Your Morning Dump… Where the boys are back in town

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

The Boston Celtics formally welcome the 2013-14 season with Monday’s Media Day at the team’s practice facility in Waltham. Just about everyone in the organization — players, coaches, front office, and ownership — typically make the rounds, conducting preseason interviews (unbridled optimism even in transition years!) and recording promos for various outlets over a three-hour span. Players also don their home white jerseys for the first time and pose for photos.

ESPN Boston: Media Day – The season begins

The roster hasn’t been this undefined since the day before draft night in 2007, when Danny Ainge traded for Ray Allen.

That deal, which sent Wally Szczerbiak, Delonte West and Jeff Green’s draft rights to the Seattle SuperSonics for Allen and the draft rights to Glen Davis, triggered the greatest Celtics era in 22 years.

But this dreaded rebuild, the one that spurred Doc Rivers to leave for an infinitely more rewarding coaching job with the Los Angeles Clippers, begins with today’s media day, and the start of training camp tomorrow at Salve Regina College in Newport, R.I.

Herald: Anticipation rebuilds for Celtics camp

In just a few hours, we’ll actually get to see this Celtics team in uniform.  And unlike past media days, this is actually an opportunity for many people to actually hear from a lot of these guys for the first time.

Get ready for a mob scene around Rajon Rondo and Gerald Wallace.  As Scott Souza noted in last night’s show, this is Rondo’s first availability to talk since his injury, really, so there will be a lot of attention paid to him.  It’s also our first chance to hear from Wallace, who seems thrilled to be here.

The Celtics Twittersphere will be ablaze with tweets starting at 1pm today.  You can watch the team’s live stream on Celtics.com, too.

In other news, it looks like the 2-3-2 NBA Finals format will be scrapped.

The NBA is expected to make a major change to its traditional Finals schedule, ending the 2-3-2 format and returning to the 2-2-1-1-1 game rotation used in all other playoff rounds, multiple sources told ESPN.com.

The league’s competition committee has voted to recommend the change to the league’s board of directors.

“The idea was raised at the competition committee and was well-received and the committee ultimately unanimously voted to recommend the change in format,” NBA spokesman Tim Frank said Sunday.

The change is expected to be adopted at the next meeting in October and could be implemented for the 2014 Finals, the sources said.

I’m a big fan of this. This isn’t 1985, with the Celtics and Lakers criss-crossing the country on commercial flights.  Teams have their own chartered planes now, the schedule has built-in time that allows for the travel to happen already, and home court advantage can actually be a true advantage again.  It’s about time this change happens.

Also…. Check out this short film:  “Pressure”

Pressure created by David Macjones, and Written by Stephanie Marpe is an illustration of how difficult times have their silver linings. Using basketball and Damen Bell-Holter as a backdrop, David tells us about the amazing ability pressure has to transform. Reverting to the basketball analogy, if you practice hard, workout hard, and study the game hard, under the pressure of a tough game or opponent, all the hard work put in will be displayed on the court. Just as in life, when tragedy strikes, what we have filled ourselves with before the trial is what will pour out of us during the trial. David’s main message for Pressure is that what you put in, you get out. However, he also makes the point that the fires of life are refining. If we embrace the hard times, we can use them to become stronger human beings. Just like gold after the fire or a diamond after the earth, we too have the ability to be refined, to be reborn, to be great.

The rest of the links:

Herald: Wait till next year, maybe longer  |  CSNNE:  Rivers: I didn’t want to rebuild with Celtics