OtB is counting down the days 'til the NBA 2009-10 season tips off by ranking the top 50 players in the league. On Thursday there are/were 19 days left.
When I wrote about Al Jefferson, the people who cared were Celtics fans as I pushed the comparisons between Big Al and the Big Ticket. Sure, there aren't a lot of people up north who can sustain concern for the Wolves for long periods of time, except the sublime and irrepressible Britt Robson...and the decent host of people who comment at The Rake, and then there's Howlin' T-Wolf and Canis Hoopus and TWolves Blog and then Empty The Bench also gets in on the fun, but the point! The point is that there are more Celtics blogs with more ferverent followings at this point, and there's a reason for that. I won't list them, even though this is a post about Garnett, because I like to be a little inverse. But the Celtics, since they acquired KG, have been a "ticking time bomb," kind of like Andrew Bynum's knees.
In this way, Garnett takes a step back from where he historically belonged on these kinds of lists. I had him ten slots up last season. It's not just that the Celts mortgaged their future for the quick championship fix (and there's nothing wrong with that); it's that foreclosure looked to come a bit sooner than anyone expected. The Celts started last season with a blast, and then cooled down for several different reasons. The one that persisted, however, was Garnett's wheels starting to come off. He's got 14 seasons under his belt. That's no small feat. It meant, though, that we got a chance in the playoffs to see what the Celts look like when Dude finally hangs 'em up. It's not quite as pretty as Bostonites would hope. Sure, Rondo looks solid. And then there's what? Big Baby? You just lost Leon Powe. For what it's worth, Minny is my favorite dark horse for break out season, though Rambis is kind of the quiet X-factor there, and you oftentimes want those to be loud...That's the last comparison you have to put up with, I promise.
Let's, again, look at the point of this iceberg. Ineffably, Garnett has become an unstable locker room presence. It can't be good for a team, and thus it drops him. Case in point, peep the chewing out of Big Baby. Maybe Davis deserved it. Still, it's not exactly exemplar leadership. Let's just thank our stars and garters Pierce is still on that team. That's all I have to say about that.
