JaVale McGee has earned a reputation for committing marvelously foolish acts. Normally, those acts are played out on the basketball court, and result in loud, demonstrative misses, turnovers, or goaltendings. But yesterday, McGee transcended boundaries, proving that his propensity for boneheaded mistakes extends to the bargaining table, as well.

The 7-footer told a horde of media members that a few players in yesterday’s union meeting were ready to fold. Not exactly the best tactic when you’re trying to negotiate for the best deal against 30 money-hungry owners. McGee later tweeted that he never said anyone was ready to fold, and that the media “always wanna turn it!” But he forgot that reporters actually record their interviews, and some media members even take videos.

Oh, JaVale. Don’t ever change.

Derek Fisher later denied McGee’s claims of players ready to fold.

“The person that spent the least amount of time in the room can’t make that statement,” Fisher said of McGee, who left the meeting early for unknown reasons. “He’s in no position to make that statement on behalf of the group. It’s obviously fair in negotiations of this magnitude that we’re going to have guys who have different opinions because we have guys in different positions.”

More important things came out of yesterday’s meeting than McGee’s ill-advised negotiating, um, strategy. Billy Hunter told the assembled media he is ready to engage in battle with David Stern if that’s what the union needs.

“Well I think it can only get worse for both of us,” Hunter said in response to a question about the owners’ future offers worsening over time because of the losses. “If somebody is pointing a gun at my head, I’m going to point one back at him. That door doesn’t swing one way. It’s not just the players that are going to suffer if there are games lost. What (Stern) has failed to reveal to you is the amount of economic damage they’re going to suffer as a consequence. He points out the players will lose $170 million every two weeks. The owners will lose the same … amount, coupled with any damage that their franchises sustained as a consequence. The pain is mutual.”

Players association vice president Maurice Evans spoke about the damage that would be done to the NBA if the lockout extends for a full season or beyond, alluding to the concept that the players gain leverage the longer the lockout extends.

“As they want to inflict these self-inflicted wounds, the gash is only going to get bigger, franchise values are going to decimate,” Evans said. “Best-case scenario — when we ran the numbers — 2023 is when they would recover [financially] and get back to where we are with BRI (basketball-related income) if we lost an entire season. So continuing to threaten that it’s a season and that it’s two years is only going to further damage your business. Again, that’s not even speaking for individual owners and what they stand to lose. Not every owner would be able to, again, come out of this lockout. There would be some contraction, potentially, if they want to lock us out for a year or longer.”

And Hunter fired one last bullet at David Stern and the NBA when he brought up contraction, after Fisher called Stern’s latest deadline “arbitrary, with no other purpose than to sway player sentiment.”

“If everybody begins to dig into their respective positions, then I think the league will be decimated. It took us five years to recover from the 1998 lockout and there’s probability that we may never recover [from this lockout],” Hunter told ESPN before Friday’s sit-down with players. “I think there will be some teams that won’t survive. Particularly if the season gets shut down, there will be teams that will not be around next year.”

Hunter singled out the Sacramento Kings as a franchise that may fall victim to “forced contraction.”

The comments were meant to show solidarity and strength, which was all well and good. But next time, Fisher and Hunter might want to think about misplacing McGee’s invitation.

“It got lost in the mail,” ought to work just fine.

I tried to translate “poster” from English to Turkish, but the results said, “poster, duvar ilanı, afiş, afiş yapıştıran kimse,” and that seemed a little too complicated. So I’ll stick to English instead. Actually, I won’t used words at all. A picture is worth a thousand of them. 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.

I wanted to hide under a towel, too. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

The final score, 106-96,will tell you about the Boston Celtics’ embarrassing loss to the Washington Wizards.  But – please believe me on this – the score cannot begin to describe the dose of humiliation the Wizards forced down Boston’s throat.  Ladies and gentlemen, Celtics fans of all ages, we have a new contender for the lowest moment of the 2009-2010 season. 

If you thought losing to the godawful New Jersey Nets, at home, was embarrassing, you should have seen tonight’s performance at the Boston Garden.  For most of the first half, it looked like the Washington Wizards were playing five second-graders.  The game was 20-17 in Washington’s favor with 2:40 left in the first quarter.  By the time 7:15 remained in the second quarter, the score was 38-17.  Just your regular old 18 to zip run.  A 15-15 tie became a 47-19 deficit.  A 32-4 run.  By one of the NBA’s worst teams. No big deal.

The game wasn’t just painful to watch, it made me want to go all Eminem on myself.  You know, stick nine-inch nails through each one of my eyelids.  If I didn’t have an obligation to write a recap, I would have switched the channel in the second quarter, and never thought about the game again.  If I don’t have nightmares about this game, it’s only because the memory of the loss left me unable to sleep.

If I do have nightmares, they’ll be about Andray Blatche scoring every which way.  They’ll be about JaVale McGee skying for blocked shots and hustling for boards, and Shaun Livingston (yes, the same Shaun Livingston everyone left for dead) scoring and dishing at will.  They’ll be about Wizards frolicking unharmed through the lane, and athletic big men.  Oh, so many athletic big men.  I’ll have nightmares about Kevin Garnett playing like Mikki Moore, and Paul Pierce and Ray Allen missing jumpers.  And a 42-point fourth quarter that still couldn’t get the Celtics to the century mark.  And about the scoreboard: Big Three–27, Blatche–31. 

My nightmares will be about anything, and everything, I saw tonight.  Except the comeback.  I won’t remember the comeback, not even a little.  It isn’t exactly valiant to start trying only after spotting an opponent 28 points.  In fact, the sight of Nate Robinson drilling three-pointers in an already-decided game almost made me lose my lunch.  That the Celtics needed a barrage of three-pointers and a barrel of Wizards turnovers just to make the final score respectable is not cause for cheer.  Actually, the only thing about tonight’s game that brought a smile to my face — and I mean THE ONLY thing — was the final buzzer.  It was over.  Finally.

Oh yeah, and Rajon Rondo was honored with the 2010 Red Auerbach Award before the game, then notched 17 points, 12 assists and 6 rebounds.  What, exactly, is the Red Auerbach Award?  According to the Celtics press release, it is given to a Celtics player who best exemplifies the spirit of what it means to be a Celtic.  After tonight, it’s surprising that exemplifying the spirit of a Celtic is a good thing.

Box Score