How fickle the media is. Now Ric Buscher and company are singing the Celtics praises and talking about the C's resigning Payton. I would like to report this as "new news" but it isn't really. This is the stance that the C's have taken all along. They wanted to keep Gary from day one. Keeping him is by far the best option, provided he's happy. The only thing that has changed here (perhaps) is Gary's willingness to stay. If a win streak makes the Glove feel the love more, then I'm all for it. However, I don't think for a minute that a win streak has changed Danny's vision or plan of attack one way or the other.
I hear about GM's saying that they would see how the next month goes to see if they are in a position to be contenders or rebuilding, and it shocks me. Really? A month is going to tell you all that? So you are hanging the next 2-3 years (or more) on the fortunes of the next 2-3 weeks? To quote Will Ferrell, "that's crazytalk." As someone pointed out already, Danny didn't care that the team won 5 straight last year when he made a trade to pick up Ricky Davis. Now we're all glad he did. Well, everyone but Peter May.
Which brings me to my next point. The day that Danny listens to May, or Buscher, or Ford, or (especially) me, is the day he should step down and never run a team again. Nuff said.
Whatever he has up his sleeve, I know that Danny also has sub-plans. Contingencies. If plan A or B don't work, then there are C, D, E, and C-1, C-3.4, etc. after that. Here's hoping that A and B work out, so we don't have to settle for the alternatives.
I think plan A all along has been to keep Gary, Paul, Ricky, and others in town and build around them. If anything has changed, I hope it is Gary's willingness to finish his career in Boston, helping us build something special here.
If not, then there's always plan B.
By the way, here is a story with Gary's latest comments about sticking around.