kevin mchale comedy hour

The Kevin McHale Comedy Hour

I'm sure all of you remember the trade the Celtics made on draft

night, sending Wally Szczerbiak, Delonte West, and Jeff Green to the

Sonics in exchange for Ray Allen. The merits of this deal were widely

debated by both Celtics fans and the media. Was it wise to trade such

a high draft pick for a 31 guard with bad ankles? Would adding Allen

make the Celtics a contender in the East? At first it seemed that

everyone would have to wait until the season to see the results of the

trade, but something happened today that confirmed that the trade was

a bad move by the Celtics. So what happened? The deal was given the

worst kiss of death it could have possibly received; the NBA's worst

GM, Kevin McHale, said he liked the move:

"The Eastern Conference has a lot of bad teams in it," said McHale.

"As a matter of fact, they sent a bad team (Cleveland) to the NBA

Finals. I mean, the top teams in the East wouldn't fare very well in

the West. It's been like that for a while. Miami came in and won, and

then you had Detroit win a couple of years ago, but, you know, in a

seven-game series anything can happen."

As such, McHale thinks it's quite possible that getting Allen from

Seattle could produce results beyond the general expectation.

"I think Ray Allen is going to help," McHale said. "Ray Allen can

flat-out shoot the damn ball. He's a game-changer in the fact that he

can get it rolling on the offensive in a big way.

"He and (Paul) Pierce at the 2 and 3 are potentially as potent as any

twosome in the Eastern Conference. The 2 and 3 are key positions in

our league right now.. . . So they're going to be strong at two

positions you really need to be strong at to score in our league now."

Just so you know, this quote pretty much made my day. It is almost as

if Kevin McHale sat down last night, channeled Steven Colbert, and

decided to say the most audacious series of things that popped into

his mind. So lets go through his marvelous quote, just to make sure

none of the finer points of hilarity are missed;

The East Sucks: Kevin decided to start off with the standard cliche of

"The East is bad, the West rules the NBA". While this was indeed true

last year, as McHale himself points out the East has won some

championships in recent seasons. Also, McHale completely ignores the

fact that a number of Eastern teams other than Boston have made

substantial upgrades this offseason (Orlando, Charlotte, New York) or

are coming off a season riddled with injuries (New Jersey, Miami,

Washington, Milwaukee). Therefore it is by no means a sure thing that

merely adding Ray Allen will vault the Celtics above the 14 teams that

were better than them in the East last year.

Ray Allen Can Score! Yay!: McHale must think that offense is the

greatest need for the Celtics, since his main praise of the trade was

that Ray Allen can shoot. This is indeed true. The Celtics already

have a fair number of scorers however, in Paul Pierce, Al Jefferson,

and Gerald Green. That offense-first attitude is likely way the

Timberwolves gave up nearly 100 PPG last season despite having one of

the greatest defensive players in the league in Kevin Garnett.

The 2 And 3...So Key: The best part of McHale's rant has to be his

assertation that "The 2 and 3 are key positions in our league right

now". Well, yeah...but are they any more key than say center, a

position from which Tim Duncan and Shaq have essentally ruled the NBA

since Jordan left? Are the 2 and 3 more important than the point guard

position? Please. Try this on for size. Pierce and Allen are All-Stars

at SG and SF. So if given the chance, would you take them over a duo

of Chauncey Billups and Dwight Howard? Gilbert Arenas and Shaq? Jason

Kidd and Amare Stoudemire? Chris Paul and Yao? Please. Having All

Stars at the 2 and 3 didn't exactly work out so great for Denver last

year, and there is no certainty it will work out for Boston either.

Perhaps the greatest part about McHale's rant is that it highlights

exactly why he is a terrible GM. He would rather try for talent at the

swing positions (See: Ricky Davis, Rashad McCants) than get a solid

player at point guard or center. He values scoring over defense. He

puts more value on quick fixes (See; Mark Blount, Davis, the Joe Smith

debacle) than actually developing young talent through the draft.

Above all else however, McHale's rant stood out as perhaps the

funniest thing I have read all week. For that I am thankful to the old

guy.

Ballhype: hype it up!

Posted by Hank Worrell at 11:11 PM