Dear Clay Buchholz, We don’t know what’s going on. We don’t know why you keep losing. But feel free to stop whenever you feel like it. We’re not asking for you to throw a no hitter all of the time. But this whole losing thing you’ve got yourself into, it’s not working for us; especially when we’re three games behind the Devil Rays. Thanks for listening. After winning three at home, the Sox dropped one......

Paul Pierce proved you can get stabbed early in life, then come back and win an NBA title, as long as you're commited to playing good defense. Maybe that crossed Danny Ainge's mind as he used the 30th pick in the NBA draft to pick J.R. Giddens of New Mexico. "He has a chance to fight for minutes right away because of his defense," says Doc Rivers. "When he had structure and organization in his......

This was just about as sweet as anything could ever be. Was there a time when we wondered if Danny Ainge knew what he was doing when he swung the Ray Allen trade on Draft Day? (Well, yes, we did.) Was there any worry that three guys, who were used to being the big dog, would learn to share the ball? Was there frustration and terror after being pushed to the brink by a neophyte......

Photo by Paul Keleher on Flickr The Celtics trounced annihilated embarrassed thrashed conquered crushed routed creamed defeated vanquished obliterated beat L.A. to make it 17. Our thesaurus didn't have enough words. Basically, we won. Big. Get off the internet and start celebrating.......

Objectively, the Celtics are right where we want them. They did their job and took one in LA, and have two chances to finish the Lakers off at home. Realistically, though, the C's had a golden opportunity - just waiting there - to snatch another game, and thus the series, away from the Lakers last night, but just couldn't finish it off. The Celtics did themselves no favors by digging another monster hole in the......

All right, fess up. Who went to bed at halftime? We confess, we spent a good chunk of time planning to ditch the bar (sorry the liveblog didn't work out, but the first hour would have just been a steady stream of cuss words anyway), as the Celtics played a first quarter that would have shamed the 1997 "let's get Tim Duncan" team. The offense was inept, the defense was inept, Doc stood there watching......

We, to be honest, had the exact opposite of high hopes for last night's game. The Lakers were going to be in front of their home crowd, energized, with the referees desperate to be on their side to avoid another four-hankie Phil Jackson press conference. And if you'd told us before the game that Paul Pierce would be a train wreck, KG would be way off his shot, and Rondo would get hurt, we'd assume......

If you were with us all last night, you know what an intense game it was. The Celtics struggled at first, then spent the middle two quarters blowing LA off the floor, before getting silly and sloppy and watching LA take a 24-point lead down to two before Pierce and Posey iced it, 108-102, from the free throw line. We could talk about all that. But we'd rather talk about Leon Powe. The guy who......

Well, sending the JV squad out against Felix Hernandez didn't work. Noted. It still wasn't the full Murderers' Row on display at Fenway yesterday, but it was plenty enough, as the Sox' bats awoke to clobber the Mariners 11-3. The most important element of the lineup was Manny, who finally deigned to hit one in front of the Fenway fans. Number 504 gave the Sox and Tim Wakefield a 2-0 lead in the first, which......

One quarter of the way there. And in the matchup of the MVP versus the defensive team of the year, the Celtics shook off some first-half shakiness to put the defensive hammer down on LA, flummoxing Kobe Bryant and company and taking Game One of the Finals 98-88. As electric as the Finals atmosphere was (most of the drunks and pink hats seemed to have been replaced by actual basketball fans), the Garden was treated......

We wish we'd thought of this first: the perfect metaphor for these Eastern Conference Finals. Everybody's exhausted, everybody keeps fighting, and everyone streaming out of the Garden last night felt like they just went 15 rounds with a giant chicken. Yes, really. But in the end, it's the Celtics with a 3-2 lead after last night's 106-102 knock-down, drag-out, stomach-punch Game Five. And with the Celtics' bench almost completely useless, they had to turn to......

Most of the attention this year was on Kevin Garnett, and Ray Allen got his share. But there was always a sense that Paul Pierce, lifetime Celtic and underrated fierce competitor, was just biding his time, waiting for one of his patented take-over-the-game fourth quarters, waiting for the time machine to 2002. Fourth quarter? Try the whole game. LeBron James, left high and dry by his woeful teammates, played about as well as one man......

This was borderline ugly. And for about fifteen minutes, there was no borderline. For much of the first half, the Celtics looked like every dire prediction about them was going to come true: they were bound to let a home game slip away, nobody had the guts to take a shot, LeBron was eventually going to step up and start carving through them. But late in the second quarter, Ubuntu kicked in. Rajon Rondo, who......

There were four multi-time All-Stars at the Garden last night. The three heads of Ghidorah, you know about already, but with Cleveland in town for Game One, LeBron James and all his accompanying hype and presence were there too. Four All-Stars, two MVP candidates, probably a great game, right? Um. No. Kevin Garnett was the only one of the marquee names to live up to the billing (28 points, 8 rebounds); in fact, KG was......

Well...that was fun. If anticlimactic. Pushed to Game Seven by a hungry Atlanta team - or dragged to Game Seven by their sporadic ineptitude, depending on which you believe - the Celtics turned on the gas and utterly annihilated the Hawks yesterday, 99-65, at the Garden. This was in every way what a big game between a 66-win #1 seed and a sub-.500 #8 seed should have looked like. It was thorough, and it was......

We honestly don't have much new to say about this afternoon's game. Win, and everything's forgotten and it's 0-0 against Cleveland. Lose - the unthinkable - and God only knows how ugly it's going to get in this town. Doc needs to coach like he's NOT being mugged, coaching a playoff game and watching his house burn down at the same time. Pierce needs to be smart and not give the refs a reason/chance to......

An old picture of our mayor, Tom Menino, is making the rounds now that Celtic Paul Pierce got in some trouble for throwing what might have been a gang sign at the Atlanta Hawks. (Next time, he should send the one-fingered salute. Everyone understands that gesture.) [Via Sports by Brooks] So, we gotta ask: Is the mayor flashing a gang sign? ( polls) For further clarification, read Chris Faraone's piece for the Dig that explains......

With their backs against the wall, responsible for a sudden regionwide crisis of confidence, the Celtics responded with one of their best, most balanced games of the season to punch Atlanta 110-85 and regain control of the first-round series. The C's put on a virtual clinic of how to spread the ball around, rely on your stars, let the bench guys contribute, and never really let the other guys into the game. Garnett set the......

Don't listen to the so-called experts. Kids LOVE pitchers' duels. Go up to any schoolboy and mention some of the great mound rivalries of the past - Koufax/Marichal, Gibson/Seaver, Palmer/Hunter - and, well, you'll probably get a blank look. But maybe you'll find a kid who knows what you're talking about, and chances are that kid appreciated the gem last night at Fenway. For the Sox, Jon Lester was throwing strikes (yay) and inducing groundouts,......

If we had to pick one favorite moment from the Celtics' rout of Atlanta last night... Contenders would be Pierce's opening flurry of 3-pointers, or Ray Allen confidently taking over in the third quarter, or Rondo's patented "huck the ball off the other guy while falling out of bounds" move. Or any of numerous blocks, dunks, defensive shutdowns that made the 104-81 final not really even as close as that. But the greatest moment of......

We'll just say pitching was a factor in the Sox-Yankees game last night in New York. To be more specific, the Red Sox pitching - and complete breakdown thereof - allowed the Yanks to run amok, and while the Sox got plenty of offense, it wasn't enough, as the Sox got smacked 15-9. Bobby Abreu and Alex Rodriguez homered off Clay Buchholz in the first to give NY a 2-1 lead. There was a little......

We'd heard the Miami Heat were terrible. At 13-60, with Shaq traded, Wade shelved, Pat Riley having wandered off in indignity, we didn't expect a real tough game for the Celtics last night. But terrible doesn't even begin to describe this team. Miami set an NBA record for fewest field goals (17) in a shot-clock-era game, set an unofficial record for passes right to defenders, and would have only been able to climb back in......

One of the few remaining regular-season goals left for the Celtics is checked off. They've seen every NBA team; they've beaten every NBA team. The Hornets were the last stragglers, winning in New Orleans last week. Last night, they found out what 2008 Celtics basketball is really all about. The game was close at halftime, but the C's clamped down the defense, completely took out the Hornets' stars, and rallied to their 2nd straight 20-point......

Paul Pierce might not think about the games he's recently played, but Celtics fans had past performances in their minds on Wednesday night - particularly the manner in which he'd faltered last month during play against those pesky Suns of Phoenix. It was with a big cheer (and sigh of relief) that we responded to a 27-point effort from P Squared during last night's 117-97 Celtics win at the Call It What You Want......

Even the most pie-eyed, green-blooded Celtic optimist didn't think it was going to be this good. No team since the Kings did it in 2001 has traveled the fabled Texas Triangle without at least a nick and a scratch. Maybe no team since then has really been as good as the 2007-08 Celtics. And last night was tough; make no mistake. The Mavericks, even though they haven't gotten all the attention of some of their......

- The Bobcats are to the Celtics what the Giants were to the Patriots: confident, strong, capable of making a game of it (although we'd like to think that we won't see Jason Richardson celebrating a championship for at least another couple of years). The Celts barely beat the 'Cats in November, lost (embarrassingly) in January, and were challenged up until the end on Friday night, when Boston won, 108-100, at TD Banknorth Garden. Not......

On the way out of the TDB Garden last night, we weren't completely thrilled about the Celtics' victory over King James and the Cavaliers last night. It was a kind of sloppy game, Paul Pierce was way off-target all night, and the effects of jet lag were obvious. Then we stopped for a second and remembered where this team was a year ago. In one season, we've gone from plummeting towards ignominy, to beating the......

You'll have to forgive the Celtics if they felt like they arrived in Portland having lurched their way up the Oregon Trail. Three losses in a row doesn't quite compare to running out of buffalo meat and spilling a wagon into the Big Blue River, but combine that with the debacle in Phoenix, and you can understand why some of the team felt like they died of cholera. Things reached the lowest of the low......

He was the last man added to the Eastern All-Star team. When KG scratched, he waited for the call, only to find it went to Rasheed Wallace. When Washington's Caron Butler went down, the call finally came. He had to cancel the fishing trip and make plans to go to New Orleans. And when he got there, Ray Allen was awesome. He scored 28 points in 19 minutes, mostly in the fourth quarter, to lead......

Look outside the window. Grimace. Then realize that somewhere, in a magical land known as Florida, spring is only one day away. Pitchers and Catchers Day is almost here, which means that spring is creeping closer to our frozen city. Ballplayers will be ready to welcome in the season when they finally get back to Fenway. The journey just happens to take them to Florida, Japan, Los Angeles, Oakland, and Toronto before spring finally reaches......