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The best prize fights are between a puncher and a finesse boxer. The most entertaining baseball is a team of sluggers against a dominating pitcher. The greatest tennis matches are between a guy that hits rockets and one who returns everything. The funniest cartoons are an elusive target against a relentless pursuer, beep, beep. And the best sports arguments are about a subject where half the population thinks it was the best possible choice and the other half believes it was disastrously bad. Against this backdrop I give you the MPP, the Celtics’ Most Polarizing Player, Darco Milicic. O.K. there wasn’t an actual vote, he won by acclaim.

Dateline: September 23, 2012––7 days until the start of training camp!

For Danny Ainge this is only his latest gift of the off-season to the bloggers of Boston basketball. He started immediately with the draft of Fab Melo. The Green faithful were about evenly split into three camps—no help now, will help soon, and no help ever. He’ll see spot duty coming out of camp, he may be of some use by March, he’ll never leave Maine. And we’ve got three months to argue about it before any actual information will trickle in—sweeet. Ainge ought to be getting a kickback from Massachusetts’ ink suppliers, oh that doesn’t apply to the internet, never mind.

Not resting on his laurels, Danny next offered the resigning of Jeff Green. Some sequels may be even better than the original, and the first round of Jeff Green debate was pretty heated. O.K., he came in a trade that ushered out a fan favorite in Perk, so maybe not so much a debate as an angry mob tirade. I like Perk–don’t trouble me with facts. I don’t want to hear things like Danny offered him all he could at that time, or that he was an already limited player who was coming back (slowly) from the “unhappy triad” of knee injuries (terrible triad, horrible triangle, or blown knee although I’d call it the Black Cloud Triangle that ends careers), or that he could just leave after the season and the Celtics would be left holding, well, nothing.

And now, you gave Green what?!? I don’t care if that is the same money that Perk got in his extension from OKC, I liked Perk! I don’t care that the team attitude went into the crapper when Perk was killed banished traded, we lost, and Green gave us next to nothing. And then he LET his blood vessels fall apart and gave us nothing the next year; and the other insignificant (starting center) piece left in the lockout just so he could actually play (in Russia). We had NOTHING, and we darn sure didn’t have Perk! And we’ve got three months to bitch before any actual information trickles in—sweeeeet!

But Green is just hitting his physical prime—don’t want to hear about it. But Jeff was playing out of position—had bad numbers there too. But he never got settled into a role here–don’t want to hear about it. But we finally have someone behind Pierce (who is slowing down)—I liked Perk. But Perk has done so little and is so expensive that there is talk about OKC amnestying him—hey, I like Perk, maybe we can get him back. O.K. maybe not so much a debate as a song, you know, various stanzas followed by a repeat of the chorus.

And now, drum roll please, Danny’s divine desperation–Darco. He was an utter disaster as the overall number two pick. You found an active 7-footer entering his prime for our backup center? He was bad then and he’s bad now. He’s mobile, relatively agile, has good timing and hands, and he is here! He isn’t any good when he tries, and he doesn’t try very consistently. He gave up three times as much money to come here rather than play in Europe! He just cashes the checks. Did you miss the three times part? He shoots an abominable percentage, and he won’t stop chucking them up. He’s been on abominable teams where nobody shot well and everybody chucks them up. Whatta ya mean, he was on a Championship team? Yeah, when he should have been a junior in high school. He’s acted like an immature jerk. Yeah, none of that in high schools!

We shudda got somebody good. Funny you should mention that, I wanted somebody good too. I actually looked at the menu a while back.

POWER FORWARDS: Andray Blatche, Kenyon Martin, Anthony Tolliver, Ivan Johnson, Chris Andersen, Lou Amundson, Shelden Williams, Troy Murphy, Dominic McGuire, D.J. White, Yi Jianlian, Brian Cardinal, Brian Scalabrine, Leon Powe, Juwan Howard, Chris Wright, Malcolm Thomas, Hilton Armstrong, Eduardo Najera, Brian Cook, Chris Johnson, Francisco Elson, Lance Thomas
CENTERS: Darko Milicic, Ben Wallace, Greg Oden, Mehmet Okur, Kyrylo Fesenko, Tony Battie, Eddy Curry, Jamaal Magloire, Mickell Gladness, Mikki Moore, Dan Gadzuric, Erick Dampier, Solomon Alabi, Keith Benson

Notice anything about those guys? Some are out of the league. Some are out but don’t know it yet. Some are broken. Some were border line and are fading further into insignificance. A couple were good, but aren’t any more. We are talking cleanest dirty shirt here, and these are some pretty filthy shirts.

I guess we’ll see. Ball is in his court. He’s never seemed to have the hunger to get better. He’s got tools. If he has sunk low enough to find a solid bottom to push off of, then this has the ingredients to serve everybody well. I think I can guarantee you that he won’t just drift through this season on the Celtics’ bench. He’ll hit the hardwood or he’ll hit the road.

Anything else to discuss? Saw a cloud, might rain. See ya.