Born To Run, and Eisenberg Sports vs. Sports Illustrated

Got my Springsteen in Fenway tickets, but the title is actually referring to a quote made by new Celtic Big Cheese (mmm,cheese) Danny Ainge. I had mixed emotions about the hiring of Ainge. While he's certainly been around the league long enough and in enough different capacities to handle the job, Danny was long the symbol of All That Was White with the Celtics, a judgement that wasn't fair to either him or the team, but still existed. More importantly, the Celtics have become the poster boys for All That Is Wrong With NBA Offenses. They played last year without an NBA pointguard, and really, with what their plan was, why would they need one? If your offensive philosophy is to have either Paul Pierce drive to the basket or have someone else heave up a three, then a pointguard becomes obsolete.

So with the hiring of Ainge, the big question became "Would Danny stand for this?" Will he be just another NBA insider who follows the pack, or will he bring us back to our tradition of running, running, and running some more?

I am thrilled to report that there is hope for us all. Holding the 16th and 20th picks on draft day, and realizing that the pointguard the Celtics so desperately need will not drop to them, Ainge trades up to get his man, Marcus Banks of UNLV. He then announces something like "We want to run. We like the way he goes to the basket, plays D, and runs the floor."

We want to run? We want to run! Banks dominated the Mountain West Conference this past season, being named co-Defensive Player of the Year, leading the league in assists and steals, and finishing second in scoring. With the exception of the Chauncey Billups fiasco, I can't remember the Celtics ever drafting a pure pointguard this high, and its been so long overdue

I don't think it is a reach to say that the Celtics now have a core of Antoine Walker, Pierce, Tony Battie, and Banks, with a fair amount of depth. With the Eastern Conference in the shape that it is in, who can say that this team isn't becoming one of the more established contenders in the East? And more important than that, Ainge might actually make them WATCHABLE! That would be something.

Tomorrow, I'm going to go into deeper draft analysis, and talk about NBA style draft philosophies, as compared to what we just saw in the baseball draft.


If you have seen Sports Illustrated this week, the one with Bo on the cover, and you are a regular reader of Eisenberg Sports, you may have been bored with the issue. The reason for that is Eisenberg Sports scooped SI on virtually every story that wasn't part of their "Where are They Now?" series. Below are topics in SI this week that ES has already covered:

Billy Beane
Larry Doby
Albert Pujols
The Lewis - Klitschko fight

I don't have a staff of thousands, can't use photos, don't publish just once a week, and this site is free. So who's doing a better job of bringing you sports news?

You know it. Eisenberg Sports.