Articles like their Celtics/Heat
preview piece are why I’m never signing up or giving them money. Let’s start with their explanation for how the Celtics beat the Raptors:
The Celtics are younger and a smidge deeper than the Raptors, both in terms of rotation depth and high-end talent
Err, the Raptors were easily the deeper team this series in terms of rotation depth, and I’d say the Celtics were more than a “smidge” better in terms of top end talent. But at least they balance out their bad basketball takes with generic Boston hate:
Good people reflexively recoil and possibly do some light gagging at the thought of the Boston Celtics playing for a chance at a Finals berth without LeBron James around to spike them back into hell.
Who needs to look into whether a team with Jaylen Brown, who lead protests and speaks with passion and insight about racial and social issues, might be worth rooting for, or Enes Kanter, who has sacrificed so much to stand up to Erdogan. You know, values the website’s politics would generally align with. But who cares, Boston bad, hurr durr.
Lest we say the piece isn’t fair and balanced, at least they hate the Celtics opponent as well. Let’s see what they have to say about Jimmy Butler:
Good people then realize that Boston’s opponent this time is the Miami Heat, led by Jimmy Butler, the Lord King of all cheesebutts, and blast their half-digested breakfast sando all over their morning paper.
Good thing someone is out there, speaking the hard truths, like that Jimmy Butler is a “cheesebutt.” And not just any cheesebutt, but the Lord King of all Cheesebutts!!!! We’re all so blessed they started this website so we can get that level of humor, that level of trenchant insight. Boston versus the king of cheesebutts, what a great angle for a piece!
I guess their avid readers will know that “cheesebutt” is apparently code for drawing fouls:
You, a desperate fool, will point to his pristine 48 percent shooting and miraculous 50 percent clip from beyond the arc; I, a prune, will counter that an incredible 41 percent of his points across nine playoff games have come from the foul line. He has attempted 18 three-pointers against a nauseating 96 free throws. Only the dreaded James Harden has attempted more from the line, and Harden has played two more games and 87 more minutes.
Huh, actual stats. Maybe I misjudged the author, I thought this would be just outrage and hot takes.
The person the Celtics will task with stopping all this is Marcus Smart, who is almost exactly what Jimmy Butler would be if you gave him astigmatism and replaced his megalomania with the world’s deepest inferiority complex.
Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. Smart’s turned himself into an acceptable shooter in the past couple years and was markedly better from 3 point range this year than Butler, but who cares, he’s just Butler with bad eyesight I guess. He also has an inferiority complex or something, despite never complaining about coming off the bench or playing time or anything like that. He gets passionate on the court, so he must have an inferiority complex? They go on to praise his defensive excellence, but first they need to make sure they get some unsupported shots at his psychological makeup, just because.
And their hate isn’t just reserved for the actual teams playing, let’s get some shots at the media too:
It gets worse! Gordon “Education Reform” Hayward is likely to return to the court at some point in the Eastern Conference Finals,
according to head coach Brad Stevens. I for one look ahead to the Celtics surging toward the Finals and Jason Whitlock’s inevitable column shoehorning Hayward and teammate Daniel Theis into the increasingly bizarre, grievance-based social cosmology he has constructed around the warping gravity of his own 23-pound head, and feel a wild urge to plunge a rotary hammer into my cranium until I am extremely dead.
Ah, getting preemptively upset about someone in the media predictably fitting facts into their pre-determined narrative. Understandable to hate that. Who would ever do something like that in their writing anyways, and why would anyone want to read something like that?
The wise thing to do is to take your mind off the outcomes and focus on the process. The basketball in this series should be very good.
Oh, well, I guess the Eastern Conference finals will be worth watching afterall despite the excess of Boston and cheesebutt because the basketball will be “very good.” How will it be very good?
The Heat and Celtics are two of the best-coached teams in the league. Both teams can play fast and free or they can bear down and grind a good shot out of a long possession against a dug-in defense. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown are electrifying players with unlimited potential; Bam Adebayo is the coolest or second-coolest big man in the league; Tyler Herro is doing very bold stuff in big important minutes, as a rookie.
That’s it, one quick note near the end just mentioning the likes of Jayson Tatum and Bam Adebayo, because those guys are certainly less worthy of talking about than taking a deep dive into who, exactly, is cheesebutt. No need to mention the name Kemba Walker or Goran Dragic. Never mind how Miami will or won’t try to replicate how Toronto defended Tatum, or how the Celtics adapted to a zone defense and how the Heat run a ton of zone, or how Miami’s 3-point shooting might see different looks than against the Bucks. Who cares about all that? Boston bad, Butler shoots free throws, cheesebutt, hurr durr.
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I guess this piece is just everything I don’t like about their house style all rolled together. It’s not insightful enough to be an analysis piece. It’s not funny enough to be a humor piece. It’s not deep enough to be an opinion piece. It’s a piece that takes their two warmed over schticks, Boston bad, Jimmy Butler gets free throws, and tries to construct a piece about their matchup with a minimal amount of thought or new information. It’s just wannabe Drew Margery without a fraction of the talent. I just don’t get the appeal unless you already hate these teams anyways and just want to wallow in it a bit more than you already have access to in great volume on the internet. Which is something, I guess?