Two players who would certainly help the Boston Celtics, both in terms of basketball performance and overall team GPA.

As you can probably tell based on Danny Ainge’s interest in approximately 2,398 players since the NBA lockout ended, Ainge is a busy man. That’s what happens when you have seven roster spots to fill, a shortened free agency period in which to fill them, and fairly little money to fill them with.

Battier is probably a long shot. A similar player to James Posey, Battier has said he would like to sign a three- or four-year contract. The Celtics chose to let Posey go rather than sign him for four years after the 2008 championship, when Posey was 31 years old. Battier’s 33 already. Though he won’t necessarily break down like Posey did (which was very similar to the way the Cool Runnings bobsled came unhinged), the Celtics would probably try to limit Battier to a shorter contract. Maybe Ainge could convince him. Maybe Battier will go somewhere else.

Hill has stayed in Phoenix to this point, but at 39 years old, maybe he wants one shot at a championship before retirement. But is Boston that place? At the very least, if Hill signs in Boston, he could play cribbage and knit sweaters with Kevin Garnett and Jermaine O’Neal.

The photographer should have zoomed in a little closer, no?

Doc Rivers says some NBA coaching staffs have proceeded “business like normal,” but the Celtics staff is not one of them. (Boston Herald)

“It’s been interesting,” he said. “We have, what, seven signed players. But as a staff, we’ve still watched film, we’ve prepped. We’re meeting in a week again as a staff. I know some staffs have gone on business like normal, where they’ve been in the office every day. I made a conscious choice not to do that, because you just don’t know. The tough part is not knowing the rest of your roster.

“But we pretty much know who we are. We’re not changing much as far as our identity defensively and stuff like that. But there are areas we want to improve on, on offense and defense, and we’re going to do that.”

There are only so many times you can look at tape and say, “Yup, Kevin Garnett is a great defender, Paul Pierce likes the stepback jumper, Rajon Rondo can really pass, and — ya know what? — why don’t we try to get Ray Allen open for jumpers next season?”

Doc Rivers is familiar enough with his team that watching tape every day just doesn’t make sense. So for now, he has been living the life — “golf, family and that’s about it,” he said. Living the retired life well before retirement, and getting paid for it. Sounds like a decent deal.

As Rivers noted, the Celtics currently have only seven players (eight if you include E’Twaun Moore, whose second-round draft selection does not come with a guaranteed contract). One name who might interest the Celtics while filling out their roster: Grant Hill.

The 38-year old small forward is reportedly interested in joining a contender next season, and the Celtics have shown interest in the past. Hill might not be a perfect fit — the Celtics bench was starved for three-point shooting last season, and Hill has never been known as a knockdown shooter — but he’s a solid veteran with a versatile skill set.  The Celtics will be limited by their salary, which figures to be over whatever salary cap is determined in the new Collective Bargaining Agreement. But Hill could come cheap.

If he does, he could very well be on the Celtics’ free agent wish list, a list that Danny Ainge has spent more time making this offseason than ever before.

“We’ve done that,” he said, “but we’ve done that every summer, every draft and every trade deadline. It’s the same as usual. We’ve just had a lot more time to go over things.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen, but we’ll be prepared. We’ve just gotten organized in our scouting. We’re just more organized now.”

Organization will help, but Ainge will also need to be creative whenever the free agency period begins. Decisions will need to be made on Glen Davis and Jeff Green. Delonte West will need to be wooed. Centers will need to be convinced to sign. Ainge will have to fill eight roster spots despite a severe lack of spending money, and he will have to juggle the success of next year and the desire to leave salary open for a 2012 spending spree.

Godspeed, Danny. Godspeed.

Perk's happy face.

The scene seems eerily similar to my kindergarten class, where we sat in a circle and passed around what my teacher called “the conch.” If you held the conch, just a regular seashell, you were allowed to speak. If you didn’t have the conch, your silence was insisted upon. It was kind of like Lord of the Flies, except an adult was actually in charge, and I don’t think my teacher considered us savages when the conch was somebody else’s.

The 20-24 Phoenix Suns gathered at mid-court during yesterday’s practice, to discuss how to right their recent wrongs. Their defense has too often resembled a five-man fish net, with holes everywhere. Their rebounding, too often non-existent. Their offense, not enough to carry their obvious flaws. Never mind that those are natural side effects of a roster that combines twenty-five small forwards. These Suns are frustrated, and they want to fix this leak before it sinks the entire franchise.

“We had a good stretch and now we’re having a bad stretch and we’ve got to find a way to end this as quickly as possible,” Steve Nash told the Arizona Republic. “We’ve just got to come out, play hard and compete and give ourselves a chance to win. If we lose, we can sleep at night if we compete. I feel like there’s been moments where we’ve been caught thinking instead of fighting.”

Questioning his team’s fight, Nash sounds the alarm, pleading for change. But it’s difficult to imagine a team that starts both Channing Frye and Vince Carter ever being tough. The problem is personnel more than anything else. Carter is who we thought he was, a disinterested star who continues to underachieve despite natural physical gifts that make even Michael Jordan envious.

One recent Carter anecdote sheds more light on the unfulfilled promise of his career: Grant Hill, noted great guy and awesome teammate, questioned Carter’s diet and conditioning. “He eats one too many cookies on that plane,” said Hill during a radio interview. Carter has never been willing to take the extra step to corral the greatness that once seemed his destiny. He’s never been willing to cut that extra cookie out of his diet, or to cut hard on every play. Now 34 years old, Carter’s an old dog. And it’s tough to teach an old dog new tricks. To continue using cliches, it’s not the size of the athleticism in the player, it’s the size of the combination of athleticism and fight in the player. Err, or something like that. What I mean to say is, Carter’s never been known as a fighter. If you ever did have to make a fighter analogy with Carter, he’d be the one with a glass jaw.

Maybe Carter should take notes when playing against Kendrick Perkins tonight.

“(Perkin’s) is a really physical guy,” Marcin Gortat told SB Nation. “He’s a guy who will never let it go. I’m going to kind of compare him to a little dog. These little dogs, they will never let go. They’re so small, they just keep barking and just keep running around you. You’re going to keep throwing the little ball and they’re going to keep running and bring it back. He’ll grab to your leg and he’ll never let go. That’s how is Kendrick Perkins. He’ll never let go. He’ll keep fighting with you, he’ll keep pushing you, keep hitting you and at some point you’re going to go like, ‘damn dude, you don’t have enough?’”

“But honestly, that’s great,” Gortat continued. “That’s character and I really respect him for doing that. I always seen this guy battling Dwight (Howard)…I really respect his game and respect him as a player. Even though right now he’s my enemy because we play today, I’m happy he’s back on the floor. He’s a good player and I believe that he deserves to play because of his hard work and his heart.”

According to Gortat, Stan Van Gundy used to say the key to playing against a player like Perkins wasn’t strategy — the key was having balls. Some of Gortat’s teammates should find some. Carter’s, specifically, have been lost for quite some time.

It’s a shame, too, that these Suns lack fight. They are wasting the remarkable twilight of Nash’s career.

Some people forget how good Grant Hill used to be. They remember him mostly for being injured so often. Not me. I remember the real Grant Hill, and he was one of my favorite players. Just watch this video, and you may fall in love, too.

When it comes to Kobe's shot-making, impossible is nothing.

Time was winding down on the shot clock, game clock and — though it wasn’t quite certain yet — the Phoenix Suns’ season. Grant Hill, desperate to keep his season alive while fully aware of the dangers presented by guarding the most-feared late-game killer in the entire NBA, gave Kobe Bryant not a single inch to breathe.

Not that it mattered.

Hill stayed glued to Kobe as basketball’s Mariano Rivera dribbled once to his right, picked up his dribble, gave a quick upfake and finally released an impossible fadeaway with both his feet standing on the three-point arc and Hill breathing down the front of his neck. The ridiculous attempt would have been more than enough reason for a coach to substitute a lesser player out of the game, but for Kobe it was just part of the plan. The jumper went down, Kobe tapped Phoenix coach Alvin Gentry on his rump, and the Black Mamba’s legend ascended one more rung.

But why does he always have to take such a tough shot?

Watching Kobe Bryant play basketball is a lesson in shot-making. He spins with perfect footwork, fakes with the utmost precision and miraculously keeps his balance and concentration no matter how many directions his body is moving or how many hands are in his face. But still, no matter how breathtaking it can be to watch Kobe send yet another improbable shot splitting through the nets, the question remains: Why don’t any shots come easy for Kobe? Why doesn’t he get many layups? Why does he always seem to settle for contested fadeaway jumpers?

The easy answer would be that Kobe has more people guarding him during crunch-time than Barack Obama did during his Inauguration. No team wants to let Kobe get off a good look as the game’s seconds wind down, so they send waves of defenders at him. Kobe wants to take the last shot himself, almost regardless of what the defense does, so teams use that to their advantage. Kobe ain’t gonna pass, so coaches load up defenders to stop him. Everywhere Kobe looks, there’s a help defender waiting. It’s difficult to find an easy shot against a regiment of defenders, so THAT’S why Kobe doesn’t get many good looks. But that would only be the easy answer. Every star has two or three guys running at him during crunch-time, but not every star routinely takes such impossible shots.

The more difficult answer? I’m not sure I even know it. I’ve watched countless games during which Kobe seems to shoot nothing but contested jumpshots, but I don’t know why he settles. Is it that he doesn’t have the same athleticism he once did? Doesn’t want to waste too much energy searching for a good shot when he can hit all the bad ones? Is it really just all the help defense? Whatever it is, Kobe’s shot selection perplexes me.

In comparing Kobe to Michael Jordan, Phil Jackson once said something along the lines of, “Michael gets easier shots, but Kobe is a better bad-shot maker.” And Kobe is certainly that, perhaps the best bad-shot maker ever and definitely the best bad-shot maker I’ve ever seen. Good defense hardly seems to bother Kobe. Hands in his face, hands in his eyes even (shoutout to Shane Battier), don’t seem to effect Kobe the way they should. No matter the circumstance, Kobe can get off a make-able shot. Of course, “make-able” and “good shot” are two completely different entities.

Kobe’s ability to make bad shots is part of the reason everyone believes Kobe is the most clutch human being on the planet when all the statistical evidence in the world tells us otherwise. (Don’t get me wrong — when Kobe has the ball tonight in Game 5 with the clock winding down, I’ll be shivering in my boots. But when every stat I’ve ever seen says Kobe is not the best clutch player in the game, I tend to believe the stats.) We believe Kobe is the most clutch player, the best closer, because he has so many — sooooooo many — impossible buzzer-beaters and clutch shots under his belt. When Kobe hits a clutch shot, you remember it. The bank-job against Miami, the aforementioned facial of Grant Hill, the back-breaker over Ray Allen’s outstretched fingers to beat the Celtics — Kobe leaves an indelible mark whenever he hits a game-winner or clutch shot because every shot he takes seems, and I wish there were another word for it so I didn’t have to keep repeating the same one, impossible. When those shots do go down, he’s Michael Jordan disguised as Kobe Bryant. When they don’t go down, they weren’t supposed to go down in the first place — they were too impossible to begin with.

As Slate’s phenomenal piece on Kobe’s clutchness quotes a David Berri email, Lebron James is a more effective crunch-time player than Kobe. “”Most importantly, [James] improved with respect to shooting efficiency and rebounds,” Berri wrote. “Kobe also improved by lesser amounts with respect to rebounds and free throws. But he also got worse with respect to shooting efficiency from the field, assists, blocked shots, and steals.

“Basically each player tries to do more in the clutch. But LeBron is better at turning this effort into results.”

Yet we don’t see it that way. We see Lebron failing while Kobe rises. We see Kobe making impossible shots while Lebron sits at home watching on TV. We see Kobe as, undoubtedly, the league’s best closer. We see all those impossible makes, all those highlights, every time we think about Kobe’s clutchness.

But the same thing that makes us remember Kobe’s highlights is perhaps his biggest fault as a player. Kobe takes tough shots all the time, and while he can hit those better than anybody in today’s NBA and possibly anybody who’s ever played the game of basketball, tough shots are more likely to miss than good ones. Kobe’s inability to manufacture easy shots — or unwillingness, whatever it may be — is what has allowed the Celtics to slow him down in the fourth quarter this series.

Over the past two games, Kobe is 3-12 in the final stanza and has been unable to find any easy shots or get to the free throw line. He is now shooting 40.8% for the series, and I can count on one hand the number of easy looks he’s gotten. At this point, it seems like Kobe doesn’t even try to get easy shots. He’s hit so many bad ones in his career that he’s perfectly content with launching 21-foot fadeaways. To be fair, he makes an ungodly amount of them. I just don’t understand why everything has to be so difficult.

Some credit should go to the Celtics defense, but it isn’t only against the Celtics that Kobe takes tough shots. He does it all the time, against everyone. He gets more easy looks against every other team than he does against the C’s, but half his shot attempts would still get a lesser player benched or, even worse, cut. He makes a lot of them, sure, but so many shots Kobe takes are so, so, very, very tough.

And that is the conundrum about Kobe Bryant. He makes the impossible look easy, but he doesn’t make anything easy. He has unending talent to make any shot one could ever fathom, but for some reason that evades my grasp he doesn’t get many easy shots. It’s the ability to make impossible shots that sets Kobe apart from every player in the NBA, but it’s also the one thing you could say might be holding him back.

When Kobe catches the ball tonight in the fourth quarter, he’ll almost inevitably shoot a tough fadeaway with a Celtic draped all over him, so close that Kobe will be able to smell his defender’s breath. It’ll be a bad shot, one that would make a high school coach shake his head, scream, “NOOOO!!!!” and want to strangle his player. But that’s just how it is with Kobe Bryant. It’s what you have to accept about his game. It’s his mind-boggling genius that allows him to make those shots, shots no other man alive would dare attempt.

And that shot I told you about, the one he’ll undoubtedly take in tonight’s fourth quarter, the one he’ll shoot with defenders in his shorts? Unless that shot clangs off the rim, I’ll know for certain it’s going down.

"Can the NBA gods keep rooting against me much longer?"

Steve Nash has experienced a whole lot of agony during his career. Honestly, it’s become an annual passage of spring that he has his heart torn from his body in breathtaking fashion. There was the Tim Duncan three-pointer, the Robert Horry clothesline, and now the Ron Artest miracle putback. Is there any way Nash HASN’T lost in his postseason career?

Yet he continues to chug along — battered nose, bruised eye and all. And, despite all the devastating losses, Nash’s confidence remains intact. (Arizona Republic)

“They held home court,” Nash said after Game 5′s agonizing loss Thursday. “We’ll go back and do the same, and we’ll come back here (Staples Center) for Game 7.”

Joe Namath did not draw much pregame notice for his 1969 Super Bowl guarantee, but Nash, far from sounding like Muhammad Ali boasting or looking like Babe Ruth pointing, has the attention of his teammates.

“We can’t make him look bad,” Suns forward Grant Hill said.

The Lakers have not lost a best-of-seven playoff series after they have taken a 3-2 lead with a Game 5 win since Namath’s guarantee year. What is feeding Nash’s confidence is the progress the Suns made with each game this series. They lost Game 1 in a blowout but lost Game 2 after taking a tie to the fourth quarter on the road, won Games 3 and 4 with improvements and played their best defense of the series in Game 5.

“I stand by what I said,” Nash said Friday. “I didn’t say guarantee, but I have no problem with that.

“It’s a belief. I believe we’re going to come home and win and go back and play Game 7 over there.”

I’m so torn about who I want the Celtics to play in the Finals.  On the one hand, there’s the possibility of a rematch with the Lakers.  The Celtics still think they should be the two-time defending champions and would be if Garnett hadn’t gotten injured.  Then there’s that whole Celtics-Lakers rivalry thing — it’s a pretty big deal when the two teams play each other.  It’d be nice for the C’s to prove that last year was a fluke and beat their most hated rivals, all at the same time.

On the other hand, I adore Steve Nash.  Not in a sick way or anything, but he plays basketball the right way and always has.  He’s willing to sacrifice his body to win games and is as unselfish a player as they come.  If you don’t want Steve Nash to win a title by the end of his career, you’re either heartless or dumb.  How can I root against Nash and for the Lakers?  It’s not only counter-intuitive, it’s sacrilegious.

On top of my unconditional love of Nash, I’m even more confused because the Suns aren’t as good as the Lakers.  Playing the Suns would undoubtedly be an easier series.  While the Celtics and Lakers match up pretty evenly, I don’t think a single player on the Suns team can guard anyone on the Celtics.  Just look at the matchups, please.  The Suns have nobody, nobody, to match up with the Big Four.  The Suns couldn’t possibly stop the Celtics, and the Celtics are good enough defensively to at least slow down the Suns. I could not see the Suns possibly defeating the Celtics under any scenario, but I could see the Lakers beating the Celtics.

So who do I root for — the team I think the Celtics would have an easier time with, or the team I’d rather see them beat?  The team I love or the team I loathe?

At the end of the day, I guess I don’t really care who the Celtics play.  Waiting on the Celtics’ Finals opponent — no matter who it will be — is never a bad thing.