Celtics Stuff Live broadcast Sunday night sans a vacationing Jon Duke and welcomed back Kevin Henkin for the co-hosting spot. In the first hour newly hired coach of the Maine Red Claws, Austin Ainge, spoke of his first head coaching opportunity (if you don’t count the Orlando Summer League) and certainly displayed the kind of media savvy required for just such a position. He answered the obvious questions (and we are now happy to have those out of the way) and talked about his basketball support network as well as his desire to return to the show to discuss the X and O’s of coaching once the season begins this fall. Crustacean Nation will enjoy this interview.
In the second hour, Jessica Camerato of WEEI.com covered a wide variety of topics including some old friends that she caught up with while out in Vegas covering the Summer League. Ryan Gomes, Orien Greene, Patrick O’Bryant, Kevinn Pinkney, and Sam Cassell to name a few. We also discussed Stephon Marbury and how new media is being used in the Twitter, Ustream, and Facebook era to promote and alter the landscape. I.E. is Stephon Marbury a genius or a fool? Jessica did not offer as strong an opinion as Adrian Wojnarowski, but did feel that Stephon was using the tool as it was intended, with the level of success he had hoped for. Justin agreed and added that Marbury has already proven resistant to exactly the kind of criticism he is receiving for the Stephonathon (c’mon Steph, follow me @JustinPoulin) and Kevin "no twitter account" Henkin felt that possibly the Yahoo lead writer’s article was simply a directed attack on the player.
In the midst of all this, Alex from NES 24/7 called into the show for a 30-minute conversation on sign and trade rumors. For fans who dislike rumor talk, the middle of the show is not for you, but for the rest of us who enjoy speculation it was a hit. Alex confirmed that he had been hearing the same rumor as Justin from a different source; that Glen Davis is headed to New Jersey in a sign and trade. While Justin was reluctant to post any such rumor in print without specific details, Alex reported that Yi Jianlian was the target and that it is likely no further details have been sorted out yet.
All were in agreement that figuring out what city Glen Davis will call home for next season was holding up the works; the proverbial cork in a shaken champagne bottle. At the end of the week, Gabe Pruitt’s future with the team will be decided and while that is no cause for setting a sign and trade deadline, Kevin and Justin set one anyway. And not to mention the CelticsBlog.com report that Bruce Bowen to the Celtics is in the works! While this may be the longest write-up for a Sunday night show in quite some time, I can assure you that it is only scratching the surface of what proved to be a solid show.
And finally, congratulations to Marc Spears (our guest from 2 weeks prior) who passed along a huge thanks to Celtics Stuff Live via Jessica Camerato for helping connect him with a CSL listener in Los Angeles. Apparently, after mentioning his desire to make a documentary of his cousin’s experience as a policeman in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina while on our show, he was subsequently contacted about making the documentary and hired on as a producer for the film.
Whoever you are, thank you so very much…