And Jeff Green is expected to miss awhile. (Boston Herald)

The Celtics provided no official word on Jeff Green last night, but all indications are that the forward will miss significant time as he tends to an unspecified medical issue.

Green flew to Cleveland yesterday with president Danny Ainge for further testing at the Cleveland Clinic after abnormalities were revealed in a stress test during the player’s physical last week.

Ainge said last night he was awaiting results from the latest exams, but sources said the problem has been detected and that decisions were being made on the best course of action. It has been noted in the Herald that a surgical procedure on Green may be needed to complement medication.

Doc Rivers offered no further information after the C’s scrimmage last night at the Garden, but it wasn’t hard to read the coach’s mood.

“Danny called and just said he’ll announce it (today), so we’ll wait,” Rivers said. “But other than that, we’ll just leave it at that.”

When asked if he was expecting to be without Green, Rivers said, “I’ll let you guess.”

Posey has always been miscast on teams with no chance to contend, so his alarming statistics from the time he left the Celtics shouldn’t be taken entirely at face value. Still, check this out:

49 games, 17.1 minutes, 4.9 points, 3.0 rebounds, 33.6% FG, 31.6% 3PT, 7.5 PER

I hope you turned your head away from your computer before you started to projectile vomit at Posey’s 2010-11 stat line.

If Posey does sign in Boston, do yourself a favor: Take the James Posey you remember from 2007-08 and put him in a box in your attic somewhere. Preferably somewhere safe where nobody can harm him. Because I know that Posey, I remember that Posey, and that Posey deserves all the accolades we still throw his way, all the respect we still give him, all the credit with which we still shower him for his solid play, timely shooting and winning effect. If you don’t lock that Posey away in your attic, and Posey signs with the Celtics again this season, there’s a chance you allow this Posey to contaminate how you think about that Posey. And nobody wants that. That Posey deserves mountains of praise. This Posey deserves to lose minutes to Sasha Pavlovic.

I love Posey. I’ll never forget how much he contributed to Boston’s only title run of my lifetime. But he hasn’t even been close to remotely decent in the past two seasons. He’s not the answer.

UPDATE: Shortly after saying Posey was an option, Mannix tweeted that the Pacers will not buy Posey out. He’s not an option, even if the Celtics wanted him to be.

I forgot how hectic trade rumor season is. Every hour, it seems, there’s a new name. The newest name is an old name, one which will inevitably bring Celtics fans to tears of joy: James Posey. (WEEI)

As for who the Celtics might be able to land before Thursday’s trade deadline, Mannix pointed to a key member of Boston’s 2008 title team.

“No question that they need a back-up small forward, and if the Marquis Daniels injury is as bad as we think, and he’s not going to be back this year — which we still really don’t know at this stage — I would have a hard time seeing Boston winning a championship,” Mannix said.

“They need to have a quality backup in that spot, like they’ve had over the last few years … I think right now what Boston is looking at is what they have done the last couple of years, where they see what the buyout situation sort of looks like. And one name to keep an eye on is James Posey out in Indiana. The change to Frank Vogel as head coach out there has totally made Posey irrelevant. In the past, I was told Posey was not interested in securing a buyout. But that could change if he continues not to play. If they could work out a decent deal with James Posey it’s possible that he could wind up back in Boston.”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: James Posey isn’t the James Posey we remember. He’s a step or two (or three) slower. Hell, I recently read the sentence (written by a knowledgeable Pacers blogger), “Obviously, Danny Granger, Mike Dunleavy, Paul George and Brandon Rush are all better players on the wing than Posey at this point of their respective careers.”

But we reminisce, and we love. And in the same way my Little League career gets better as it becomes further removed from the present, the James Posey legend has grown. He was great back then, don’t get me wrong. The perfect backup for the ’08 team, I’d say. He never abandoned his role, always hustled, and matched up well against the likes of Kobe and Lebron.

But that was then, and this is now. He’s now older, slower and obviously not as good as Paul George or Brandon Rush. I just don’t see how the ’11 version of James Posey helps the Celtics, even if the ’08 version would still be damn near perfect.

Do you remember the scene in Cool Runnings, when the crowd all starts to get Jamaica fever?

The Jamaican team, led by Derice Bannick (and Sanka’s egg-kissing technique), is taking over the Olympic bobsledding track one surprisingly fast run at a time. Their push starts, aided by three near-Olympic sprinters and the best pushcart driver in all of Jamaica, allow the Jamaicans to fly down the ice, and not even a fat, former cheater of a coach can keep the world from falling head over heals for this lovable band of bobsledding rookies. The announcers discuss the increased adoration being thrown Jamaica’s way, ultimately unzipping their jackets to reveal their own Jamaica shirts.

“Ah, what the heck,” says one announcer. “Go Jam!”

I’m kind of like those announcers. I normally try to stay away from discussing college basketball in this space, but last night drew me in. Ah, what the heck. Go Jimmer.

But this post isn’t an ode to Jimmer Fredette — I imagine there will be enough of those written in the coming months. Fredette’s a certified star, a scorer without a conscience, a scorer who has yet to be stopped by any amount of double- (and sometimes even triple-) teams. If he hasn’t already (and, after last night, I suspect he has), Fredette will become this year’s Stephen Curry or Adam Morrison — a one-man show in a lesser league, destined to tear out opponents’ hearts while intriguing fans by the boatload. He’ll get his (well-deserved) shine this season, even if I don’t write a single word about him.

No, this post goes out to Fredette’s teammates. The selfless, gritty blokes who sacrifice shots and touches on a nightly basis, all so they can help their team win. The all-heart bastards who would rather pass the ball to their superstar teammate than shoot a lower-percentage shot themselves. The tough guys who throw their bodies around, who set mean screens for 40 straight minutes, who box out, who hedge screens, who dive on the floor, and who do it all with zero fanfare. Fredette’s teammates are the offensive linemen of college basketball. They help make winning possible, but never accumulate gaudy stats or the average fan’s adoration.

One thing last night’s BYU-San Diego St. affair reaffirmed is this: a team doesn’t need to have more talent to win; it just has to have pieces that all fit together. BYU wasn’t more talented than San Siego St. Not one through twelve, at least. If San Diego St. played BYU in a Ryder Cup-like string of one-on-one matches, San Diego St. would win every time. But this isn’t the Ryder Cup, it’s basketball, and so group synergy plays into the final results. BYU didn’t have more collective talent, but the Cougars have Jimmer Fredette, and they surround him with four players who all know their roles and remain committed to those roles all the time. On most nights, that synergy will be enough to win games.

Which (finally) takes me to the Celtics, and the NBA. There are certain teams that play beyond their individual capabilities. It’s difficult for me to say the Celtics are one of those teams, because they (still, even at their ages) have so much star power. But I’m going to say it anyway: these Celtics play better as a whole than they would as individuals. There’s something about “Rondo as distributor; Pierce as slasher/scorer/occasional playmaker; Allen as shooter; Garnett as provider of all things; and PerkShaq as big man/enforcer/occasional finisher/(hopefully) rebounder” that meshes perfectly. These Boston Celtics play off each other like Abbott and Costello. Which reminds me, Who’s on first.

The synergy I speak of is part of the reason James Posey didn’t play nearly as well once he left Boston. In Boston, the Celtics needed Posey to do only what he does best. He needed to defend, dive on the floor after loose balls, annoy the opponent, make open three-pointers, and, yes, hug his teammates before games. When his next teams (New Orleans and Indiana) needed playmakers, Posey could not oblige. That’s not his game; he can’t operate as a playmaker. Never mind that Posey has gotten older and lost a step (or two). Even in his prime, Posey fit best on good teams, teams that already had talented playmakers. Posey frees playmakers to make plays, and the playmakers free Posey to provide everything else. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship, one that doesn’t work if a team doesn’t have enough playmakers.

Never mind that I just said the word playmakers 12 million times in a single paragraph. There are about 30 players in the NBA who would fit into any situation in the league.  Lebron, Wade, Kobe, Howard, Paul, and I refuse to list the rest, because listing 30 players is quite tedious. After the top 30 (or so), players only help matters when they fit in. Look at Hedo Turkoglu as perhaps the most obvious example. In Toronto, and I’ll put this mildly, Hedo sucked. In Phoenix, same thing. Now, back in Orlando, Turkoglu once again makes a positive impact.

Think about a player like “Old Shaq.” Either the Cavaliers didn’t know how to use Shaq last season, he simply didn’t fit into their system, or the players surrounding Shaq did not help him. Whatever it was, Shaq held the Cavaliers back. His mere presence not only made them worse, but a lot worse. Did Shaq have nothing left in the tank? No. We see now he can still help a team, but — at this stage of his career — Shaq’s a role player who has to be placed in the proper role to succeed. For players like Old Shaq, and most of the NBA, the situation has to be right. If you throw the wrong player into the wrong situation, what results is disaster.

The circle of life (or, in this case, the circle of a rambling post) leads me back to Jimmer and the Fredettes. If Noah Hartsock (one of BYU’s tall, tough bastards) played for North Carolina, he probably wouldn’t play a single minute. North Carolina isn’t ranked, but still has a stable of big men far more talented than Hartsock. Yet BYU, the country’s ninth-ranked team (and probably climbing), is perfectly content with Hartsock playing his role and playing it well.

When you see Hartsock, maybe you see a limited player who couldn’t score 20 points if he was left all alone, in a gym, for two straight hours. But me? I see pride. I see power. I see a bad-ass mother, thriving in the perfect situation, who don’t take no crap off of nobody.

Let me get this out of the way first: I just want to hug someone.

Not a quick hug, either. A big bear hug, complete with some really homo-erotic whispering in someone’s ear.

I’m sorry if this is the creepiest lead in Celtics Town history (and by “if”, I mean it most certainly is), but that’s the type of mood that seeing James Posey puts me in. Big Game James is unequivocally the greatest hugger in Boston Celtics history. 

When you add to my hugging mood the beautiful sight of Walter McCarty, Vitaly Potapenko, and Jim O’Brien on the Pacers bench, today was a good day. All it was missing was a Pervis Ellison sighting, but, well, I guess I can do without that.

Getting to the actual game, Paul Pierce did everything for the Celtics. And I mean everything. For parts of this season, I wondered whether Pierce could still produce nights like this. He’s had a nice and efficient season, but (as Celtics Hub’s Ryan DeGama noted) Pierce has also been a shot-maker, rather than a shot-creator. We wondered whether he could still create shots, for himself and others, if he needed to.

With Rondo out, our Allen Iverson is now clear. In other words, our Answer is now clear. Pierce can still make plays. The reason he hasn’t this season is a changing of his role, rather than an inability. Rondo needs the ball in his hands, and he needs to be the facilator, and so Pierce offers what the Celtics need. He hits spot-up shots, scores efficiently, and generally plays like a second or third fiddle.

Not today. Today was a flashback to the 2008 NBA Finals, Game 5. The C’s lost that game, but Pierce did it all. He brought the ball up, ran pick-and-rolls, limited Kobe defensively, kept his teammates involved, and generally played like he was the best all-around player in basketball. Don’t get me wrong — I’m not calling him the league’s best all-around player, not at all. But on nights like that Game 5, and days like today, Pierce sure as hell does a good impersonation.

The difference between last year and this year, in Pierce, is stunning. I see him probe the defense now, with his slow, methodical technique, and know he couldn’t have done this “put the team on my back” routine last year. Not when his body wasn’t feeling right, and fluid was squirting out of his knee, and Ron Artest was shutting him down in the Finals.

There’s still a long way to go in this season, of course. Pierce always seems to look spry in the season’s early months, and sometimes looks run down by the end. But if he can keep this up, this “do whatever my team needs me to” mentality and ability, these Celtics will continue to be the Eastern Conference favorites all season long.

My next point is Nate Robinson, the trouble-making little kid with whom you can’t stay angry for long. There was one play (and I’m not exaggerating)when Nate drove through the paint, closed his eyes, turned his body away from the hoop, and tossed a backwards, vision-less shot off the side of the backboard. These are the things he does, and these are the times it’s frustrating to have Nate Robinson on your favorite team.

But then, later in the game, three Pacers go after a loose ball. Nate is the farthest away from the ball, and most players in Nate’s position wouldn’t even put up a fight. But Nate is different. Nate is a 5’9″ (in heels) bolt of lightning who exudes nothing if not 100% energy, all the time. He sprints his way past the first two Pacers, and there’s only one more standing between him and the ball. Nate is still in the outside lane, still has a lot of work to do to reach this unattainable loose ball. He dives on the floor, and the Pacers must feel shocked. This ball was theirs, but this tiny man — this boyish-looking person with a flattop fade — stole it with an effort level they couldn’t match.

At that point, I felt like Harry in Dumb and Dumber: “Just when I thought you couldn’t possibly be any dumber, you go and do something like this… and totally redeem yourself!” Nate frustrates me, all the time, and I’m sure he frustrates Doc Rivers, too. But he tries, and he never stops trying, and it’s tough for me not to forgive him, even after his biggest, most bone-headed blunders.

Moving on, it was nice to see Shaq back in business. Unless you’re Jeff Foster. Then you really wish Shaq’s injury hadn’t healed in time for today’s game.

Shaq’s presence changes things for the Celtics, especially when he has 11 first-quarter points. Also, it’s nice that opponents continuously commit lane violations against Shaq. Imagine how low The Big Diesel’s free throw percentage would be if he didn’t get extra opportunities on approximately 25% of his misses.

With Shaq back in the lineup, Semih Erden played only seven minutes. In other news, he actually grabbed a rebound today. Which gives him a grand total of one rebound in his last two games. And yes, he is still seven feet tall.

Just as I know the sun will rise in the morning, I know Glen Davis will produce on both ends of the court every night. His consistency, entirely lacking last season, has become marvelous. Doc can pencil him in for 12-18 points, 5-7 rebounds, and 1-2 charges taken every single game. That’s a hell of a weapon to bring off the bench.

Anything else I missed? KG didn’t look quite as springy as he has lately, (which could be blamed on his soreness), but also viciously crossed over Jeff Foster. And no, it was not a good day to be named Jeff Foster. Mike Dunleavy scored well but didn’t even look like he wanted to be playing basketball, Danny Granger making a three-pointer is “just like duck soup to him” (please send Tommy Heinsohn all questions regarding the meaning of that statement), and even Solomon Jones’s mother cringes each time he shoots a jumper. And Roy Hibbert took 23 shots to score 17 points, but also somehow managed to impress me in the gory process.

Yes, we will end this with one more ode to Paul Pierce’s triple-double:

Doc Rivers spends a lot of time talking about the mystical “Celtic way.” Nate Robinson was benched last year because he didn’t yet know the Celtic way. Kevin Garnett epitomizes the Celtic way. Patrick O’Bryant is the exact opposite of the Celtics way. Okay, Doc Rivers never said that last thought. I still imagine he’s thought it at least once or twice.

Yesterday, Rivers finally described what the “Celtic way” entails. (Boston Globe)

“I don’t know the Celtic Way, I mean I know it when I see it. It’s our speed, it’s unselfish. Being a Celtic is every decision you make is about the team, every touch you make is about the team, every pass you make is about the team and you take yourself out of it — then you’re probably a pretty good Celtic. If you don’t want to win and you don’t want to play team basketball, if it’s more about you, then you’re probably not a pretty good Celtic. And definitely not in this era, I can say that.’’

The Celtic way is setting hard screens, passing up an open shot to pass to an even more open teammate, and rotating to help a beaten teammate.

It’s throwing away the stat sheet after games, offering help to lesser teammates after practice, and diving on the floor after loose balls, even during preseason games.

It’s knowing your role and filling it, outworking your opponent every night, and never counting yourself out, even when you’re down 24 points in an NBA Finals game.

It’s Eddie House chasing down a loose ball, James Posey hugging his teammates before games, and Kevin Garnett pounding his chest.

It’s Kendrick Perkins’s scowl, Paul Pierce’s stepback jumper, and Ray Allen’s understated fist pump.

It’s Rajon Rondo’s ascendance to stardom, and his teammates’ willingness to accept that.

It’s Glen Davis coming off the bench drooling, Nate Robinson finally “getting it,” and Delonte West being loved and supported.

It’s about the pure elation of winning a championship for your brothers who aren’t blood related, and it’s about being eliminated from the playoffs, looking around the locker room and not seeing a single dry eye.

The Celtic way is how I one day want my son to play basketball.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

I was reading Henry Abbott’s post on TrueHoop about Basketball Reference’s findings that improving a team’s defense is more important to winning a title than improving the same offense. Like Abbott, I started to ask myself why. Shouldn’t adding four points to your own score be worth the same as taking four points away from the other team? Doesn’t that only make sense? But it’s not, and statistics prove it. As Sheed might scream like a wild man, numbers don’t lie.

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