The Boston Celtics are signing forward Jarvis Varnado of Sioux Falls in the D-League, league source tells Y! Sports.

December 24, 2012 12:18 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

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Adrian Wojnarowski

Despite Fab Melo’s ridiculous 15/16/14 triple-double this weekend, the Boston Celtics decided to sign Jarvis Varnado, a 6-foot-9 shot blocker who became the NCAA’s top career shot blocker while at Mississippi State. Varnado, 24, is averaging 3.9 blocks per game in the D-League this season, which probably means the Celtics are admitting, “Yeah, son dude, our interior defense sucks.”

Varnado isn’t a polished center by any means, but he should help Boston’s interior defense, which certainly could use some assistance.

Brian Scalabrine, now a CSNNE analyst, who recently challenged anyone in Boston to a one-on-one match to prove his athletic superiority, looked at a picture of Tom Thibodeau wearing a Salem State basketball jersey in his 1984-85 team picture. He joked that Thibs’ poor individual defense in college, a real phenomenon according to the coach’s college teammates, was the reason the current Bulls coach conjured such a magnificent help defense. I’m paraphrasing now, but Scal said something like, “He knew his opponent was getting by him, so he needed to devise a way he could still stop the other team.” Then Scal told viewers a little more about Thibodeau, known as much for his yelling as for his unrivaled defense and for his tendency to play Luol Deng 55 minutes per game: “People don’t know how fun this guy is.”

The red-head still hasn’t perfected the art of making television — he’s still not as polished with his speech as Mike Gorman, still in danger of muttering “um” every once in a while — but he’s unafraid to speak his mind and offers rare insight that few other analysts are willing or able to.

He told us once tonight that Chris Wilcox was supposed to blitz a pick-and-roll, and that Rajon Rondo on the same play was supposed to fight over the pick with more tenacity. He spoke of playing pickup basketball with the Celtics coaches after practice yesterday, of how Doc Rivers raved about Boston’s practice intensity. (That anecdote sounds odd after Boston was blasted 100-89 by the Chicago Bulls, who were playing on the second night of a back-to-back. But Rivers warned Gorman in the pregame that the Celtics going so hard in practice might work against them during the game.)

Scalabrine told us Thibodeau used to preach going under screens against Rondo. He told us how Courtney Lee beat Rondo in one-on-one at practice yesterday. He argued with a CSNNE’s statistician’s proclamation that tonight was Joakim Noah’s first triple-double — “Agree to disagree, Mr. Stat Man” — and then jokingly bragged in third person after he was actually right — “Sorry, Stat Man. Scalabrine got you again.” Scal watched one of his former teammates, Nate Robinson, try a couple of showboat plays during garbage time, after which Jason Collins briefly tried to murder Robinson with a glare, and then Scal complained that “The Nate Robinson Show” doesn’t know when to stop.

Scalabrine understands basketball, and, better for us,  he knows how to explain what he knows. Better even than that, maybe, he sees basketball like we do, with a brain capable of grasping what he sees yet a body flawed enough, plus an ego fragile enough, to view what great NBA players do with awe. Scal spent 13 seasons in the NBA, and in many ways he is an insider in the NBA world like we will never be. But in many other ways, he does not consider himself an insider. He knows he could never accomplish what Pierce does or what Rondo does, yet he spent years searching for reasons why they make the choices they do — in other words, he spent his career as a man searching for knowledge despite knowing he would fail if he ever tried applying much of it. And now it’s that knowledge, and his willingness to impart it, and the uncomplicated and humorous manner in which he does so, which make him one hell of an analyst, who will only improve as he becomes more acclimated to being on television. It’s no wonder the Bulls offered him a job as an assistant coach.

Why have I written only about Scal? Because he earned a lot of praise. But also because it beats talking about Noah’s triple-double; Boston’s atrocious defense and missing bench; Rondo’s wasted awesomeness; wide open Carlos Boozer layups; Jimmy fucking Butler; Robinson drilling five 3-pointers; and finally Robinson flexing while looking at the Boston bench, in the waning moments of the latest embarrassing Celtics loss.

There are only so many times I can discuss the same Boston shortcomings all over again.

“Right now we’re not a good team,” Doc Rivers said after the shellacking.

But at least there’s Scal.

There’s class, and then there’s Doc Rivers.

Rivers has been considered a candidate to replace Mike Krzyzewski on the Team USA sideline, and Rivers has said he would be honored to be named Coach K’s successor. However, he doesn’t think he’s the best man for the job. (Boston Herald)

“There’s no doubt,” said Rivers of his peer. “There’s just no doubt. To me, there should be no doubt at all.

“It shouldn’t be me. It really shouldn’t be. It should be Pop. Forget me. Take me out of the equation. I really think it should be (Gregg) Popovich.”

“He’s done it,” he said. “He’s won four titles. He’s done everything. He’s a winner, and he knows how to coach great players. He should be it.”

There is also the fact that Popovich, who spent five years in the Air Force, has paid dues by twice being an assistant coach for the national team.

“He’s served more than his time,” said Rivers. “He’s served his country. He’s done everything that should be required, and he should be it. He deserves it.”

It’s incredibly hard not to like Doc Rivers, no?

As @KWAPT put it on Facebook, “When all is said and done, this is all that really matters tonight. One friend, there for another. Winning and losing is just not so important.”

(Video via @truthtrey)

Kevin Durant's shoes tonight.

I watched the whole game, took notes and tweeted about it. But lamenting some poor interior defense and bad shooting just doesn’t feel right tonight. The lasting image I have from this game wasn’t Jeff Green’s fierce dunk or James Harden’s outrageously effective Eurostep. It was Kevin McHale, who recently lost his daughter, sobbing into Kevin Garnett’s shoulder while the two hugged after the game.

I’ll get back to overreacting to basketball games tomorrow. Tonight, that just doesn’t feel right.

I see people trying to make sense of this tragedy, people calling for stricter gun control laws, people claiming mental illness awareness needs to expand. I searched for “Ryan Lanza” on Facebook and later switched my search to “Adam Lanza” when news emerged that the wrong brother was initially blamed for the crime. I am reading about 20 elementary school students dead, and 27 dead total, and I think back to my own elementary school days, when I was so innocent, so much kinder than I am now, when I befriended the new Chinese kid who couldn’t speak any English despite our language barriers because it seemed like the right thing to do, and had him come over my house, where he needed to write his thoughts on an easel because he still didn’t know how to verbalize my language.

I remember crying during second-grade basketball games when I missed shots, pretending like I was physically hurt. These memories return to me now because fake injuries, not bullets and deaths, are what elementary schoolers should cry about. They are supposed to be innocent and naive and waiting for Santa Claus to come through the chimney. They are supposed to embrace people who are different just because it seems like the nice thing to do. They are supposed to learn from teachers who have dedicated their lives to children, not learn what it’s like to see several of their teachers die. They are supposed to go to recess and play four square and tell one of their buddies to tell a cute girl’s friend that they think the girl is pretty. They are supposed to have their lives ahead of them, to be shielded at least to an extent from life’s pain, to not have to deal with shit like this — friends dead, teachers dead, cousins and daughters and brothers and parents, at least 27 of them dead — after witnessing events they will never be able to unsee. Obviously, life isn’t always perfect. Some five-year olds have dealt with circumstances I couldn’t imagine. But I am of the mind that we should stick innocence in a ziplock bag and into a refrigerator, attempting to preserve it as long as possible.

There is, so sadly, nothing we can do about this fact: At any moment in our lives, we are one complete stranger’s unfathomable mistake away from becoming a victim. We can arrive at work on an otherwise routine day and have our building blown up by a suicide bomber. We can be operating our car sober on the highway and get hit by a drunk driver. We can attend opening night of a movie and have our brains blown out by someone we don’t know. We can kiss our children goodbye and never see them alive again.

I have a fear of heights that many people cannot understand. I am so afraid that my palms sweat every time I stand on the second floor of a mall. Why? I don’t know where the fear originated. But every time I stand on the second floor of a mall, or anywhere else high where I am not surrounded on all sides by barriers (for example, I’m fine flying airplanes), I think to myself, “If someone ever pushed me, I could die.” To calm down, I think that nobody would ever do that. Yet these senseless killings remind me that my fear has a basis, however minuscule.  Some sick people out there murder people who have never sinned against them. Somebody out there might see a 25-year old standing on the edge of a mall railing and push him over, just like somebody opened fire on a classroom of kindergartners this morning.

I drove home to eat lunch today, just in hopes of seeing my little brothers. They had not gotten home from school, though. Their classmates were walking home on sidewalks everywhere I looked, smiling to each other, chatting with each other, walking home, maybe to play video games, or to get ready for dance class, or to do homework, or to wait until their fathers got home so they could watch the Celtics-Rockets game together. I watched my brothers’ season-opening basketball games the other night. They both played well given their various roles, but maybe the point isn’t how well they performed. Maybe the point is that one day, they might perform a lot better. Their peaks are ahead of them.

Somebody in Connecticut robbed the world of so many peaks today, so much innocence, so many unborn memories, not just for the 27 dead or the 600 students at the school, but for all their friends and families too.

There will be a time to fight for change, to advocate for stricter gun control or better mental illness awareness, to explore other ways we can protect society from experiencing more horror like this in the future. But I don’t think that time is now. Not today. Use this event to inspire improvement, please, by all means. But first, use it to motivate appreciation. Go home, kiss your family members, tell your loved ones how much you care for them. Somewhere deep inside of us remains the second-grader who embraced our new Chinese classmate despite the language barrier. We have hardened since then, become more cynical, less open to new joys. We have reached the part of life where we understand how difficult it can be. We experienced our innocence to the fullest and then it slowly erased as our eyes opened to the world’s harshness. Those kids should have had more time to fulfill their innocence, they should have lived until they were hardened, until they became parents and could kiss their own children before their children went off to school.

Youth is equivalent to hope and possibilities and not-yet-jaded outlooks on life. Youth is staying awake all night on Christmas Eve, trembling about what you might find underneath the tree the following day. Youth is standing in the shower and thinking about the girl you have a crush on, how she smiled at you during lunch period, how she walked next to you in the halls. Youth is jumping on a trampoline with friends and playing in a wiffle ball league on weekends. Youth is the beginning of a life worth living.

I will never understand how anybody could fathom using a rifle to take that away.