Your Morning Dump... Where another awards show has come and passed

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.

Neither Stevens, in Indiana for a memorial service for his grandmother, or Tatum were on hand for the ceremony. Aron Baynes was there to accept the awards in the event either had won.

When speaking recently to the Herald, Stevens was admittedly uncomfortable being named a finalist.

“It’s always an honor to be recognized, but I take it with enough of a grain of salt, because some of that stuff is irrelevant in terms of trying to achieve the next task,” he said.

“Just the nature of the game and how competitive it is,” Stevens added. “Some of the people I steal the most from have 20-plus wins or 30-plus wins. That doesn’t mean they’re not doing an incredibly elite job. I just think when you go through this list of 30 coaches, to pick three is silly.

Boston Herald

Guys, the NBA has exactly one post-season award worth winning–and it’s not given to a coach, an executive, or one guy on the team.

So yeah, last night I saw a fair bit of angst and anger from Celtics fans on Twitter, because–at least in our opinion–Stevens was a far better coach than Casey, Ainge did a whole lot more than Daryl Morey, and Ben-not-really-a-rookie-and-doesn’t-have-a-jump-shot-Simmons was not as well-rounded of a player as Jayson Tatum.

But seriously, who cares?

Who cares that Al Horford was the only player on the league’s best defense to crack the top five in DPOY voting?

Bill Russell won eleven rings. Including college, that dude won fourteen championships in sixteen years of competitive ball. We are never, ever going to see anything like that again. But people today keep talking about whether LeBron or Jordan is the “GOAT”–as though somehow it was a fluke that Russell was the one constant in all those wins from USF to the Olympics (granted, the rest of the world was pretty much the Washington Generals to the US’s Harlem Globetrotters when it came to the Olympics then) to the Celtics.

Here’s a thought.

Here’s a crazy, wacky, way-out-there thought:

Maybe, because it’s a team game, the most important thing to look at when the end of the season rolls around is where the team ended up?

And think about it. People are all worked up about who won coach of the year today. But it won’t last. Most basketball fans can tell you who won the championship every year they followed the game–but they can’t tell you who won MVP every year, and time has shown that to be the only award the NBA hands out after the season that anyone pays attention to for more than ten or fifteen minutes.

Page 2: Where the Celtics sign a department store

[Brad] Wanamaker spent this past season playing for Fenerbahce Istanbul, which he helped to the Euroleague Final Four, eventually falling in the title game to Real Madrid. Negotiations to bring Wanamaker, who played at University of Pittsburgh from 2007 to 2011, have been going on for more than a week, international basketball reporter David Pick reported.

Wanamaker has never before played in the NBA, though he was a member of the Austin Toros, the San Antonio Spurs’ at-the-time D-League affiliate, during the 2011-12 season. He was teammates with Celtics forward Daniel Theis while playing in Germany during the 2014-15 season.

MassLive

In non-awards-show related news, the Celtics are apparently planning to move on from a likely unaffordable Shane Larkin, signing a guy who’s been knocking around the AAA leagues for a while (department store reference explained here).

I would be very surprised if the Celtics are planning to keep Shane Larkin after this signing. Like Evan Turner, but on a smaller scale, time spent in the Stevens “system” has boosted Larkin’s value to a point where the Celtics probably can’t afford to keep him.

Finally: Russ is still Russ

Sorry everyone, I forgot it was live TV & I can’t help myself whenever I see Charles it just is pure instinct. @NBAonTNT @NBA #birdman #NBAAwards pic.twitter.com/0zQLvWhuKi

— TheBillRussell (@RealBillRussell) June 26, 2018