WASHINGTON, D.C. Senator Arlen Specter accused the Boston Celtics of "cheating like a lazy fifth-grader on a geography test" in winning their seventeenth NBA championship Tuesday night, saying New England Patriots' head coach Bill Belichick filmed the Los Angeles Lakers' shoot-around prior to the decisive game six earlier in the day.
Specter: "There must be a grassy knoll around the Boston Garden somewhere . . ."
"This sort of dishonesty is contrary to everything America stands for, except for legislators who vote on bills that favor campaign donors," Specter said in a hastily-called news conference. "To those who claim I'm obsessed with bringing down Coach Belichick, I say you'd feel the same way about someone who is always stealing your yogurt from the refrigerator in the Senator's Lounge."
Belichick: "You watch--Kobe's going to shoot now."
Belichick was fined $500,000 in 2007 by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell for taping defensive signals of the New York Jets, a charge that the Patriots' coach did not dispute but which he said was due to a misinterpretation of the rules. "As I understood it," Belichick said at the time, "I was allowed to take video of [Jets' head coach] Eric Mangini to see who was doing better on our Weight Watchers Diet competition."
Belichick and Mangini: "Nice to see you, too."
According to Specter, Belichick's tape of the shoot-around enabled the Celtics to anticipate the Lakers' offensive plays in their 131-92 blowout win in Game 6. "You can see it in their defenders' eyes," Specter said as he rolled three metal balls in his hands. "They knew the Lakers' 'Give the ball to Kobe' play, their 'Clear out for Kobe play', and their 'Get yelled at by Kobe during a timeout' play."
Jackson and his "Triangle Offense"
Lakers' coach Phil Jackson said pre-game taping would help an opponent understand his complicated "Triangle Offense", which he has used to guide the Lakers and the Chicago Bulls to nine NBA championships. "There's no way the Celtics could have known that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the two other sides," Jackson said bitterly as he boarded a charter plane back to Los Angeles. "Unless they taped the practice or took high school geometry."
BOSTON. As the final seconds ticked off the clock at the TDBanknorth Garden last night, Glen "Big Baby" Davis, the Celtics' massive rookie, stood by himself, savoring his team's triumph over the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals, his mouth wide open as he looked up at the confetti drifting down from the rafters. "This is great," Davis said, a big smile on his face as stuffed the tiny pieces of paper in his mouth. "All we get in timeouts is Gatorade, and I was getting hungry."
Davis: "Hey ice cream man!"
In the locker room a few minutes later, Davis was overcome with emotion as he was handed the Charles W. Barkley Award for the Most Largest Player in the championship series by NBA Commissioner David Stern. "This is for all my teammates," Davis said as he hoisted the trophy above his head. "They cleared out on isolations and allowed me to attack the post-game buffet."
"Are you gonna finish that?
David is listed at 289 pounds on the team's roster, but he has recorded weights as high as 345 with the wind at his back since graduating from LSU in 2007. "Glen is the kind of guy you can build a team around," said Celtics' coach Doc Rivers. "You could also build a shopping center around him, as long as you had an anchor store like Nordstrom's at the other end of the mall."
Barkley: "Glen has a great future ahead of him, and a big butt behind him."
Davis turned in a breakout performance in the NBA Finals, scoring three points in a fourteen-minute appearance that helped clinch the Celtics' first championship in twenty-two years. "We knew we wanted to close them out tonight in six games," an exhausted Davis told reporter Michele Tafoya, "so I ate game 7."
"Kids, you gotta stop the violence against childhood obesity."
Davis is a fan favorite who gives back to the community through the Glen Davis Fund to Fight Violence Against Childhood Obesity, a cause that is near and dear to him. "I tell kids, we got to stop all this fighting childhood obesity," he says. "You need to just chill and learn to live with it, like I did."
LOS ANGELES. Frustrated by a disappointing game five loss to the Boston Celtics in which his Lakers blew a 24-point lead, superstar Kobe Bryant lit into his teammates today and challenged them to be as unselfish as he is.
"We got to play as a team so I look better!"
"I gave them the same speech I've been giving teammates since third grade CYO basketball," Bryant told reporters after emerging from a closed door meeting in which he reduced teammate Pau Gasol to tears by calling a "Eurotrash cream puff". "I told them--there may be an 'I' in team, I don't know, but there's no 'I' in Kobe."
Gasol (right): "I'm sorry I bumped into you."
Bryant is generally considered by himself to be the greatest basketball player of his generation, the equal of past greats such as Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Hot Rod Hundley. He holds the career record among active NBA players for most commercials filmed in Italian (1) and biggest diamond purchased for a wife after allegations of sexual assault on a 19-year old (8 carats, $4 million).
Hot Rod Hundley: Closed course, professional basketball player. Do not attempt.
Bryant told teammates that their continued poor play would hit them where it hurts--in the pocketbook--if they didn't turn things around. "The endorsement deals you all--I mean me--will get if we lose are basically car dealerships, men's clothing store openings and non-franchise pizza places, which are chump change."
Bryant had ten assists in game five, but criticized teammates for missing open shots. "You guys gotta make those shots," Bryant yelled during one timeout. "If you don't, I don't get an assist."
LOS ANGELES. A look at the box score to Tuesday night's game 3 of the NBA finals was as revealing as the clipboard at the end of a hospital patient's bed, according to Dr. Wu Yi Lee, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital a court-length pass away from the TD Banknorth Garden. "Big Ticket has Ralph Sampson's Disease," Lee said. "He need to take it to hole."
The right way
Ralph Sampson was a number one draft pick out of the University of Virginia who was expected to transform the game when he was paired with Hakeem Olajuwon in the Houston Rockets' "Twin Towers" offense. The 7' 4" inch Sampson opted for mid-range jump shots over low-post moves, however, and never realized his potential, causing college basketball scouts to apply the name "Ralph Sampson's Disease" to a big man's phobia of driving to the basket.
World's Largest Point Guard
Garnett was fouled only twice in Game 3, four times in Game 2 and 6 times in Game 1, causing Celtics trainer Ed Lacerte to call for help from high-powered basketball pathologists at Mass General, a hospital that has treated other NBA greats for ailments such as Iverson's Rock-Retentive Syndrome, colloquially known as "Ball Hog's Disease".
Dr. Lee: "Take two Dance Team members and call me in the morning."
Garnett's long-term prognosis is good, but he is day-to-day in terms of his ability to overcome the limitations of the disease, says Lee. "He is one very lucky man," Lee said. "Medical conditions named after athletes can be fatal, like Lou Gehrig's disease, although Sampson ended up in the Spanish League with Unicaja Ronda, which merely sounds like it could kill you."
BOSTON. Coming off a dramatic win Thursday night in which forward Paul Pierce made a miraculous recovery from a knee injury to lead his team to victory, the Boston Celtics today announced that they have added faith healer Jimmy Ray Embree to their training staff.
Embree: "Jesus--make this small forward walk again so he can come back and drain back-to-back 3 pointers!"
"Miracles can happen, but you don't want to count on them," said Celtics coach Glenn "Doc" Rivers, who is not a licensed physician. "Paul's comeback saved us, just the way a good Bible-thumping televangelist can save you."
"He can walk! Praise the Lord!"
Pierce injured his right knee in a collision with center Kendrick Perkins, and was carried off the court by teammates Tony Allen and Brian Scalabrine and Dr. Brian McKeon, a team physician. "There's nothing I can do for him," McKeon said upon examining Pierce. "We'll have to put him down, like a racehorse."
"God wants you to spread the floor and create isolations for St. Paul!"
But Embree, an itinerant preacher who took a wrong exit leaving Atlanta and ended up at the TD Banknorth Garden when he was pulled into the Ted Williams Tunnel by the gravitational force of Boston's Big Dig, volunteered to minister to Pierce by "laying-on of hands", a faith-healing technique.
"Double-team Bryant--Gasol's no offensive creationist."
Lakers' coach Phil Jackson expressed skepticism over Pierce's injury, calling it a "pants malfunction" and a "broken drawstring" in a post-game interview. "People are comparing him to Willis Reed," Jackson said, referring to Game 7 of the 1970 NBA Finals in which his New York Knick teammate returned to action after a half-time heart transplant and vasectomy. "Compared to Willis, Pierce is a wuss."
Willis Reed, 1970 NBA Finals
But Pierce bristled at the suggestion. "I listen to rap, he listens to the Grateful Dead," Pierce said as he sat in the whirlpool. "You tell me who's a wuss."
CLEVELAND. Jerry Burke is a Massachusetts State Policeman who hasn't played basketball since he was starting point guard for the St. Columbkill's seventh-grade Gremlins in Brighton, a working-class neighborhood of Boston, yet he found himself accompanying the Boston Celtics, the holders of the best regular-season record in the NBA, as they made their way through Cleveland Hopkins International Airport this morning.
Jerry, second from left, in his prime.
"It's a real thrill for me," he says as boards the team's chartered bus, "but I have to keep my mind on my job, so I can't really savor the moment."
Jerry, on the job
Jerry's job is to protect the Celtics as they face Cleveland in game six of the Eastern Conference semifinals tonight, a task made tougher by the fact that Gloria James, mother of Cavaliers' star LeBron, has been added to Cleveland's playoff roster as a defensive "enforcer" assigned to inflict physical punishment on any opposing player who roughs up her son.
"Mom, don't embarrass me!"
"Gloria is an essential part of our game plan," says Cleveland coach Mike Brown, referring to the off-the-bench spark she added in game four, taking on Paul Pierce after a hard foul by the Celtics' small forward on her son. "You don't come into a mother's house and mess with her son, that's all I'm saying."
"Momma--you got to rotate to the weak side!"
Mother-son tag-teams were permitted in the American Basketball Association along with red, white and blue basketballs, but the NBA forced the ABA to drop the practice in much the same manner that the federal government forced Utah to abandon polygamy as a condition of statehood.
Marvin "Bad News" Barnes
The most famous maternal enforcer in the ABA was Toinette Barnes, mother of Marvin "Bad News" Barnes, who played with the Spirits of St. Louis. She is credited with teaching her son the signature "tire iron" move he used on a Providence College teammate, an incident that resulted in Barnes' suspension. As he left the locker room in his street clothes, Barnes said "News be back 'cause his fans be demandin' it," a quotation sometimes incorrectly attributed to General Douglas MacArthur upon his recall from Korea by President Harry Truman. What MacArthur actually said was "You can take the general out of Korea, but you can't make him drink."
AUSTIN, Texas. New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton raised the bar by which her opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination should be judged in a speech to supporters last night, saying Illinois Senator Barack Obama needed to score a "triple double"--a three-state victory by at least ten percentage points--in the four primaries being held today.
Barack Obama, in "Hoop Dreams" phase.
"My opponent likes people to think 'he got game'," the former First Lady said in a speech that drew heavily on street slang she picked up Maine East High School in Park Ridge, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. "Let me tell you something--he's gonna get a schoolin', and I ain't foolin'!"
Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.
The term "triple double" is derived from basketball, where it refers to a game in which a player accumulates double-digit totals in any three of these categories--points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocked shots. It became widely popular during the mid-1980's, when Larry Bird and Magic Johnson would routinely achieve "quadruple doubles", a triple double followed by ten Bud Lights for Bird and ten women for Johnson.
Clinton and Magic Johnson: "When she sets up in the low post, you can't move her!"
The four states that will hold primaries today are Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont. Clinton and Obama were both campaigning in Texas today, the biggest prize with 193 delegates and a two-day/one-night Family Pack Special at Six Flags Over Texas, an amusement park, at stake. The candidates engaged in a friendly game of "21" organized by the Democratic National Committee at an elementary school playground here, where an Associated Press reporter picked up a bit of "trash talking" before the candidates threw "rock-paper-scissors" to decide who would get the ball first:
OBAMA: We had a back porch when I was growing up in Kansas, but it wasn't anywhere near as big as that!
Playground hoops: "Yo, Hillary--take a chill-pillary."
CLINTON: Are those your ears, or missile defense radar dishes that are draining money away from America's social ills?
We do so many defensive drills in practice that we do them in our sleep. Man, I come home putting the press on my woman, denying her the ball. It's sad, man.
Boston Celtic Kevin Garnett, The Boston Herald
It was 7:28, and I had my game face on. I put the last glass in the dishwasher, dried my hands with a terry-cloth towel, and headed for the den.
Kevin Garnett
As I walked in, I saw my wife Sarah "Sally" Christopher, a two-time Volunteer of the Year for the Uphams School PTO, fiddling with a dried flower arrangement on the armoire. Just like her, I thought, acting blase right up to the moment of tipoff.
"Are you going to be in here or the living room?" she asked as she turned around. Like I'd tell her where I was going to set up. "Can't say," I said as I picked up the local paper and nonchalantly flipped through the high school sports section. The second hand on the Pottery Barn Scottish Terrier clock on the wall ticked up towards twelve. We looked each other in the eyes, bent at the knees and extended our arms for balance. Bring it on.
That is just so precious!
As the clock struck 7:30, we lunged for the remote and, after a brief scramble, I emerged with possession. "Celtics vs. Kings," I said as I pointed and clicked at the big-screen TV. "You're going to have to go watch 'The Queen' someplace else."
"That's okay, I'd rather spend time with you," she said calmly as she picked up a Martha Stewart Living from the wicker magazine basket at her feet and took a seat on the couch. I wasn't fooled--I know a zone defense when I see it.
The Celtics took a 25-17 lead as the first quarter ended, and I decided it was time for dessert. "I'm going to go get some ice cream," I said as I got up from my chair. "You want anything?"
"No, I'm fine for now, thanks," she said, not even looking up from a photoessay on homegrown herbs. She had learned the game in the hardscrabble Presbyterian living rooms of her youth, in a gritty suburban neighborhood where you didn't get to watch H.R. Pufnstuf unless you were quick to the dial, and willing to throw an elbow at your big sister if you had to.
H.R. Pufnstuf: He's your friend when things get rough.
I scooped myself a bowl of Haagen-Dazs strawberry frozen yogurt--I needed to be ready to run if she decided to switch to an uptempo game in the second quarter. I turned and walked back to the den and saw--Sally with the remote in her hand, clicking for the Lifetime Channel!
Lifetime Disease-of-the-Week Movie: "I just hope you live 'til the next commercial, sweetie."
"Hey, what gives!" I said with a pouty look that I learned by watching Miami Heat coach Pat Riley.
"Gimme the remote, dammit!"
"You snooze, you lose," she said as she watched a mother lovingly stroke her daughter's forehead.
I flopped down in my chair as if I'd just been pulled from a game for a missed slam dunk. "What's the Disease-of-the-Week?" I asked, knowing that someone would get sick and die before I'd see another transition basket.
"They don't know yet," Sally replied. "They think it might be Osgood-Schlatter's Disease."
Osgood-Schlatter's Disease
"What a crackpot diagnosis that is!" I said with a snort. "Everybody knows Osgood-Schlatter's primarily affects adolescent boys . . ."
"Primarily," she said without taking her eyes from the screen.
I decided to slow things down and work the shot clock. It is virtually impossible for a woman to watch the Lifetime Channel for more than ten minutes without breaking into tears. Sure enough, just as they wheeled the girl into the operating room for emergency surgery, Sally began to sniffle.
"I'm going to go get a tissue," she said as a touching commercial for instant cinnamon-flavored cappucino (yuk) came on.
"You getting a cold?" I asked solicitously, if sarcastically.
"Keep up the trash-talk and you can sleep on the couch," she said.
As soon as she was out of the room I set up on the block in front of the cable box and switched back to the game--45-44 Kings, halftime. The Boston Celtics dance team--who go by the name 'The Boston Celtics Dance Team'--took their places on the historic parquet floor of the TD Banknorth Garden to shake some obligatory male-fan-base-pleasing booty.
Red Auerbach is spinning in his grave.
"Oh for the love of God!" Sally exclaimed when she returned as she saw the rock-hard abs that are standard equipment on the underemployed aerobics instructors who succeed in the fiercely-competitive world of NBA fleshpot entertainment.
"I thought you liked dance," I said with an innocent look on my face. "Sure, they're not the Boston Ballet, but then who is?"
Co-Defensive Players of the Game
Sally plopped down on the couch as Rocco and Oakie, our two cats, came into the room, looking for a warm lap to sit in for the rest of the night. I don't like to brag, but they do favor me--maybe because I'm such a sensitive guy.
Sure enough, they both hopped up in my chair and settled down after doing that circling thing that cats do to find the best spot. Rocco took the high lap up by my waist where he could get his chin scratched, while Oakie took the low post on my ankles, which were resting on a footstool.
"They sure love you, don't they," my wife purred with a chocolate-eating grin after our little tableau vivant was set.
"What's not to like?" I asked rhetorically.
"Oh, I don't know," she said with a thoughtful look on her face. "Maybe the way you hog this!"
As she spoke she stole the remote from my hand. I was stuck--I couldn't fight my way through the double-team. "Illegal defense!" I yelled.
Deviated septum: Before, and after.
"You're not going to get that call in a close one," she replied coldly. "The refs aren't going to win the game for you."
Sally switched back to Lifetime, where the ailing daughter was seen walking out of the hospital and throwing away her crutches. "Mom!" she cried. "I'm fine--it was just a deviated septum!"
"Oh, honey, that's wonderful!" the mother exclaimed. "Now we can go shopping for scented candles and potpourri again."
"Okay, it's over," I said. "Can we switch back to the game now?"
"Let's see what's on the House and Garden Channel."
In the tradition of American art historian Bernard Berenson, Glen “Big Baby” Davis, the Boston Celtics’ 289-pound rookie, kept a diary on the team’s pre-season tour of Italy.
Glen "Big Baby" Davis
Hey everybody—
First I want to say “Ciao”, which is kinda like “Aloha” in Hawaii—it means either hello or goodbye, but right now I’m saying hi.
We went to the Vatican today, it was great. Michelangelo was a very talented painter, and what’s crazy is, he did it all lying on his back. You’ve got to come to Rome to see it, though, because it’s one thing Isabella Stewart Gardner couldn’t steal and bring back to Boston—it’s attached to the roof.
"I just gotta finish the ceiling."
It took Michelangelo six years to paint the whole place! Supposedly the Pope was getting impatient after five years and dropped by to make sure Michelangelo wasn’t goofing off. He comes in and says “Hey Mike—how’s it going?” real innocent like, and Michelangelo says “Pretty good, I just gotta finish the ceiling.”
Speaking of the Vatican, did you know “Chateauneuf du Pape” means “the Pope’s new house”? I didn’t either, and when I asked somebody if the Pope had moved, they said no.
We beat Toronto last night at the PalaLottoMatica, a place where you can play the lottery, do your laundry and shoot some hoops at the same time. It’s cool.
I’ll catch up with you tomorrow.
Ciao—and this time I mean “goodbye”.
Bernard "Little Baby" Berenson
Hey guys—
Today I picked up the media guide, which shows us all in our new uniforms. Have to say, I’m putting on a little weight eating that good pasta every night. I was hoping for more of a chiaroscuro effect—you know, a couple of shadows in the folds of my jersey—but I filled it out pretty good.
"Does this make me look fat?"
We went over to the Coliseum and saw where them Christians got eaten by the lions. I got so hungry listening to the tour guide, my mouth was watering. I was looking at Kevin Garnett, but he’s so skinny he has to pass a place twice to make a shadow.
"Final score, Lions 14, Saints 0."
I was about to pass out when somebody gave me a gelato, which is Italian soft-serve ice cream.
I’m learning a lot!
Rubenesque women: "Oh, what the hell--I'm going to have a piece of cheesecake."
Back at it today—
I like the looks of the women in Rome. They’re very “Rubenesque”, even though Rubens was Flemish with a Baroque style that emphasized movement, color and—get this-- sensuality. He musta known some Italian girls!
Not all the guys are digging it, though. Rajon Rondo, who’s the skinniest guy on the team, asked me “What’s the difference between an elephant and an Italian grandmother?” I said I don’t know, and he said “Fifty pounds and a black dress.”
He thought he was being funny, but I didn’t laugh ‘cause I don’t wanna get in trouble with the front office. I’m just trying to make the team!
Catch you later.
Roman Forum
Hey there--
Well, today we did some serious scrimmaging, and I got to throw my weight around a bit. I like to set up on the low block, like one of the columns at the Roman Forum. Nobody can move me down there except maybe Kendrick Perkins, who's 280 pounds if he's an inch--with the wind at his back.
I'm an old-school guy, none of this modernist #### for me, just like Berenson. Personally, I think there's gonna be a renaissance of East Coast-style hoop this fall, with plenty of post-up play and application of psychology to the interpretation of the art of basketball, as William James noted in his seminal review of "Florentine Painters of the Renaissance".
"Have some calamari--it's just like onion rings. Really."
Got2Go--it's "Rookie Night" tonight and the vets and the guys eligible for the mid-cap salary exception are gonna make us "rooks" eat calamari. Don't know what it is, but hope mine doesn't come up again during "suicide" sprints tomorrow.
Yo--
Uh, that was a great "bonding" night, but I never thought I'd be lookin' at the business end of a squid after four bottles of Moretti beer. I was doggin' it this morning on the three-man weave--hope Coach didn't notice.
Titian's "Venus Urbino": Plus-size models of the Renaissance.
Think I'm gonna cool off today by lookin' at some Titians and dig how in his later works forms lose their solidity and melt into a lush texture of shady, shimmering colors and unsettling atmospheric effects. 'Cause that's what I'm feelin' like right now.
BEIJING. Faced with the failure of its "One-Child" policy to curb overcrowding in urban areas, the People's Republic of China is considering a wholesale expansion of televised sports in order to slow the growth of its population, already the world's largest at 1.3 billion.
"Uh, actually I was going to stay up and watch Game 3 of the Chengu Dragons-Tianjin Bulldogs Divisional Championship Series."
"Human fertility can be managed by robust bi-coastal rivalries such as the New York Knicks-Los Angeles Lakers from the late 60's to the early 70's," noted Li Changchun, Senior Population Officer of the Communist Party of China. "When teams play on the western border, guys in the east stay up too late to have sex. When teams play on the eastern border, it ruins dinner in the west and the little woman gets all whiny and goes out for rice wine with her girl friends."
Willis Reed: Responsible for decline in New York birth rate, 1969-1973.
While a link between late-night sports and declining birth rates has been suggested for many years, the evidence was largely anecdotal until a longitudinal study of the Boston Celtics-Los Angeles Lakers rivalry in the mid-80's was completed. "Eighteen years after the last Celtics championship you had high school graduating classes in Boston with like four kids," noted demographer Walter Casner of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Too many guys told their wives 'Hold that thought, there's only two minutes left,' without mentioning that it takes an hour to play the last two minutes of an NBA playoff game.'"
Bird: "If it's a boy, we'll name him Larry Joe, right?"
China's One-Child policy is enforced by monetary fines on urban couples who have a second child without a valid excuse notes Pro Basketball Insider columnist Ernie Povich. "You have to approach it like the salary cap," he says. "Do I want to use my rookie exception on little Xiang-Jiang, or wait a couple of years and give up Ling-Ling for adoption?"
"You guys had better start blocking out on rebounds, or Shanghai's gonna hit 18 million by the fourth quarter."
Skeptics say the program is unlikely to succeed until the quality of play in the Chinese Basketball Association improves. "You've got teams who can't hit the Great Wall from three-point range," says long-time pro scout Mitch Ross. "Most guys will eventually come to bed if a game is lousy enough, unless they've got money riding on it."
BOSTON. In a move that reflects Danny Ainge's philosophy to "get old in a hurry," the Boston Celtics today traded guard Rajon Rondo and the starting lineup of St. Brigid's fourth-grade CYO Falcons to the Philadelphia 76ers for the rights to Dolph Schayes, a star of the early NBA.
Dolph Schayes, pictured shortly after the earth cooled.
"I am confident that with the addition of Dolph Schayes we have put in place the last piece of the puzzle that has been sitting on the card table in the game room at the Shady Acres Rest Home for some time," said Ainge, who is Executive Director of Basketball and Mascot Operations for the Celtics. "Dolph is the kind of guy I would have idolized when I was growing up, if I hadn't been two years old when he retired."
"Aw, Red--do I have to wear my blazer to the game?"
Ainge and the Celtics made headlines around the league over the summer as they acquired thirty-two year-old Ray Allen and thirty-one year-old Kevin Garnett for young stars Gerald Green, 21, and Al Jefferson, 22. "Gerald and Al have a great future in this league," Ainge said, "but they didn't fit into our system where everybody has to buy a round after a win."
Togo Palazzi: Is he available?
Those who know Ainge personally say his purge of young players is tied to feelings of insecurity he first developed when he joined the Celtics as a baby-faced guard out of Brigham Young University in 1981. "Danny used to get carded a lot," says former teammate Robert Parrish. "That's what happens when you try to use Chuck E. Cheese tokens to buy a pitcher of light beer."
"Hey Danny--these two bet fifty tickets they can beat you at the free throw machine!"
As for Schayes, the 79-year old says he is excited about the prospect of winning his second NBA championship. "The only time I won it all was in '55," Schayes said. "I don't remember which century."
KNOB NOSTER, Missouri. Pro basketball scouts and agents have been flocking to this small town in central Missouri for months now, making for crowded conditions at the Motel 6 on State Highway 50. "I've had to put two guys into the same room with a rollaway bed," says owner Gene Ray Hampton. "They complain they don't have any privacy."
