Boston Celtics

Boston Red Sox' David Ortiz: "This Is Our Fucking City"

When real tragedy like the bombings at the Boston Marathon last Monday occurs, one of the phrases that gets uttered seemingly every time is that "sports helps the healing process." Now, most of the time we hear this, it's uttered by someone who makes their living in sports, so the statement may b ... More >>

The Rockets Are Back In The NBA Playoffs! Their Complete Rebuilding Anthology

With four games to go in the 2011-2012 season, the Rockets were coming off a 117-110 loss to Dallas, a loss in which Dirk Nowitzki provided a stark reminder to last season's Rockets team that they were devoid of a superstar caliber player by dropping 21 points on them in the fourth quarter. To call ... More >>

The Screwball Economics of Major League Baseball

As another season begins, MLB faces an unsustainable future - and you're picking up the tab.

From Five Straight Wins to Four Straight Losses, the Young Rockets Continue to Confound

I've mentioned in this space on numerous occasions that you have to take the good and bad with youth. It's exciting and fast-paced and fun, but it's also exceedingly frustrating. On a weekend that saw the Texans go out more with a whimper than a bang, it would have been nice for the other halfway de ... More >>

NBA Season Jump Starts with Spate of Christmas Day Games Including the Rockets

In 2011, Christmas Day was the literal start to the NBA season thanks to a lockout that kept the season from starting for nearly two full months. Most every other year, the season starts in October, but for the casual fan, it doesn't really get going until Christmas Day. With the NFL taking the day ... More >>

Rocket Roller Coaster Continues with Wins, Losses and a Trip Back to NYC for Lin

Check out pictures form the

Twin Towers: A Fascinating Tale of the '80s Rockets and What Never Was

On June 5, 1986, I was barely 17 years old and on my way home from a music lesson. While cutting through a nearby neighborhood, my car, an amazingly awful pumpkin orange Datsun B-210 I bought from a friend for 500 bucks, broke down...again. Fortunately, I was only about two blocks from a schoolmate' ... More >>

Why the Rockets Have to Suck Before They Can Improve

For quite some time, I have resisted the sentiment that to improve in the NBA, you must first have a substantial downturn. I don't like the idea of losing on purpose. Calling it "tanking" only makes it worse. The entire concept feels like the exact opposite of what players, coaches and fans are taug ... More >>

NBA Finals: Series Prediction and a Few Prop Bets

Finally, it's here! If you had allowed David Stern to sit in a room with all 16 playoff teams on the wall by conference, and allow him to pick his dream matchup for the NBA Finals, it's without a doubt the Miami-Oklahoma City matchup we're getting here. LeBron versus Durant, big market versus small ... More >>

NBA Playoffs: "Good Job, Good Effort" Kid Has Been Located

Well, that didn't take long. On the heels of the Boston Celtics' 94-90 win over the Miami Heat on Tuesday night, there were two stars usurping the spotlight after the game. One was Boston forward Kevin Garnett, whose 26 points and 11 rebounds led the Celtics to the huge upset. The other wasn't a pl ... More >>

Rockets Mediocrity: Blame the Strategy of the Owner

There's something unholy about a team playing out the string of games knowing it won't make the playoffs. It's even weirder when said team felt its season end with a thud after a horrid stretch of games that lasted right up until the second-to-last game of the year. Going one step farther, that game ... More >>

Picking Rockets Team of the 2000s Not an Easy Task

Throughout the course of this frustrating season, the Houston Rockets have been allowing fans to pick their choices for the starting team of the decade beginning with the 1970s and continuing with the '80s, '90s and 2000s. They had all but one of their starting five for the 2000s on had for their wi ... More >>

Comparing the Rockets Starting Lineup to the Best in the West

The Rockets are mired in a five-game losing streak and slumping their way towards the NBA trade deadline next week. They lost two overtime heartbreakers to the Clippers and the Celtics and dropped an uninspired road loss the the abysmal Toronto Raptors. The Rockets aren't exactly free-falling, but t ... More >>

One Man's NBA All-Star Reserve Selections

Go ahead and chalk up the NBA All-Star Game taking place in a few weeks (Sunday, February 26, to be exact) in Orlando's Amway Center as the next "feels weird" moment of the NBA season. It feels like the season just tipped off a few weeks ago and yet here we are, about 20 games in, deciding who the b ... More >>

10 Observations About The Rockets 2011-12 Schedule

Clutch pulls in late for the earlier home start times​I have to admit, when I saw the headline that the NBA would be announcing its 2011-12 season schedule, I chuckled out of confusion a little bit. I mean, do you really want to remind your hardcore customers (and trust me, those who care abo ... More >>

Women's World Cup: Five Other Seeming "Game-Winning" Scores That Weren't

The USA's run in the Women's World Cup seemed to be finishing in grand style when Abby Wambach put in an extra-time header to give the team a 2-1 lead. It didn't last, and Japan won in overtime. Wambach's late goal joins a storied list of scores that seemingly iced a game or a series, only to be o ... More >>

2011 NBA Draft -- 4 Winners, 4 Losers

Tough night for Dick Vitale​My fingers are still recovering from the lengthy (eight printed pages!) live blog I did last night here on Hair Balls, but the day after the draft necessitates some post-draft analysis. I've now had a day to sleep on it, and without further ado, a few post-draft tho ... More >>

NBA Draft Rewind -- 1986, The Worst Draft Ever

Plus the shorts sucked​As much as those who construct teams in sports would like to think that they have a formula and a blueprint that they can go execute with any team in any market and be successful, the fact of the matter is that even for the best personnel men in the best-run organization ... More >>

2011 NBA Draft -- The Live Blog

Keep coming back for the latest​The overwhelming consensus on the 2011 NBA Draft is that it's, by and large, a pretty underwhelming group of players, and it may quite possibly be completely devoid of future All-Stars. So why am I so excited about tonight's festivities? Because of all the thin ... More >>

Mavericks Celebrate In South Beach Bar: The Photos, Including Dirk Nowitzki Guzzling an $80K Bottle of Champagne

worldredeye.com​The webiste worldredeye.com has a page full of pictures up of the Dallas Mavericks, the whitest NBA champs since Larry Bird's Celtics, getting down last night and early this morning at Dallas South Beach nightclub LIV. We can only assume such a hip name as LIV is an homage to ... More >>

ESPN's Doris Burke's Difficult Week (w/ VIDEO)

Doris Burke and a moment of Zen​Of all of the on-air personalities who put their fingerprints on a sporting event -- studio host, play by play, color analyst, sideline reporter -- I've always thought that the sideline reporter has the hardest job out of all of them. It starts with the inhe ... More >>

Kevin McHale Is The Rockets New Head Coach

Do not read the subhed​In what would have been classified as a fairly startling upset at the beginning of the search process, the Houston Rockets have chosen former Boston Celtic great/Minnesota Timberwolves coach and general manager Kevin McHale as the next head coach of their franchise. In ... More >>

The Chris Bosh 2010-2011 Experience (in Quotes -- PLAYOFF Addendum)

Chris Bosh is no Never-Nervous Pervis.​"Was I effective today? It's common sense. I think it's evident. I just have to get it where I'm effective. I have to get it where big guys get it. Then, I feel I can start helping out this team more. I'm effective down in the low-post area. That's where ... More >>

NBA Playoffs Schedule Maker, a Mother's Day FAIL

Could have been the best Mother's Day match-up of all time.​It's not easy for a sport's postseason that lasts practically as long as the entire college football regular season to be compelling from beginning to end, but so far this NBA postseason is doing as good a job of just that as it's eve ... More >>

The NBA's Top-Selling Jerseys List (And Seven Things It Tells Us)

NBA jerseys: We CAN just all get along!!​I'll admit, I don't own any sports jerseys. I'm not a jersey-wearing guy, partially because the fit and feel of an authentic professional sports shirt are not optimal, but mostly because I'm over the age of 14. Full disclosure, I don't buy many jersey ... More >>

LeBron's Mom Smacks Around A Valet Guy

Res ipsa loquitur, bitches​I've never been big into crime dramas, but for whatever reason, I've taken a real liking in the last year or so to shows like Law and Order and CSI. Even though the shows are pretty formulaic (like so formulaic that if there were such a thing as "Mad Libs: Sexual Pre ... More >>

NFL, College Football, Twitter, Pancake Bites and Bestiality -- Weekend's Best Bets

A regular Paul the Octopus​So last season I did these Best Bets posts on Fridays and made every attempt to conduct myself like an actual handicapper, coming up with reams of statistics and subjective observations to lead to a conclusion that I hoped made reasonable sense. End result? A predic ... More >>

NBA 2010-2011 Preview -- Reconstructing LeBron

Please, no more operations on Yao Ming​"What should I do?" -- LeBron James, over and over and over again his new Nike spot The fact that LeBron James is posing the question in his new Nike spot perhaps tells us that he is not completely devoid of self-awareness, as he appeared to be last summer. ... More >>

GAME TIME: NBA Draft: 8 Winners and 8 Losers

As in most things in life, Calipari is both a winner and loser​"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 2010 NBA Draft..." -- David SternI'm not going to lie, those words give me a tingly feeling every year that I hear them. It never gets old -- like reruns of The Sopanos or seeing that Bree Ol ... More >>

Game Time: Celtics, Feel Better -- Five Officiating Decisions That Were WAY Worse Than Kendrick Perkins' Second Technical

Sorry about that fifth down.....​It's funny, because I'm from New England, people automatically assume that I am a fan of all the Boston teams. To wit, last night as the Celtics were imploding in Orlando, my iPhone was blowing up with text messages asking if I was starting to get worried about th ... More >>

In Honor Of The Bugatti Incident: The Five Best Incidents Of When Birds Attack

Today's story on a pelican causing a $2 million sports car to wind up in a lagoon is, of course, distressing. And not just if you're the owner of that $2 million car.Birds -- you gotta watch out for them. You just never know when they're going to strike.The lagoon incident can now proudly take its p ... More >>

The Red Nation Manifesto, Honored Mostly In The Breach

Photos by Monica Fuentes​The Houston Rockets hosted a party last night at Hotel Icon to celebrate the team's new Red Nation marketing campaign. Other than "alternative jerseys" for this year, the team -- as part of the campaign -- has developed a Bill of Red, "a document passed down from high and ... More >>

Where Does Sunday's Rockets Victory Rank? It'll Have To Top These To Make The Top Five

Where does yesterday's deceptively close 99-87 shellacking of the Lakers rank in the annals of great Rockets victories? It's too soon to tell. If they build on that win by taking this series and then slip into their fifth NBA finals, minus not just Yao but also his geriatric Congolese understudy, no ... More >>

Top Ten Sports Moments of 2008

10. Danica Patrick won the Indy Japan 300 to become the first woman to win a major (NASCAR, Indy, Formula One) auto race. 9. Atlanta Braves pitcher Tom Glavine won his 300th game, then retired at the end of the season, to just about cement his selection into the Baseball Hall of Fame in five ye ... More >>

Top Ten Sports Moments of 2008

10. Danica Patrick won the Indy Japan 300 to become the first woman to win a major (NASCAR, Indy, Formula One) auto race. 9. Atlanta Braves pitcher Tom Glavine won his 300th game, then retired at the end of the season, to just about cement his selection into the Baseball Hall of Fame in five ye ... More >>

Former Rocket Dirk Minniefield Finds A New Way To Get In Trouble

Dirk Minniefield, the former Houston Rocket whose drug-addled life was turned around with the help of John Lucas, is in trouble again.The Associated Press reports that he's been arrested for a mortgage-fraud scheme centered in the Houston area:The indictment alleges Minniefield was a real estate age ... More >>

The Five Worst Basketball Movies of All Time

Lakers-Celtics: Not with a Bang, Barely with a Whimper

Celtics-Lakers: The Boston Conundrum

NBA or WWE?

Finally! NBA Finals Begin Tonight

Don’t Hate the Spurs, Hate the Celts

Q&A with Daryl Morey: What’s Next?

NBA Playoff Preview: Your Guess Is As Good As Mine

Rockets-Celtics: Requiem for a Streak

Jason Friedman’s NFL Picks, Week 12: Lions, Turducken and Bears...

Rocket Science: Daryl Morey Brings Hard-Core Statistical Analysis to the NBA

Houston's pro basketball team pins (at least a part of ) its hopes on a brainiac GM

Jason Friedman's NBA Predictions: Mavs Beat the Jazz, the Suns, the Rockets and the Pistons, Take the Championship in '08

Trading T-Mac

Bring On '07!