Your Morning Dump... National Lampoon's All Star Family Vacation

Every morning, we compile the links of the day and dump them here… highlighting the big story line. Because there’s nothing quite as satisfying as a good morning dump.

Brad Stevens was preparing to have this weekend off. A family trip was in the works, likely to someplace relatively close to home like New York or Washington.

The getaway is still happening.

The days off have been cancelled.

Stevens has never been to an NBA All-Star Game, and that’s about to change. Boston’s fourth-year coach will lead the Eastern Conference side in New Orleans this weekend, a perk that comes with his team sitting at No. 2 in the East and with Stevens well on his way to having the Celtics improve their record for the third consecutive season.

“My 11-year-old son is really excited,” Stevens said. “My 7-year-old daughter is just as excited but for different reasons. She hasn’t gotten the basketball bug like my 11-year-old. She’s just looking forward to hanging out with our staff’s other kids. We’re excited and to spend that moment together and share that moment together, I think it is the best part about this for our staff and our family.”

Providence Journal

Geez. Just when you think Stevens couldn’t sound any more wholesome.

Me? I’m just hoping for one completely zany ATO play. And also, maybe, to hit the ‘under’ on 375 points. But I’m not optimistic on that last one. Each major sport’s all star game is its own type of bizarre, whether it’s the NHL’s weird setup that comes from their four conference layout, or the NFL’s Sunday morning hangover-brunch-ish end-of-season-but-not-quite Pro Bowl, now stripped of many of its best players, or baseball’s quirky rule that the winner gets home field advantage in the world series, because the NL and AL don’t play each other at all. Except they do now. And they didn’t back when the all star game wasn’t used to determine home field.

Then there’s the NBA All Star game. I had forgotten that the West All Stars dangnear cracked 200 last year. Well, I figure odds are pretty good someone’s going to crack 200 on Sunday. They might as well start playing the game with two balls, and just let each team stay on the other team’s side of the court and chuck baskets for all the defense that gets played in these games…. I can’t see how the score would be *lower* if they did this.

Where was I? Oh yes, Brad Stevens’ family is going to New Orleans to join him on vacation. And good for them. Not exactly sure that New Orleans during Mardi Gras is the *best* place to take an 11 year old and a 7 year old, but hey, Brad and Tracy probably know what they’re doing.

Page 2: Where IT is a legit all-star

No one who stands 5-foot-anything has won an NBA MVP award; Allen Iverson was the shortest to win it, doing so while listed at exactly 6 feet. Short people just don’t usually thrive at the highest levels of basketball. There hasn’t been a WNBA MVP under 6 feet since 5-10 Cynthia Cooper won the first two such in that league in 1997 and 1998.

Yet here Thomas is, back on the game’s in-season showcase stage, and feeling like he belongs now more than ever.

“No doubt,” Thomas said. “Last year I didn’t know what to expect. Everything was coming at me so fast. This year I kind of know what to expect, and hopefully it’s for many more years to come.”

Providence Journal

I don’t think IT is going to win an MVP. Doesn’t mean I don’t think he deserves it. I just don’t think he’s going to win it. That doesn’t seem to be how these awards work.

But there should be something done or said if he finishes this year with the highest scoring average ever tallied by a Celtic. Although, the flip side of that is worth pondering: The Celtics have won more titles than any other team–yet no Celtic has ever led the league in scoring.

Page 3: Looking back at Dee Brown’s no-look dunk

I was thinking, ‘I got to do something special. I got to do a signature dunk that people remember me for 25 years later.’

Michael Jordan had the dunk from the free throw line. Dominique Wilkins had the windmill [dunks] with power. I had to do something that was a signature that the only person that had done it was Dee Brown. I was sitting, getting ready for my dunk. I was thinking about different things going for my last dunk. I decided to close my eyes. No one had done that before. This is my last dunk of the contest. I think I had already won, but I didn’t know that. I had to do something signature just to make sure.

ESPN / The Undefeated

In that fan profile Mike published yesterday, one of the questions was what Celtics memories stick out. I do remember this dunk.

That was in the early 90s, when I thought, well, maybe this young core, Rick Fox, Dee Brown, Brian Shaw, Reggie Lewis, maybe they’ll get it together and really do something. And also, maybe Larry Bird has one more good year left in him. That no-look dunk, for a few of us Celtics fans, was one of the last highlights to come along for quite a while. A few months after that dunk, Bird had his last epic game as a Celtic, against the Pacers. The one where he banged his head on the parquet (I remember seeing that happen.) And after that… Well, it gets pretty dark. So yeah, that no-look dunk, that’s kind of bittersweet to a lot of Celtics fans…

On the other hand, it’s good to know that Dee Brown’s apparently doing all right. He has a girl playing for the Terrapins, and he’s managed to stay around basketball.

Page 4: Where this kid has had enough of John Wall.

https://twitter.com/nbaayy/status/832709790778298368

That’s awesome.

Finally: Where Kyrie Irving has theories!

pic.twitter.com/jOCKtCZKfu

— Ben Rohrbach (@brohrbach) February 18, 2017

Pressed to explain himself, Irving spoke of “particular groups” and a mysterious “they” who want to convince us Earth is round.

“It’s right in front of our faces,” he said. “I’m telling you, it’s right in front of our faces. They lie to us.

The podcast was being recorded on a plane, which Kyrie attempted to use as evidence for his claims.

“What I’ve been taught is that the earth is round,” he continued. “But if you really think about it from a landscape of the way we travel, the way we move and the fact that, can you really think of us rotating around the sun and all planets aligned, rotating in specific dates, being perpendicular with what’s going on with these planets.”

“How are you gonna put ‘planets’ in quotations?” Jefferson interjected.

“Because, everything that they send—or that they want to say they’re sending—doesn’t come back,” Irving explained. “There is no concrete information except for the information that they’re giving us.

Sports Illustrated

In case you missed it, Kyrie Irving revealed on a podcast that he thinks the earth may not be round. He later doubled down on those remarks during his All Star media availability. Now, he may be playing a Joaquin Phoenix long-con on the rest of us, but what if he isn’t? It’s not like he’d be the first famous person who believes something entirely bonkers.

Frankly, this sounds like the reasoning of a guy who has spent too much of his life indoors. I’ve driven from Fargo to Grand Forks, and I can assure you, the only reason why you can’t see one of those towns from the other is because the earth is round.

Kyrie’s comments are not exactly a ringing endorsement of Duke University either.