5 Steps to fix the Celtics

The silver lining to a season of misery for Celtics fans was supposed to be the promise of a high lottery pick that would help them obtain the next franchise building block.  This is why we put up with the sickening feeling of rooting against our own team en route to a 57 loss season.  We hung in there as the losses piled up because of one reason - hope.

Those hopes may have been crushed last night when luck avoided shining on the Celtics once again at the NBA Draft Lottery.  Boston entered with the 5th best odds, with a 10.3% chance at winning the top pick and a 33.4% chance at a top three pick.  No such luck.

Instead, it was the Cleveland Cavaliers that were the lucky ones.  Now that might be an understatement. Despite having only a minuscule 1.7% chance, Cleveland won the lottery for the second straight year and third time in the last four years.  They now have had a total of five picks that were in the top-4 of the draft over the past four years.  If it's possible to master playing the lottery, the Cavs may have found it.

With Cleveland leapfrogging over them, Boston will have to settle for the 6th pick in the draft.  In a draft like this that is supposed to be deep with talent, picking 6th isn't necessarily a terrible thing.  They will still have the chance to select a good player that projects to be a solid starter with upside for more.  It just probably won't be a franchise player to build around, like they were hoping to get if they managed to snag one of those top three picks.  Andrew Wiggins, Jabari Parker and Joel Embiid aren't likely to slide to where they will be picking.

Yet hope is not lost.  There are several options the Celtics could pursue and now that they know where they stand in the draft order, it will make it easier to plan how to attack the off-season.

NBA Playoffs are off to a historic start

It's only been one round, but already these NBA playoffs are off to a historic start.  Hard to believe?  Well, for starters, let's just point to the fact that on Saturday we witnessed three Game 7's on the same day for the first time in league history.  That alone is impressive, but we're just getting started.

No postseason in league history has ever had more than five Game 7's.  This year we've already seen five - and that was just in the first round!  There's a good chance we'll see more along the way.

The first round featured eight games that went to overtime, setting a new record for OT games in a single round.  The record for OT games in an entire postseason is 10, which is another record likely to be broken in the near future.  The epic series between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Memphis Grizzlies featured four straight games that went to overtime, which had never happened before.  If not for a suspension that kept forward Zach Randolph out of Game 7 for throwing a punch in the previous game, perhaps the Grizzlies could have pushed for a 5th OT in the series.  Who knows, maybe they would have won.

Except it was the Thunder who won that game thanks to an outstanding performance from Russell Westbrook.  With 27 points, 10 rebounds, and 16 assists, Westbrook became only the second player in league history to record a triple-double in Game 7 of a playoff game twice in his career.  He also did it back in 2011 (Rajon Rondo did it twice in 2012).  Only four other players have ever recorded one triple-double in a Game 7 and it's worth noting that all of them are Hall of Famers (West, Bird, Worthy, Pippen).  It remains to be seen if Westbrook (or Rondo, for that matter) is bound for the Hall one day, but this is certainly an exclusive list to belong to.

Pujols joins the 500 Club

Some players are prone to struggle when they have a career milestone in their sights.  Whether the pressure starts to get to them or they just end up over thinking things, a prolonged drought as the world anxiously awaits the breakthrough moment that makes history isn't unusual.  Albert Pujols is not one of those players. On the verge of one of baseball's most cherished milestones, the Angels slugger went deep in three of his past five games, including a pair of homers last night, to become the 26th member of the 500 Home Run Club.

Rumors of his demise have been greatly exaggerated.  Concerns of Pujols' decline began to grow from the moment he signed an outrageous 10-year, $240 million deal with the Angels.  In his first two seasons in LA, Pujols battled injuries and saw his production sharply decline.  This year he's been healthy so far (knock on wood) and appears poised to remind us how great a hitter he is.

How great has Pujols been in his career?  He's the third youngest player to reach the 500 HR mark (34 years, 96 days) and only seven players joined the club in less at-bats than the 7,390 that it took Pujols.  He's also on the verge of joining even more exclusive territory.  Of the members of the 500 HR Club, only three of them (Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx) hit over .300/.400/.600 for their careers.  Pujols currently sits at .321/.409/.599, barely missing the cut.  Granted we're only 20 games into this season, but he's slugging .619 so far, so if he keeps it up at anything close to that rate he'll join that group by season's end. Of course some inevitable decline at the tail end of his career could drag him back down under those thresholds. Hey, there's a reason only three guys have ever done it!  But the fact that we're talking about it as a possibility is pretty amazing.

NBA MVP Race

Another NBA season is in the books, but before we look ahead to the playoffs and crown a new champion, let's look back on this regular season to determine the league's Most Valuable Player.

The term "most valuable" is open to interpretation, as there are a lot of factors involved.  Essentially how I look at it is a combination of who had the best statistical seasons combined with how much they helped their team win.  So while guys that stuff the stat sheet for lottery bound teams may be great in your fantasy league, they don't belong on this list.

MVP

1. Kevin Durant
2. LeBron James
3. Blake Griffin
4. Stephen Curry
5. Joakim Noah

This was essentially a two man race between Durant and James, with everyone else relegated to a lower tier of contenders.  While it's hard to argue that LeBron isn't the league's best all around player, Durant surpassed him by having a better season.

A tale of two contracts

The two best players in baseball were recently rewarded with historic new contracts.  One of them appears to be a brilliant decision to lock up a once in a generation talent, while the other is destined to be a disaster. These predictions are not based on where each of these MVP caliber performers are at this stage of their careers, but rather the direction they are trending in.

Miguel Cabrera has won the AL MVP award in each of the past two seasons.  In 2012 he also completed the rare accomplishment of capturing the Triple Crown.  There is no denying that he is the best hitter in baseball, which made him a relative bargain at the $44 million total he was owed over the final two years of his contract.  The eight year extension the Detroit Tigers recently gave him is another story.

When including the final two years of his previous deal, the extension makes his contract worth $292 million over 10 years, which eclipses the 10-year, $275 million deal Alex Rodriguez was given by the Yankees in 2008 for the largest deal in league history.  Cabrera will earn an average of $31 million per season over the course of the deal, beating Clayton Kershaw's $30.7 million for the highest annual average.

Cabrera was worth 7.5 Wins Above Replacement (per Baseball-Reference.com) last season.  A win is worth approximately $6 million on the open market.  Forbes estimates that it is actually $5.9 million per win, but even at a more conservative estimate closer to $5 million, Cabrera is still worth the $31 million per year as long as he continue to put up 7.0+ WAR seasons, as he has done in each of the past three years.