Your Morning Dump... SNOW DAY!!!

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.

Because of Winter Storm Jonas — no relation to Jerebko — the Boston Celtics could need to fly to Philadelphia on the day of Sunday’s game against the 76ers.

The Celtics normally fly into a city at least one night before a game. Evan Turner said he can’t remember traveling on the day of a game since high school, but the Celtics are at the mercy of the weather.

MassLive

The Celtics initially planned to fly to Philadelphia after the game last night. That plan was a late scratch, and as of the time this post was filed, the Celtics were hoping to fly to Philly late Saturday, or at worst, Sunday morning. The last time the Celtics had such weather-related inconveniences? 2003:

In December 2003, snow forced the C’s to fly to Denver day of game. They won, then blew out Utah the next night. https://t.co/C6jrSMUL2u

— Sean Grande (@SeanGrandePBP) January 23, 2016

We’ll hope for similar results on Sunday.

Page 2: Will consistent minutes lead to consistent play?

Brad Stevens has finally decided on a playing rotation and it was a long-overdue decision. He pushed out rookie R.J. Hunter, who has been sent to NBADL Maine, and James Young, along with Lee and Tyler Zeller.

Eventually Stevens was going to have to make that difficult decision and now that players know when they’re going to play, the Celtics should be a more consistent group in the second half.

…

The rotation issue was one reason for the Celtics’ first-half inconsistency. Injuries played another prominent role. Stevens has rarely had Smart and Avery Bradley at his disposal at the same time. The development of Smart this season was stunted by a bone bruise in his left knee. While his offense is still sputtering, Smart is still making a defensive impact.

Boston Globe

Gary Washburn with an optimistic take on the back half of the Celtics’ schedule. While the Celtics may not be able to create real separation in their push for the playoffs, I don’t think it’s out of the question to expect them to start playing with a bit more consistency than they have been up to this point.

Page 3: Framingham native Blatt is out, ex-Celtic assistant Lue in at Cleveland.

General manager David Griffin is too well-connected in the NBA, too knowledgeable of the truths inside Jackson’s Warriors regime to let that happen. So much of Griffin’s job has been to manage the constant demands of James’ camp and the volatility of owner Dan Gilbert. As much as anything, his job has been to bridge the chaos above and below him.

Yahoo Sports (emphasis added)

David Blatt’s firing was so unexpected that I at first thought he’d done something scandalously unprofessional. Apparently that’s not the case–unless trying to telling LeBron what to do constitutes unprofessional conduct.

Granted, Woj has had some issues with his coverage of LeBron in the past (as detailed in a poorly written article that commits many of the same sins that the author accuses Woj of), still, the picture of a team mutiny leading to the dismissal of a respected coach isn’t even unprecedented for the 2015/16 NBA season, let alone the history of the league.

Time will tell if Blatt was holding back a talented team a la Mark Jackson, or if there are larger issues that were unfairly pinned on Blatt a la Kevin McHale. I’m leaning toward the latter conclusion.

At any rate, the sentence highlighted above is about the best summary of the difficulty of being David Griffin that I’ve seen so far.

Red’s Army contributor Mike Dynon had his own take on what happened in Cleveland:.

When your superstar and your coach actually understand how to win. pic.twitter.com/E8Yz050U2r

— Mike Dynon (@MikeDynon) January 22, 2016

Finally: Danny Ainge is the Jerad King of Chipotle

We all know players love Chipotle. It is the Cheesecake Factory of Tex-Mex restaurants within the NBA community. But you’d never guess the identity of the NBA’s most committed Chipotle addict: Celtics general manager Danny Ainge.

“There have been weeks,” Zarren said, “where we have eaten lunch there seven straight days.”

Ainge will sometimes follow up a Chipotle lunch five or six hours later with dinner at the same place. “I have to admit, there are days I eat there twice,” Ainge said. “I just like Chipotle.”

ESPN

Do yourself a favor. Read that article. What else are you going to be doing today? Building a snow fort?