There's now another place you can read LucidSportsFan

One of my bartender coworkers recently decided to move on to other things, and yesterday was her last night at work.  So some of us went out for drinks after she was finished, and there were definitely some unnecessary shots consumed.  The point is I'm not feeling so hot today, and I have to head in to work soon, so this blog is not going to be one of my best efforts.  If you haven't noticed, I recently started writing for another website, thenosebleeds.com.  Check it out.

It hasn't been ALL bad for the Celtics the last few days

Rajon Rondo had his third straight good game last night, putting up 17 points, 7 rebounds, and 8 assists.  And he is beginning to show confidence in knocking down jump shots.  I've been saying for a long time that he actually can shoot, and it's just a matter of time till he starts doing it on a regular basis (two years ago at the All-Star Game he was in the finals of the HORSE competition against Kevin Durant.  It was taking too long and TNT wanted to move on to the dunk contest, so they made them both shoot 3's till someone missed.  Rondo hit 10 in a row.  Durant made 11).

There was one sequence in the 3rd quarter yesterday where Ray passed up an open 3, then KG passed on a jumper at the top of the key, then Rondo took and buried a 20 footer.  I've got a feeling we're going to start seeing more and more of this.  And I like it.  Rondo is also developing great chemistry with Chris Wilcox, who seems to be the guy most willing to run up the floor.  I think we're going to be seeing a lot more of him as well.

Thursday night was the 27th straight game this season that Boston has held their opponents under 100 points.  That ties them for the 4th longest streak of it's kind in NBA history (they now trail only the 1955 Pistons 28, the '01 Knicks 33, and the '04 Pistons 36).

Also, I can't stand Joakim Noah.  Garnett got in a nice little head slap on him last night, but if he keeps up this crap someone soon is going to legitimately clock him in the face.

The Bruins slump is worse than it looks, but it's not that bad

Yeah the B's held on to beat Montreal in a shootout yesterday behind some nice saves by Tim Thomas and a pretty goal from Tyler Seguin.  But they blew a 3-1 third period lead, and haven't won two games in a row in over a month.  Boston is 7-8 in it's last 15 games, which doesn't seem like that big a deal unless you look a little deeper.  Of those 7 wins, FOUR of them have come in shoot outs.  In the old NHL the Bruins would actually be 3-8-4 over that stretch.  Three regulation wins in 35 days definitely qualifies as a serious slump.  So what does it mean?  Honestly, I think nothing.  It's just regression to the mean.  There was no way they could possibly keep playing as well as they were five weeks ago.  But they are also better than they have been lately.  So don't panic.  Just be patient.

Inappropriate bar behavior?

The other day while I was working, two people started playing Words With Friends at my bar.  No big deal, right?  I see that all the time, usually when somebody is waiting for another person to arrive.  But this was kind of odd because they were both right there next to each other.  I mean usually people go to bars to talk and be social, not to sit and play games.  But you know what made this particularly weird?  These two were playing the original version of the game, I think it's called Scrabble?  Lucky for me a couple friends of mine were also sitting at the bar, and sneakily took a picture:

And this wasn't even the small plastic version of "Travel Scabble" from the 80's; these people whipped out the full on original size game, in a cardboard box with wooden tiles and everything.  Surprisingly this didn't actually bother me as much as some other things people do at the bar.  It wasn't very busy at the time and mostly I was just amused by it.  But it was definitely pretty ballsy of these two to just assume it was an acceptable thing to do.  Also they left their scorecard behind.

Oh, and for anybody unfamiliar with my humor/writing style, obviously I know what Scrabble is.  I just thought it was funnier to write it this way.

Awesome Old Song of the Week: "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" by Whitney Houston

My choice this week was a no brainer.  A number one hit from 1987, I Wanna Dance With Somebody is my all time favorite Whitney Houston song (and judging form the airplay it's gotten the last few days, I'm not alone in that sentiment).  It's her second biggest single ever, after I Will Always Love You.  It's also the first song I ever danced to with a girl.  It was at the CMS "6th grade spaghetti dinner dance" in the carpet gym at the Sanborn building.  I'm sure there's some other Concord kids out there reading this, and you know exactly what I'm talking about.

But anyway, rock on Whitney.

Rajon Rondo did a lot of things in 21 seconds

With a little over 9 minutes to go in the 4th quarter at the Garden on Sunday, I pointed out Rondo's stats on the scoreboard to my buddy.  He figured there was no chance for a triple-double because at the time Rajon had just 6 rebounds.  But after tracking down two in the game's final 21 seconds, he finished with 32 points, 15 assists, and 10 boards.  There's only been 6 triple-doubles in the NBA this season, and Rondo's got 2 of them.

But that wasn't the most impressive thing Rajon did in the last 21 seconds.  He also went 4-4 from the foul throw line to ice the game (extending a 91-88 lead to 95-89 with only 9 seconds left).  You don't expect the Celtics to win games with Rondo at the line, but that's exactly what happened (overall he made his final 6 free throw attempts, and went 10 of 13 for the game).

And that wasn't even Rondo's best 21 seconds.  With 5:28 to go he threw a nice alley-oop to JaJuan Johnson.  Then on the next possession he passed to Chris Wilcox for another with 5:07 left (exactly 21 seconds later).  I don't remember ever seeing the Celtics convert back to back alley-oop dunks before.

This was the 25th straight game that Boston has held their opponents under 100 points.  It's the longest such streak in the league in 7 years, and also the 7th longest streak of it's kind in NBA history in the shot clock era (I find myself always writing "in the shot clock era" when referring to records.  I'm sick of it.  Can we just eliminate that phrase?  The NBA only existed for 5 years, 1950-54, before the shot clock, and it was a totally different game then and not much happened.  So I'm done with it.  From here on out I'm only ever acknowledging the NBA post 1954.  Sorry George Mikan).  Strangely enough the Celtics have never scored more than 100 points themselves during that same stretch.  But, they have scored exactly 100 on three occasions, twice vs Washington and once vs Toronto.

One final thing: the Celtics are 15-12 right now.  I know they have played twice as many games at home as on the road, and I know their schedule in the month of March looks pretty brutal, but their current pace would give them 37 wins for the season, which is exactly what I predicted.

Reflecting on the Superbowl a week later

After the game ended I avoided exposing myself to sports news for a few days.  So it wasn't until about Wednesday that I realized people were blaming Wes Welker for the loss.  That's crazy to me.  As the play in question was happening, I though to myself that the throw was too high, and it never crossed my mind again.  Welker is a tiny guy.  I've met him a couple times, and he's not an inch over 5'7''.  And even though he says he's made that play hundreds of times, I don't think I've EVER seen him have to jump for a pass before.  He catches low balls in traffic over the middle, maybe the best I've ever seen at that.  But he's not Calvin Johnson; you can't expect him to also be the guy who makes running twisting leaping grabs down field.

And that was just one of any number of plays that could have altered the outcome of the game had they happened differently.  In my opinion, the most significant thing was the fact that the Giants fumbled 3 times, but NONE for turnovers (one was taken away by a penalty, and the other two they recovered themselves).  And that's how sports works.  You can't explain everything.  It's random.  It's insane to think that because Brady/Belichik won the first three Superbowls they got to, that they are somehow a failure for losing the last two.  The fact that they have made it there 5 out of a possible 10 years is unbelievable, and defies all odds to begin with.

Which brings me to my main point: as a Patriots fan, I think it's completely reasonable to be sad and disappointed about the loss.  But to be angry and try to assess blame seems totally illogical and unfair.

Headed to the Celts/Bulls game...

So nothing for now, but my one week after Superbowl retrospective is coming up later tonight.  And Jermaine O'Neal and Brandon Bass are both out for Boston, which makes this a great day to debut my Stiemsma shirt!