A Tale Of Two Games

The Boston Red Sox won last night in Atlanta, as David Price pitched 8 innings and struck out fourteen batters in his (and The Sox's) most convincing win of the season to date.

The Boston Celtics lost last night in Atlanta, after trailing at halftime, turning the ball over ten times in the third quarter, the Atlanta Hawks looking like the 1994 Chicago Bulls in that same quarter and got run out of the building, now facing elimination from the NBA playoffs. When human pylon Kris Humphries hits back to back three point shots on you, it's game over, man!

Would anyone care to guess which of these games Shank decided to write about? If you guessed the Red Sox, you must be new around here:

ATLANTA — How do you explain this Celtics-Hawks series?

You don’t. Just roll with it, wait for the next game, and hope your team does better.

The Celtics led the Hawks by 10 points in the second quarter of a pivotal Game 5 at Philips Arena on Tuesday night. Sweet, right? On the heels of sweeping two games in Boston it looked like the Celtics might break the Hawks’ spirit, take a 3-2 series lead, and wrap things up at the Garden on Thursday.

No. The Hawks demolished the Green Team in the third quarter, ran out to a 33-point lead, and took Game 5, 110-83, to put the Celtics on the brink of elimination.

The Celtics and Hawks are working hard and leaving it all out there on the court, but this series might set basketball back to the pre-shot clock era of the 1950s. We have two starless teams bumping into one another, with the series winner appropriately earning a four-night, all-expenses paid trip to . . . Cleveland.

Not if Indiana or Charlotte manage to win two games - lowest seed plays the highest seed, Shank!

Then again, four nights in Cleveland would be punishment enough - tank the series!

...
The Hawks seemed similarly rattled. Jeff Teague’s mind-numbing failure to execute (after two timeouts) in the final 15 seconds of regulation was a gaffe of epic proportion. Had a Boston player blown a game in such fashion, it would have dominated all sport media for the ensuing two days.

And we all know who would be leading that charge, don't we?

There was actually little of anything early Tuesday night. Despite a pregame video presentation that includes a voice claiming Atlanta has “the loudest fans in the NBA” the New England Revolution generate more buzz in Boston than the Hawks do in Atlanta.

Shank sure hates sports teams owned by Robert Kraft, doesn't he?