Celts Care Too Much For Chauncey's Tastes

I love the Celtics as much as anyone, but if the reports of Posey’s taunting are accurate, then I for one am a little ashamed of him right now, and I’d completely understand Billups’ reaction. No, you don’t have to play with the silent efficiency/“professionalism” that the Pistons play with (though one could argue that the fact that they’ve done so well in the past few seasons means that more teams should try emulating that), but there’s something to be said for being a gracious victor.

It’s not even the whole “playing the game right” argument. Why on earth would you give a team bulletin board material to get them fired up for the next game? Granted, a reasonable argument can be made that if the Pistons aren’t fired up already to play the Celtics given the two teams’ successes this season, there’s something seriously wrong. But continuing the Super Bowl analogy: how did the “underdog” tag and the constant put-downs work for the Patriots when no-name QB Tom Brady took over for long-time star Drew Bledsoe? Frankly, how’s the “you can’t win without cheating” taunt worked so far this year for them? Let the other team get fired up their own way; don’t give them a hand with it.

kgiessler said: Oh the lessons Ron Artest has taught us.

:D

Chauncey was just minimizing the C’s victory and their loss. The themes in Detroit this year all run along the lines of their experience as a team of savvy, crafty veterans who have been to the finals twice recently and have won a championship. The fanbase is like-minded.

They talk about how these are just regular season games and that as such there is nothing important about them at all other than them serving as a vehicle to playoffs. They say they aren’t even interested in being the one seed in the East because historically they’ve been more successful as the two seed.

They talk about “saving it” for the playoffs and how Boston is most likely just going to end up like Dallas having a great regular season only to get knocked off in the first or second round of post-season play. The general sentiment is that the Pistons are still a significantly better team than the Celtics and time will reveal that. They say they are already looking past March when we meet again.

So I think the Pistons and their community exhibit a certain amount of minimization, rationalization, justification and denial with regard to their assessment of the Celtics. I would point out though that there are good reasons to be concerned about practically everything they say. They are talented, experienced and probably play the smartest team basketball in the Eastern Conference.

I do agree with them on one thing completely though. They should look past our rematch in March. In fact, they should just go ahead now and put a little check mark in the Loss column for that one. Why, they might even consider forfeiting the game whereby they could save themselves a trip and rest their guys some for what’s really important…since that game won’t matter anyway. ;)