There would be no talk this time around about the Washington Wizards pissing down their legs, or Andray Blatche woofing with Kevin Garnett and getting the All-Star’s juices flowing.  The Wizards couldn’t hold a 13-point lead last time these two teams met, but a 28-point lead proved to be more than enough.  It might have helped that Blatche decided to keep his mouth shut this time, deciding not to talk trash, preferring to let the Celtics continue to play dead.

But his reason for staying silent was a bit unbelievable.  Read more »

The Celtics have gotten rid of their morning walkthrough, but that doesn’t mean we have to. Here are a few Celtics links, and maybe even an NBA link or two, to help wake you up and get you focused for the day.

The pain of another draining loss. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Julian Benbow, Boston Globe – “‘We’re at home,’ Garnett said. ‘We look for our fans to give energy, to give us a spark when times are tough. It doesn’t help when the boos happen.’ [...] ‘We are a group of veterans and we are a group that is a real team,’ Garnett said. ‘We aren’t fair weather. So when that occurs we all just get together and say we just have to grind this out. Through any type of adversity, you just grip up and come together. I think that’s when your bond comes and it’s very much needed at that point.’ In a way, Pierce (9 points on 4-of-12 shooting) understood the fans’ reaction. ‘When they booed us in the past, it was because of the effort,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t because we were a bad team. I’ve been on bad teams where they cheered us. They came in sold out and cheered us every night. Regardless of if you win or lose, the fans want that effort. When they see the other teams beating us to loose balls and us turning the ball over, I think that’s the thing that they see and they start to boo about.’”

Steve Bulpett, Boston Herald – “As the Celtics left the floor at halftime last night, their senses were assaulted by both the scoreboard and noise. Trailing the wobbly Wizards 52-31, this team once drunk with success was now drinking boos. ‘Then don’t come to the (expletive) games,’ said Kevin Garnett in a relatively low tone as he headed from the court.”

Rich Levine, CSNNE – “Anyone who watched the game would agree. Friday night wasn’t about rhythm. It was about a lack of energy, a lack of fire and, as the Captain would go on to say, the Celtics playing with a lack of urgency. But the question is why? Why wasn’t the energy there? What happened to the fire? Where was the urgency? The answer brings us back to Rivers alleged smoke screen, and, in turn, to the biggest problem currently facing this team. They don’t care. No, I’m not talking about the season on the whole, or the playoffs, I’m talking about the now; the end of the regular season. They’ve checked out. They don’t have a sense of urgency because, in their minds, there’s nothing to feel urgent about.”

Jessica Camerato, WEEI – “‘I told our guys I really took the blame for this loss,’ [Doc Rivers] said. ‘I gave our guys yesterday off and shoot-around off today and nothing, you know sometimes we meet in the morning for guys to get shots. I forbade anybody from going to the gym today because we need our rest and I thought it really killed our rhythm. So you could just see it, they couldn’t get their engines started. They were stuck in mud the entire game. And I really thought that doing that was probably the reason for. I still would take the rest, having said that, but I just thought we’d play better.’ The players say it’s not fair to pin it on the coach, though. He isn’t the one on the court. ‘Doc is going to look at himself first to figure out what he can do better, but as a team we’ve got to take responsibility as well,’ said Ray Allen. ‘Doc can’t get out there on the floor. It’s whoever is out there. We have to cheer each other on and we have to have the effort every night.’”

Chris Forsberg, ESPNBoston – “While Robinson and Daniels have fallen from Rivers’ playoff rotation unveiled in Sunday’s win over the Cavaliers, he suggested that Robinson will win Boston a playoff game. ‘I think Nate can just wake up and make shots — that’s who he is,’ said Rivers. ‘Like I told you guys last week, Nate is not in our rotation right now, but he’ll win a playoff game for us. There will be a game where we are flat and we are going to need somebody to come in and make something happen. And Nate will do that. I told him that [Thursday], that there will be a game where he’s going to win this — he’s going to win us a playoff game. [With] Marquis, it’ll depend on how the guys are playing and how he’s working and practicing and everything else. But Nate’s more of an X-factor offensively.’”

A. Sherrod Blakely, CSNNE – “The Wizards had crisp ball movement. They pounded the ball inside the lane. They knocked down open jumpers when they had them. They did everything the Celtics were planning – no, make that expected – to do, which is surprising when you consider the Wizards (25-54) have nothing to play for but pride while the C’s are still playing for playoff seeding. ‘It’s like they expected us to be scared of them, or expect us to lose,’ said Wizards center JaVale McGee. ‘We just tried to prove everybody wrong and tonight we did. ‘Here we are in April, and the C’s continue to find themselves addressing issues like toughness, composure, late-game execution – the kind of things that most of the NBA’s elite teams don’t have to worry about nearly as much as the Celtics do. ‘When we go out there and put that type of effort, I don’t think we really played with any toughness against this Washington Wizards team that has been struggling all year long,’ said C’s forward Paul Pierce. ‘There’s really no excuse for it.’”

Barbara Matson, Boston Globe – “Blatche was the Wizards’ catalyst last night, scoring 15 points in the first half to push his team to a 52-31 lead. Blatche, who finished with 31 points and 11 rebounds, did not shrink away this time when Garnett came calling. When the confrontation got heated, he kept playing basketball, knocking down three straight shots — a 22-foot jumper, a fast-break layup, and a 17-foot jumper — to hoist the Wizards to a 47-19 lead with 4:33 left in the first half. ‘We came in here with a lot of energy,’ Blatche said. ‘We wanted to play hard and compete like we have been the last couple of games. We just came out on fire.’”

Mark Murphy, Boston Herald – “The cold-shooting Celtics finished with a deceptively high field-goal percentage of 42.7, and continued to work on the huge dichotomy of having the second-best road record in the NBA (25-14), but an increasingly troubling 24-16 mark at home. Indeed, the Celtics have now lost four of their last five games in the Garden. The very notion of playoff momentum stretches a little more each night. ‘We want to win these games and gather some momentum going into the playoffs,’ said Paul Pierce. ‘I don’t believe you can just turn it on in the playoffs, though some teams have done that in the past.’ Instead, the Wizards last night were the latest team to turn it on against the host Celtics, marching farther than Napoleon, and with better results, on a 32-4 first-half surge.”

Have a link I might want to look at? Send it my way by email (jayking@celticstown.com) or Twitter.

Andray Blatche has taken a vow of silence for tonight.  It’s what his coach, Flip Saunders, wants.  “Me and Coach had a talk, so I’m going to do exactly what my coach asks of me,” Blatche explained.  “If he wants me to say nothing, I’m going to say nothing. I’m just going to go out and play my game and try to get us a win.” Read more »

How do you know you’ve pulled a Ricky Davis? Well, either you’ve lost a whole lot of games or attacked the integrity of the game by trying to manufacture the final rebound of a triple-double.

Yesterday, Andray Blatche did the latter. Watch the hustle as he goes after his final rebound: The sad thing is, if he gave that same energy every minute of every game, he’d be an All-Star.

All the KG-Blatche comparisons are hereby finished.

Can we please stop comparing Andray Blatche to Kevin Garnett? I realize they are both insanely talented, freakishly long seven-feet (-ish) tall human beings that possess skills and abilities so unique they should probably be deemed unlawful.

But Kevin Garnett never would have left his team out to dry, as Blatche did yesterday when he refused to reenter a game after being pulled for not getting back on defense. (Washington Post)

“Yeah I guess, just because of everything,” Saunders said when asked if this incident was the low point in a season filled with forgettable moments. “This team, we’ve lost a lot of close games, you know, and you’ve got a chance, and when you have coaches go up and ask a player that’s supposedly your quote-unquote key player to play, and he just says he doesn’t want to play.

“I don’t care. You can be upset with me, but don’t leave your teammates hanging out to dry like that. You don’t do that. You don’t do that. That’s one of the greatest things about this sport. You look to the right, and you look to the left. It’s being in the trenches with those players. And what happens is as players, you know what you have. Right now, those teammates, he’s lost their credibility. What’s going to happen when things go bad? You can’t do those things.”

Saunders then continued, even invoking Garnett’s name to put down Blatche.

“You [know] what I’m disappointed in?” Saunders said. “I’m disappointed in that since we started him, 60 percent of the offense is run through him. Coaches aren’t wrong, no matter what. When a coach wants to teach you something, and you think you’re about that because you’ve played 16 good games?

“I mean I [coached] Kevin Garnett [in Minnesota]. That guy, you’d say one thing, and he’s up there, ‘What do you want coach?’ He wanted to get better every time. He never copped that type of attitude. That’s ridiculous. It really is. I am extremely disappointed. I am the most disappointed I’ve ever been in 15 years with a player. Most disappointed.”

Blatche has embarrassed himself, his team, and his sport.  If you have a problem with your coach, fine.  No big deal, that happens all the time.

But when you let your teammates down so blatantly, you’ve disrespected the integrity of the game.  Congratulations, Andray.  I just lost all the respect I ever had for you.

When most good teams play well, it’s because off effort and execution. When the Celtics play well, it’s because of… trash talk? (A. Sherrod Blakely, CSNNE)

Four wins over four not-so-good teams isn’t reason enough for the Boston Celtics to rejoice about their recent success.

But there’s another reason why this stretch should excite Celtic Nation.

The C’s are back to talking trash, as clear a sign as any that they’re inching closer to regaining that championship-caliber swagger we’ve come to know and opponents have come to loathe.

Of course, the trash talk is only good because it is symbolic of everything the Celtics are at their best: Bold, brave, confident, tough, and swaggerific. Once upon a time, Boston was ten points ahead at the start of games because of its tough-guy reputation. The Celtics would rub people the wrong way, talk and shove other teams out of their game, and back up all the bush-league stunts with great play. For Boston, trash talking isn’t just a bunch of annoying words strung together; it’s a weapon designed to help the C’s play their ‘A’ game and opponents to lose focus.

Guys like Stephen Jackson and Andray Blatche may feel “disrespected as men” by all the smack coming from the Celtics, but I’m with Blakely: Boston is a better team when it has an us-against-the-world mentality and plays the part of the evil villain.