Shaughnessy dissects the Celtics latest road loss, a 74-69 defeat at the hands of the Cavaliers in Game 6 of their playoff series. Shaughnessy points out that the Celtics were victims of poor officiating (that call on Pierce was horrid) but that they were also outhustled. Although I have grown a little weary of Shaughnessy's constant harping on the road losses, he's right in that this does not give the Celtics a warm feeling about their playoff hopes.
Although his piece is relatively straightforward, Shaughnessy does include this one asinine line:
"The NBA should be concerned about the home-road disparity. Why even bother to play the games when we all know ahead of time which team is going to win?"
There is a Shaughnessy tendency to draw conclusions on small sample sizes. We are talking about one round of games and Shaughnessy decides to throw up his hands in exasperation and suggest there is an NBA-wide problem. One round does not an alarming trend make. Either there is a long standing pattern that has existed well before this series (and Shaughnessy should have done the homework to investigate this since he has done nothing but talk about home-road disparities for the past 2 plus weeks...but he won't because he is too lazy or busy primping for his TV appearances) or this is a statistical aberration. Either way, Shaughnessy apparently lacks the analytical capacity to figure it out.
Also, Shaughnessy dusts off a favorite old line but does so with a new twist:
Last July, he wrote
"Even Tim Donaghy thinks the Patriots are a lock."
Today, he writes, "Neither Charles Barkley nor Tim Donaghy would bet on the Celtics to beat the Pistons four times at home in the next round."
Ha, ha...that's a good one. Got to love the Barkley injection there to freshen it up a bit.
3 comments:
Is it just me or has CHB written the same exact column every day for like three weeks, are we sure he's not just copying and pasting?
Not, it's not you. His columns have been the same 'partly sunny/partly cloudy' drivel for the past three+ weeks. Of course, when Detroit comes to Boston next week and promptly wins both games at the Garden, this 'league-wide disparity' will be forgotten.
Silly me. I thought the Celtics losing every road playoff game was a major and important local sports development.
Now I know its a potential "statistical aberration" based on "small sample sizes."
Isn't any seven game series a "statistical aberration?"
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