FrankWhite

It's not unrealistic to think Woody might be quicker to pull a young point guard from games than he would be with a big. He did apprentice under Larry Brown, after all, and his utilization of Acie at times this year was baffling.

It's all just supposition, but I think it's reasonable to say Paul fell into the best possible situation for him and there's no guarantee he would have flourished like he has under Woodson.

You can't possibly think Portland would trade Oden for Smith.

He screwed up? Even Joe Dumars, who I think we can agree is one of the best GMs in the game, has screwed up horribly in the draft.

If anyone actually believes that the Spurs are done and will now start dismantling the team, they probably shouldn't be allowed to comment on basketball.

Plus, it's unclear that we would have gone after Joe Johnson if we had drafted Paul. Remember, Joe was brought in here under the auspices that he could play point.

No matter how much people here like to play the revisionist history game (and really, why does this happen every time there's a downtime here?), the facts remain: A. Mike Woodson is not Byron Scott; Scott preaches an up and down the court offensive philosophy, he played with the Showtime Lakers and coached Jason Kidd in his prime. He deserves at least some of the credit for Paul's success, and Mike Woodson is simply not the same type of coach, and the same thing goes regarding Deron Williams and Jerry Sloan. B. We didn't have and we probably still wouldn't have a player like David West to compliment Paul. Yeah, Smith would excel in transition, but he does not have the prototypical power forward game that West has. C. We don't have a shooter like Peja or a center like Chandler.

Could we have acquired all of those things in the 3 seasons that followed the 2005 draft? Sure, but it's not nearly likely, especially given our ownership situation. At best we would have drafted Paul (or Deron) and teamed him with Joe in the backcourt, with Smith and Harrington at the forward spots and Childress off the bench. We would have probably picked Shelden later in the lottery the next year, so that's a wash, and we wouldn't have had a draft pick last year. We would have a fun and exciting team with little depth and no post presence and not much shooting ability. Yeah, we would be a solid playoff team in the East, but all these thoughts that we'd on the same track as New Orleans or Utah seem far-fetched to me.

I don't have any problem watching the Hornets or the Jazz.

I'm not blaming him for everything that went wrong today. Obviously, he can't physically put the ball in the basket for these guys. But it's a pattern we've seen all year long. Big game on the road and the team not just loses, they look lost and barely compete. The coaches have to find a way to get their team prepared on the road, and this team is NEVER prepared. Hell, one of our measly 12 road wins came after we were down 21 to the friggin' Timberwolves!

The inability to be mentally prepared and execute on the road is on the coaching staff. It's shocking how inept the team looked today in the biggest game of most of these guys' careers. Obviously, Woodson isn't cutting it.

I am proud of what the team has done this series. However, this series proves a few undeniable facts. 1. We're too talented to have finished with just 37 wins. 2. Woodson is not the coach to take us to the next level.

This is the worst coaching performance I think I've ever seen.

Every team that goes from bad to good suddenly has bandwagon. The Celtics have them. We have them. The only professional team that can argue they don't have them is the Chicago Cubs.

You're right. Red Sox fans aren't bandwagon fans. Patriots fans are.

His job is to be a professional blowhard. I don't think I've ever heard him admit he was wrong about something.

The thing that keeps annoying me is the insistence from sports pundits that we are what are record is, rather than coming to the logical conclusion that we're much better than our record shows, therefore we haven't won these games, Boston's lost them.

Pretty ignorant of you to assume it has to be one or the other. I'll take them BOTH, thank you very much.

Thank you. I'd like to see all of our young guys reaching their potential together. Why does everybody have to play favorites with the Hawks? It's a team game. It's best for everyone on the team to be good, not one guy in spite of all the others. This is simple stuff.

I listened to the home team broadcast, so I don't know the tone used, but I actually don't think that's an insult. I think what he's getting at is we haven't built up reservoirs of doubt like other young teams have. It doesn't hurt to have a guy like Horf, who's played in crazy environments and pressure packed games and has been nothing but fearless in all games. Bibby was supposed to be our postseason veteran leader, but it turns out it's Horford!

I'll give him credit because we were badly outrebounded to start the game and made the right adjustments. This game was won on the glass. Limit the Celts to one and done and you can dictate the pace and beat them.

I'm still dubious about him returning as HC, though.

I agree on both.

Look, I know most of you won't change your opinions of him, but it would be nice to see the Marvin haters here step up and give him credit for coming through in the biggest game of the season. He also showed some heart coming back out with a sore knee.

Am I wrong in thinking that Boston started the trash talking?

Of course you're not. Anyone outside of a few delusional Boston fans can see that the Celtics were only getting a dose of their own medicine when we talked back to them.

The only journalists who should get a vote on these awards are beat reporters who are forced by their jobs to watch every team play at least twice and talk to scouts from both conferences on a daily basis. The problem is they let columnists who probably only watch about 30-40 full NBA games total a year and who rely on stat sheets and highlights to form their opinions. So it's no surprise it's a popularity contest. Durant's name was probably etched on the award during summer league.

Well, before Rider, Mookie was a team leader despite his penchant for smoking up.

Simmons praised that trade at the time and ripped Joe repeatedly for coming to Atlanta instead of playing with Nash. He even ranked Diaw above Joe in his players trade value column the next year. Here's the quote:

Now he watches Joe torch his team for 20 4th quarter points and suddenly he's "reminded" that Phoenix dicked Joe around and lowballed him until he manned up and said I don't want to be here, let me go. Convenient.

I'm shocked.

The Hawks have grown up and exposed these Celtics in the process! You gotta love it!

That made no sense. He said the reason Philly is up 2-1 is they know they're inferior to the Pistons and the reason we were down 0-2 is we think we're better than the Celtics. What???

He also said the Celtics are superior at every position, which means he must think Kendrick Perkins is better than Al Horford. How this idiot somehow convinced someone he's an expert on anything is beyond me. He's dumber than Chad Ford.