When Marcus Smart was traded away for Kristaps Porziņģis I thought this was one of the biggest mistakes the team had ever done.
How delightful to be wrong although in fairness getting Holiday was likely just as important if not more.
Derick White had his face smashed into the garden floor in the first have which cost him a tooth. As the game. White says he’d lose them all for a title. If you look at that play in slow motion you’ll be surprised that he was able to come back in.
Was a tad surprised that Brown got the MVP over Tatum. I thought Jason played one of his best games, particularly in terms of passing but Brown has been first rate right along as well.
I suspect this won’t be a bid deal to anyone except for sports writers on talk radio looking for something to argue about.
Dallas actually didn’t play a bad game at all but had plenty of shots that really should have fallen but didn’t.
Of course Dallas’ biggest problem was the Celtics defense that was smothering.
If Dallas adds a piece or two I would not be surprised to see a rematch next season.
Now that the title is in had a few questions:
Does Horford retire now that he has a title?
Given their salary cap situation do they simply try to run it back with the same team?
With a title in hand will the Celtics still be hunger enough to repeat?
Will Jason Tatum finally get credit as a leader by the Boston press (I’m guessing maybe)
One of the side effects of the Boston Celtics being blown out in game four vs the Mavericks after winning the first three is to remind us just how Great Tom Brady is and why he deserves a place in the Pantheon with Bill Russell (11 rings) and Yogi Berra (13 Rings) or maybe even beyond them.
Both Yogi and Bill had an advantage that Tom did not, the ability to either:
Have a bad game
Have your opponent have a great game
This advantage is inherent to a playoff series. You can lose a single game or multiple games, you can have a bad night, your team can have a bad night, you can make a huge mistake in a game, and you can still win because it’s a best of seven series.
Not Tom Brady.
In football it’s one and done, if you have a bad day, tough luck, you’re out.
If your opponent has an incredible game (think Pats Eagles) even if you played great, tough luck you’re out.
If your opponent has a lucky break (Think Pats Giants and the Helmet catch) tough luck your out.
That’s why it’s so hard to win at that level in football and that’s why Tom Brady is and will remain the GOAT until someone matches his level.
Brady’s Pats were not allowed a game like the Celts had that why even if the green raise the trophy over their heads in the Garden Tomorrow, they will not be anywhere near Brady level great.
Bill Russell is in my opinion the greatest basketball player who ever lived and no man is more valuable in a world series that Yogi Berra, but when it comes to greatness Tom Brady is right there if not higher.
Chicago, not surprisingly, is coming apart at the seams.
While recently propped up a bit by COVID relief money, which will run out next year, Chicago, because of massive unfunded pension liabilities, is essentially bankrupt. Its streets and roads are in terrible shape. Riding on Chicago’s buses, and even more so its el trains, can be trip into a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. The George Floyd riots of 2020 chased out major retailers on North Michigan Avenue, and fear of crime has solidified the work-at-home movement, keeping office workers, and their wallets, out of Chicago’s central business district, the Loop.
Last year, Chicagoans voted in a defund-the-police advocate, Brandon Johnson, as mayor. In 2020, while a county commissioner–as well as working as an organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union–Johnson said of the defund movement, “I don’t look at it as a slogan,” he said. “It’s an actual real political goal.”
Chicago used to be a hard-knuckle newspaper town. The Front Page, a 1928 play that inspired two movies of the same name, was written by two Chicago newspaper reporters. Chicago has devolved from that to subservience. Led by its worst journalist, PBS Chicago’s Heather Cherone, the local media barely pressed Johnson on his hypocrisy over the defund movement.
Fourteen months into Johnson’s term, with the exception of murder, the crime rate continues to rise in Chicago. To be fair, not everything is Johnson’s fault. Until December, Chicago is plagued with a George Soros-so-called prosecutor, Kim Foxx. And last fall, Illinois’ SAFE-T Act, which abolishes cash bail, went into effect.
It’s a glorious new era for criminals. They are emboldened because they don’t fear getting caught, and if they are arrested, Chicago’s criminals have a decent chance of not getting punished.
As I have here before, I am going to list some recent headlines from the essential CWB Chicago:
Yes, a man was shot near the home of the man who signed SAFE-T Act into law. And let me reiterate, these are recent CWB Chicago stories, the oldest is from three days ago. And notice the anarchic nature, when digested together, of these crimes.
Yes, lawbreakers are emboldened in Chicago. A look at this X video from 16th & 17th District Chicago Police Scanner. Police were dispatched to break up a raucous party. Just a few years ago such a police call would be termed “routine.” Look at how these beasts, many recording the mayhem, react. One law enforcement officer is struck in the head while some women twerk, as if they are in a porn video, in response.
Video of an arrest/10-1 where police were called to break up an unruly party. The supervisor was overwhelmed with party goers and was battered.
— 16th & 17th District Chicago Police Scanner (@CPD1617Scanner) June 16, 2024
On the upside, the jackals are multi-racial. Even as it’s falling apart, Chicago is coming together.
Chicago’s 16th Police District, on the Northwest Side, was considered a safe place to live. No place is safe in Chicago. On a personal note, my daughter and one of my sisters live within the district’s boundaries.
Also from 16th & 17th District Chicago Police Scanner, is this disturbing sign outside the entrance of the 16th Police District station, which because only one cop is working the desk there, advises crime victims to drive to another police station if they want faster service.
The 16th district is so short staffed they are advising people to go to other police stations to save citizens time.#Chicagopic.twitter.com/UiFazyjDAZ
— 16th & 17th District Chicago Police Scanner (@CPD1617Scanner) June 15, 2024
Citywide, the complaints from residents calling 911 and having to wait hours for police to respond are piling up.
In two months, the Democratic National Convention will convene in Chicago. Thousands of protesters rioters are expected to descend upon the city.
And the Chicago Police Department, because of staff shortages, cannot even handle a normal weekend.
Chicago’s Summer of Misery is here.
As of this writing, 3:45pm CDT Sunday June 16, there have been 38 people who have been shot in Chicago. Six of them, including a 13-year-old boy, are dead.
UPDATE June 17:
Last weekend ended up being an extremely violent one. The final shooting total, for now, for last weekend in Chicago was 71 people shot and nine killed. There were two mass shootings early Monday morning an hour apart from each other.
Here is coverage of one of the Monday mass shootings.
New details about Chicago mass shooting.
It was a violent night in Humboldt Park, where new details about a mass shooting are being released. Gas station surveillance video shows the moments when someone opened fire.🧐 pic.twitter.com/ZWrJ0HbuDk
Aboard a Chesapeake Bay steamer, not long after his surrender, the general [Joe Johnston] heard a fellow passenger insisting that the South had been “conquered but not subdued.” Asked in what command he had served, the bellicose young man — one of those stalwarts later classified as “invisible in war and invincible in peace” — replied that, unfortunately, circumstances had made it impossible for him to be in the army. “Well, sir, I was,” Johnston told him. “You may not be subdued, but I am.
I usually don’t engage all that much on twitter anymore as so few people know how to have a spirited argument in a respectful way but once in a while I see something that jumps out at me. Such a thing happened today when someone was going over Putin and his faults.
Now as a person who knows his history and Putin’s KGB background you didn’t have to sell me on his faults even before the war on Ukraine began. It also seemed clear to me with the offensive near Kiev that Putin had more in mind that the Donbas region when he got started and fears of his forces driving beyond the borders were legitimate and even if you thought the threat of such a thing was not legitimate if you are a resident of Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia your fear of such a possibility is certainly legit as the three occupations of those countries by Communist Russia, then Nazi Germany then Communist Russia again are still in living memory.
As we all know the Ukrainians managed to stop the push of Kiev but the Russians had success in the Donbas region likely with the help of the large Russian population there left over from the days that they were part of the both the Soviet & Russian empires, Ukrainian counterattacks which seemed promising faded and the front lines have been fairly static for a bit with the Russians holding Donbas and neither side at the moment getting clear advantages.
The Russians have the advantages of numbers and a much larger population to draw from, the Ukrainians have the advantage of fighting on home turf and a large amount of foreign aid that even subtracting what is being used as graft makes a big difference, but a war of attrition by its very nature favors the side with the larger population plus Russia has the advantage of huge domestic energy supplies and a strong market for such energy if they wish to export to India etc.
Still this is bleeding Putin and thus you have seen some peace offers coming from Russia and the Ukrainians have to this point dismissed them. This is their right. They are the ones who are fighting this war, doing the bleeding and dying and living with all the risks of war which when it affects water and electrical supplies can quickly turn a 21st century lifestyle into a 17th or 18th century lifestyle.
Now all of the rest of us have a right to an opinion on what Ukraine should do, but it seems to me that being 10,000 miles away from the front lines and only risking tax dollars it’s not my place to tell people to go and fight and die. Nor is it the place of others to demand they fight to the last nor degrade those who might decide it’s not worth the cost anymore. The idea that Putin is a bad man and working for his own motives and that Ukraine is better off making a peace deal of some kind is not mutually exclusive.
Now of course the ideal would be Putin going back where he started from but it seems to be that even with weapons and supplies from the west the Ukrainians have neither the manpower nor the skill to force the Russians out of the areas they hold. Furthermore there is always the threat of Russia using tactical nukes if they feel the situation gets out of hand. The genie’s that would let out of bottles would not bode well for anyone.
Still in the end it’s their decision. If they feel it’s worth the hardships of war for months or even years to retake the parts of the country the Russians hold, I respect that. It’s their call not mine. There is a nobility in such a call whatever the result and no matter how it works out nobody should think less of them for doing so. Hey, they might think that Putin will reach the point of exhaustion and withdraw on terms favorable to Ukraine, if they can pull that off they deserve congratulations and admiration.
On the other hand if they eventually decide otherwise, that their people just can’t bear the costs of war anymore I’m certainly not going to critique them as Putin apologists or being on the other side or traitors for reaching the point of war exhaustion that I think a lot of the people online pushing them to keep fighting would have hit long ago. It’s very each to make that call from the safety of a keyboard far away in a comfortable home where your food and electricity supply is not in doubt. If they make a deal, they make a deal and it’s their deal to make.
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