh blahhh blahhhh. You’ve heard it, I know.

But the carnage far outweighed the positives, and it made the game difficult to watch. Observe:

• The +/- system is handy in some statistical cases, but it can also be a total dog turd kind of wonky, and in a game like tonight, the latter was true. According to the +/-, the only way the Celtics would have come out ahead was if they had played Darko Milicic, Courtney Lee and Kris Joseph all game. Superstars, those guys. The Big Three, I like to call ‘em.
• Maalik Wayns is a surprisingly good ball distributor. He tore up the Orlando Summer League by passing to a pair of decently talented bigs (for Summer League) in Andrew Nicholson and Kyle O’Quinn, so if he gets minutes with Andrew Bynum this season, don’t be surprised if he starts to make a bit of a name for himself.
• I used Rob Kurz as a punchline in my last recap, and he came back to haunt me tonight, dominating the Sixers with 2-3 shooting for five points and two rebounds. I propose the nickname Killer Kurz. You heard it hear first
• Fab Melo played a little and did some Fab Melo-y things. He, for example, was very tall, airballed some layups, and was very much a project. Much like Sullinger, Melo tends to play within his own boundaries. Unfortunately, his boundaries are far less likely to allow him to be good at this basketballing thing.
• The “Dionte Christmas should get a roster spot!” camp is looking about as grim as the #SixSeasonsandaMovie Community crowd on Twitter. Christmas doesn’t look outclassed by any means, except that he seems uncomfortable and nervous every time he hits the floor. At least he’s looking better than Jamar Smith? Definitely not better than Rob Kurz, though.

Good preseason games are a chance for development, even in losses. Saturday’s loss to the Knicks, for example, was a good preseason game. Good preseason games are not a waste of time. Tonight was a bad preseason game, and tonight very well might have been a waste of time, at least for the C’s. There was very little we could glean from it besides the fact that if the Celtics turn the ball over 20 times and play Kurz, Downs, Smith and Collins for more than 10 minutes they will probably lose. So there’s that. I guess we learned that.

Follow Tom on Twitter: @Tom_NBA.