Who would have thought that a mere two nights after sitting high the sports world and celebrating three huge victories in one night, the entire brood of Boston sports teams would fail in an even bigger fashion. Seriously, it was so big that ESPN’s Bill Simmons forked out $79 to watch the Bruins game and even had a live chat going for about four hours.
So what happened? Well, after Big Papi stranded 12 runners in an extra innings loss to Anaheim, everyone in Red Sox nation essentially turned on him and are now demanding he be moved down the lineup. If I supported the Red Sox, I wouldn’t want a guy hitting around .200, with no home runs, batting cleanup. At least Teixeira can still hit the long ball to go with his horrid batting average. And we’ll always know what the last straw was too. Ortiz, with the bases loaded in the 12th, weakly grounded out to end the inning. In the bottom half, the Angels won it.
In Orlando, the Celtics just couldn’t hold a lead, the same thing that had plagued the Magic the past two games in their series. It became quite clear how awful the Celtics front court is right now in a few ways. First, with only three true big men, there’s not enough fouls to go around if you want to hack at Dwight Howard. Second, there’s really no one you can put on Rashard Lewis, a big matchup problem and finally, Boston’s front court is so bad that Rajon Rondo grabbed 16 rebounds last night. Any time your team’s leader in rebounds is the point guard, you’re in trouble. Of course, with the Celtics record at home for game 7s, there shouldn’t be too much worry about Orlando coming to town on Sunday.
Then, last but not least, the Bruins were unceremoniously bounced from the playoff by the former Hartford Whalers. In overtime, nonetheless. And, even worse for Bruins fans, the man who scored the winner, his first ever playoff goal in fact, was Scott Walker, the same ‘Cane that sucker punched Aaron Ward in the face two games ago and didn’t get suspended. As the Sports Guy put it, “Worst. Case. Scenario.†And then he walked off. I guess having a league look over suspending someone who clearly deserved it has finally come back to haunt a Boston team, instead of help them.
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