As A. Sherrod Blakely writes on CSNNE, a season-erasing lockout could improve Boston’s chances of acquiring Dwight Howard.

Blakely’s reasoning is simple: if the lockout is lifted, Orlando could very well trade Howard. He does not seem intent on staying in Orlando, so the Magic’s best bet could be to trade him to the highest bidder before Howard departs for nothing in free agency. If the Magic do trade Howard, the Celtics, with limited assets, almost definitely could not make the highest bid.

On the other hand, if the lockout does wipe out the entire season, Howard could opt out of his contract and become a free agent. Then, Boston’s lack of trade assets would not matter and the cap space they have built would.

Of course, the Celtics would love to acquire Howard. Any team with a GM (not even any team with a competent GM; just any team that has a GM) would love to add the NBA’s best center. The problem is that Boston adding him, while not completely impossible, seems entirely far-fetched.

Reason #1:

When’s the last time the Celtics signed a superstar free agent in his prime?

(Waits for answer.)

(Still waiting.)

(No, Rasheed Wallace doesn’t count.)

(No, Shaq’s decomposed body doesn’t count.)

(No, Patrick O’Bryant doesn’t count.)

Do you give up? That’s because the answer is never. The Celtics traded for Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, drafted Paul Pierce and Rajon Rondo. They drafted Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, John Havlicek, Dave Cowens, Larry Bird, Bill Walton and even Danny Ainge. They traded for Kevin McHale, Robert Parish, and even Dennis Johnson.

Players have consistently spurned Boston in free agency for at least two reasons:

1) The city has a reputation for racism dating back to the Russell era (and beyond). As much as Russell did for the Boston Celtics—I would never say a bad word about his contributions to the franchise—his comment calling Boston a “flea market of racism” stuck. He was the NBA’s best winner, yet a group of Boston morons had broken into his house, left racist graffiti on his walls, vandalized his trophies and poo’ed on his beds. The city deserved Russell’s harsh criticism. But his words certainly did nothing to improve Boston’s odds of signing a premier free agent.

A “flea market of racism” reputation doesn’t go away easily, although Kevin Garnett might have finally changed it. Garnett, at least according to reports, initially did not want a trade to Boston. He worried about the city’s attitude. He wondered whether the city was still a cesspool of bigotry. But Paul Pierce and Doc Rivers convinced Garnett to give Boston a chance. The city has changed, they said. And it has embraced Garnett with open arms, just like James Posey did so many times.

With Doc Rivers signed for the next five years and the local reputation changing, the Celtics could become a more desirable location for black players. But still, the next superstar free agent the Celtics sign will be the first.

2) Boston is cold, and it isn’t New York. Players will always want to play in New York City. The media spotlight shines brighter there than anywhere else. It’s the biggest market in the country, “the Mecca of basketball,” yada yada yada. Players can bear the snow when it comes alongside endorsement deals, fan support, basketball history (not so much professional basketball history, but still) and more attention than players could receive anywhere else.

Boston’s a big market, too, but it isn’t New York. And given the choice between living in South Beach or Southie, the white sand, mid-90s weather and zany nightlife sound pretty good.

Reason #2:

Yes, the Celtics could have miles of cap space for next season. Yes, Rajon Rondo will wear Green and White for the foreseeable future. But the Celtics’ future is murky.

Consider this: the Celtics have two players signed for the 2012-13 season. Just two. One is Rondo, who is an All-Star but probably not the type of free agent drawing card Chris Paul should be. Why not? There are serious questions about Rondo’s game. He can’t shoot. He disappears occasionally during the regular season, if not the playoffs. He battled nagging injuries, including plantar fasciitis, all last season; the injuries (and maybe a laissez-faire attitude toward the regular season) derailed what had been a Stockton-iffic start and left Rondo average for the final quarter (at least) of the regular season. Playing alongside Rondo would presumably be oodles of fun. But teaming with him is not necessarily a free ride to the NBA Finals.

The other player Boston has under contract for 2012-13, Paul Pierce, will turn 35 before playing a single game that season. If a free agent (such as Howard) is looking to build a Super-team, the Celtics won’t be his best bet—especially considering he could move to New York, play in the Mecca of Basketball, and call both Amare Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony his teammates. Or he could move to Los Angeles and take over Hollywood. Or he could move to wherever Chris Paul lands and immediately field a better roster than Boston’s, even if the supporting cast couldn’t throw the basketball into an ocean.

Let’s say Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen decide to return to Boston for significantly smaller contracts. Even then, joining the Celtics would not guarantee competing for a title. Garnett will be 36 years old by then and Allen will be 37. If they’re still good players, they certainly won’t be All-Stars.

Don’t misunderstand me—Boston has its draws. Any superstar would love to play for Rivers. The franchise (mostly) knows what it’s doing, and is committed to winning. Rondo can make basketball easy for his teammates. The owners are willing to spend cash. The franchise is the greatest in NBA history. The city loves sports. But there are reasons free agents have never picked Boston, and those reasons will not evade Dwight Howard.

The Celtics would be idiotic not to try adding Howard. Hell, I assume all thirty teams will submit trade proposals for Howard if he ever hits the trade market. But I wouldn’t count on Howard signing in Boston, even if the Celtics preserve all their cap space, even if this season ends with a lockout and Howard chooses to become a free agent. Call me a pessimist or call me a realist. I would vote the latter.

Nonetheless, I’m keeping my fingers crossed, holding my rosary beads and saying all my prayers. And I’m not even moderately religious.

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.

If Glen Davis returns to the Boston Celtics next season, I will:

• pledge my support to the New York Yankees now and forever
• go for a 20-mile run on gravel, barefoot
• eat green beans and only green beans from this day forward, and…
• call the police to turn myself in for a crime I did not commit.

Davis’s ignorant comments yesterday (combined with his dismal final three months of the season) bought The Ticket Stub a one-way ticket out of Boston. To recap Davis’s remarks, he said (in different words) that A) the Celtics hindered his play last season, B) he doesn’t really stay in touch with Doc Rivers or Danny Ainge, C) Doc talks a lot, but Davis tries not to pay attention, and D) Glen wants to be Glen, and Glen wants to go somewhere Glen Davis can be Glen Davis. He used the third person approximately one zillion times, made himself look like an ass repeatedly, and did not once act as if he wanted to stay in Boston. Read more »

After spending most of the early season preaching the importance of home-court advantage, Doc Rivers has changed his tune. Kind of. (San Antonio Express)

“I guess it’s important,” Rivers said. “I don’t know. We want to win the games, obviously, and I’m sure so does Pop. We would love to get the No. 1 seed or keep the 2 seed. At the end of the day, I want to be healthy and have our rhythm. If that takes up to Day One of the playoffs, I’m good with that.”

Would Doc prefer it this way, with the Celtics likely to earn a second or third seed, meaning they would likely have to play at least two series (if they advance far enough) on the road? Would Doc prefer it this way, with the Celtics (yesterday notwithstanding) stumbling into the playoffs? No. Of course not. The Celtics learned first-hand the importance of home-court advantage. They learned it can be the difference between winning and losing a series, between winning and losing a Game 7. (Hold on a second while I: (A) smash my head against the wall, (B) shout obscenities at my computer, and (C) wonder why, exactly, the Celtics decided to stop trying a few weeks ago. . . . Okay, I’m back.)

As the season progressed, standards lowered. Once, home court was the goal. Now, things have changed; Doc just wants his team playing good basketball by the time the playoffs roll around. If he has to take his chances on the road, so be it, as long as his team’s playing at a high level entering the playoffs. Is that perfect? No. But the home court ship might have already sailed, so it’s not like the Celtics really have much of a choice.

(About an hour before tipoff last night, reporters were informed Rajon Rondo would not play against the Indiana Pacers. Ten minutes or so later, Rondo’s status was changed.

Doc Rivers attributed the change of plans to a conversation he had with Rondo. “He came in and said ‘I feel great — my hand feels great, the swelling is all gone,’ ” said Rivers. But that’s not how the conversation really went, at least in my imagination.)

Rondo: Coach, my pinky finger feels so much better. Seriously, I can go tonight. I wouldn’t be risking any further injury. (Holds out a hockey stick in his right hand and rotates his wrist fully. Charlie Conway appears in the locker room and says, “He can have my spot. It’s what I can do for the team.”)

Doc: But Charlie, you play freaking hockey. For a fictional team. Which improbably went from being the laughingstock of a local league one year, to Junior Olympic champs the next, to a high school’s JV team the year after that.

Charlie: Yes, I was confused too. And no, I don’t know exactly what offering my spot on a fictional hockey team to Rondo did. But Ducks fly together, no?

Rondo: Yeah, coach. Ducks fly together! This one time, the Celtics and I were in class—err, film study—and we started fighting. KG called Ray Allen a coach’s pet, then Glen Davis said Ray Allen’s mom had the hots for you. Before we knew it, the whole team was fighting and the teacher—err, Lawrence Frank—came running into the classroom to tell us to sit down and ask what we had to say for ourselves. It was then that we all came together. “Quack, quack, quack, quack,” we chanted in unison, until we all got detention. The most rewarding detention I ever got.

Doc: Umm, okay. But where the hell are all these Mighty Ducks references coming from?

Charlie: Well, Rondo’s jumper definitely looks like the knucklepuck. Except it’s not nearly as accurate. Plus, your guys need to start flying together. Seriously, when’s the last time your team executed The Flying V?

Doc: Touche. But still. If we were going to have a Mighty Duck magically appear in our locker room, I wish it had been Felton Reed or Dean Portman. God knows we need some Bash Brothers. Nenad Krstic has the tenacity of a balled-up sock, and the O’Neals have the durability of dry twigs.

Glen Davis: What about me, Doc?

Doc: You’re more like Goldberg, Glen. You know, if Goldberg’s effective field goal percentage was far lower than the league’s average and had been for each of the last three seasons. I could also refer to you as “cake-eater,” even though I wouldn’t mean the term in the same way the Mighty Ducks used it.

Rondo: If we’re making comparisons to the Mighty Ducks, Sasha Pavlovic is like Averman—you don’t know whether you’re laughing at him or laughing with him. KG’s  like Luis Mendoza, who only knows how to go full speed. And Krstic is like Kenny Wu, except less graceful, or Julie “The Cat” Gaffney, except less of a man.

Doc: I would love to hear these wonderful comparisons continue, but it’s almost game time. What the hell were we supposed to be talking about in the first place?

Rondo: My injury. I can play, coach. Really.

Doc: You were never injured in the first place. Your time off was just a punishment, remember?

Rondo: Oh, yeah. Well, umm, I’m sorry? I’ll play better? I promise?

Doc: Okay, go suit up. And Charlie, I just want you to know: I loved Dawson’s Creek.

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.