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.