So tonight we get sports blogging. Jim O'Brien has resigned as coach of the Boston Celtics - meaning that the top two teams in the Atlantic division (not exactly a stellar achievement this year) have been removed in the space of 2-3 days. At least Danny Ainge didn't fire O'Brien - thus not looking as stupid as Jersey's management - but he basically forced him out. Am I happy? Uh - no. Danny Ainge has had the C's for 7-8 months and has already done more harm than Rick Pitino ever did - or Dave Gavitt - or any of the parade of mediocrities and failures they ran through in the post Larry era. Granted, it is too early to judge Ainge's work - guys have to get healthy, maybe they need a year to grow into what they have..But damn, it's hard to see this going anywhere but down. They have less talent now than when he got the team - they have less "character" (by which I probably really mean, less hustle and less willingness to play D) - and I think they are tied down more by their contracts, though I'm not sure of that. They were a playoff team last year - were going to make the playoffs easily this year, with Pierce and Walker (and not by finishing 6th in the East with a 40-42 record, like they looked on a pace to do this year, before O'Brien left.) Now - maybe, the Walker trade maybe let them build for the future - Welsch looks good, LaFrentz healthy could make a difference - so maybe that's not a disaster. The Ricky Davis trade though - dumb. Plain dumb.

Oh, it's depressing. They got back to respectablilty, they made a good draft pick this year for the first time in many a year - they looked promising, more than able to hang around until Banks developed... Bah. Ainge is running them into the ground...

I'll bet Isaiah Thomas feels stupid right about now - if he had let Don Chaney hang around a couple more weeks he could have had his choice of Byron Scott and Jim O'Brien! They are - along with Larry Brown and Rick Carlyle and probably Paul Silas - look at that! Those are the best -a nd the most successful - coaches in the east, for the last few years - and every frigging one of them has changed jobs (or is out a job) since the end of last season! Oh sure - none of them can beat the west - but my god people, none of them have half the talent Flip Sanders or Phil Jackson or Don Nelson has. The only eastern team that seems close to the talent level of the average western teams in Indiana - of course they had Thomas coaching last year, so you can't expect them to win anything... Carlyle might get somewhere.

Enough! It's been too happy a winter for New Englad sports fans, with the Patsies making like the 72 Dolphins and the Red Sox making like the Yankees. The C's were sort of hanging around in the shadows, bland, mediocre, going nowhere, but hey - they might start putting it together! - now we see they are going to stay bland mediocre and continue to go nowhere for the foreseeable future. Though I imagine they might start losing 110-102 more often - heck, they lost a lot of those games with O'Brien - they'll start losing 120-108! which I suppose improves the highlight reels, if nothing else.

So does this mean that O'Brien ends up in Jersey? oh god...