Thomsen: "Celtics Are My Pick For Sportsmen Of The Year"

by Jeff Clark on Nov 7, 2008 3:09 PM EST in News/Links Comment 2 comments

Ian Thomsen of SI.com would like to nominate the Celtics as the "Sportsmen of the Year:"

The 2007-08 Celtics are my Sportsmen of the Year because they embraced the least respected and most valuable quality of NBA millionaires: humility. Each sought to play not for himself but for the team. This has become such an empty cliché in pro sports that it needs repeating -- Garnett, Pierce and Allen each pursued an agenda that reduced their individual stats on the faith that it would help the team. The scoring numbers of each star plummeted with no guarantee that they would win. They had no reason to believe that their selflessness would pay off, because none of them had ever been part of anything greater than himself.

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Who could disagree

There was some unbelievalb individual efforts on display last year but truly the whole was better than the sum of the parts.

All we can hope is for this year to equal last year

by Wildblu1 on Nov 7, 2008 5:33 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

I posted this very thing in the Forums

After winning the title, I mentioned that either the Big Three or the entire team were immediate frontrunners for SI’s Sportsmen of the Year. It’s the kind of story that SI loves to tell. When Phelps won 8 golds I thought he might’ve taken over as favorite, but if you look at the other SI essays, it appears he was not even nominated. The two most mainstream are easily the Celtics and Tiger Woods, but is one magical weekend by Tiger enough to overtake a magical season by the Celtics? I hope not.

by Big Ticket on Nov 7, 2008 6:56 PM EST reply actions 0 recs