King James

LeBron James has another bad night and Shaughnessy writes about it...again. With Shaughnessy and the Celtics lately, it feels like we are in summer rerun season. That being said, it is a fair enough look at James' struggles in the past two games; however, I would like to address two points.

- James has two bad games in a row and Shaughnessy feels compelled to make reference to bad showings by star athletes in big venues. Pick a sport....In lazy Shaughnessy form, he ticks off a Ted Williams reference (1946 WS); a Phil Mickelson reference (2006 US Open) and an Alex Rodriguez reference (pick a series)--anything that rolls off the top of his head. For goodness sake, why can't he dig just a little deeper and keep it within the sport? All he has to do...pick any three NBA superstars; dig through the record books--did any of them have two games like this? Was it contained to two games? How did they eventually break out of their slump? How did their teams respond? Why is this so difficult? Because he is flat out lazy. What is really odd is that he has a very detailed break out by quarter of James shot sequences--and perhaps he thinks that gives the appearance that he followed the game closely. But anybody can use a game stat sheet to do that -- you would think an award winning journalist could put a little more effort into it

- Getting back to the ARod thing, Shaughnessy made a comment in his column the other day that drew my ire but I did not write about it but after thinking about it, I will surface it. When the Celtics were struggling against the Hawks, Shaughnessy started to hang the ARod label on Garnett. (i.e., great player when it doesn't count). You know if he had made that point at any time during the season based on Garnett's time with Timberwolves and a long term look at Garnett's playoff history, that would be fair enough (assuming he could back it up). But to make that point 4 or 5 games into Garnett's first playoff series when we really do not have a proper perspective of him in a Celtics uniform during the playoffs was bush. That is a label that you could start hanging on Garnett if the Celtics were to lose 2 or 3 playoff series over a few year span. But Shaughnessy ever prone to hyperbolic knee-jerk reactions played that card. (Side note to OB: I don't care if he roots for the home team or its players--I really dont. Just get sick of the crap that he spews)