Posted by Jessica Camerato

On Tuesday night the Boston Celtics will take on the New York Knicks without Kevin Garnett as he serves a one-game suspension for his conduct on Saturday’s game against the Milwaukee Bucks. Garnett was penalized without pay for striking Andrew Bogut in the face in the fourth quarter of the Celtics 102-97 overtime win. Bogut’s foul on Garnett was also upgraded to a Flagrant Foul Penalty One on Monday.

This isn’t the first time the team has been without KG since acquiring him nearly 16 months ago. Last season Garnett sat out nine games with an abdominal strain that he suffered on a game-saving play against the Minnesota Timberwolves. The Celtics went 7-2 during that stretch.

Pierce and Allen got it done without KG before

This isn’t the first time the team will take on the Knicks without KG either. Last February 13 the Celtics defeated them 111-103 at Madison Square Garden.

So how did the Celtics get it done without Garnett?

(I know, I know, beating the Knicks isn’t earth shattering but the Celtics still have to make adjustments.)

That night Paul Pierce and Ray Allen combined for 45 points, 13 rebounds, and 12 assists. The duo hit 17-of-18 from the free throw line (Allen missed one). Rajon Rondo also shot 64% from the field to score 18 points. Garnett wasn’t the only starter out of the lineup that night. Kendrick Perkins was sidelined as well, so Leon Powe and Brian Scalabrine got the starts in their place. Powe chipped in 18 points while Scal lasted just under three minutes before James Posey took over.

On the defensive end, they limited the Knicks to 29% three-point shooting and held them to 20 assists (the Celtics dished 29). The Cs also blocked six shots to the Knicks zero.

The Celtics turned to their bench to get it done last time and Tuesday night will be no different.

Posted by James Stewart

Sorry Mike Muttnansky, this isn’t the horse racing blog you’ve been begging for during the WEEI dot com Saturday morning show.

For my money Dustin Pedroia is the American League MVP. We all watch the Red Sox for one hundred sixty two games, plus post season. We are admittedly blinded by his laundry. We see the other games on the World Wide Leader, Saturday game of the Week or if we have the baseball package because the Red Sox aren’t on at the time.

Let’s play Michael Berger’s numbers game and just compare on those alone based on the Top 5 hitting candidates on just offensive numbers.

 Player                    G         R       H      2B     HR    RBI     SB     AVG    OBP    Advantage

Dustin Pedroia      157     118     213   54     17      83      20    .326    .376     R/H/2B/SB/Avg

Kevin Youkilis       145      91      168    43     29     115     3      .312    .390    None

Josh Hamilton       156       98      198    35     32     130     9      .304    .371   RBI

Justin Morneau      163      97      187     47     23     129     0     .300    .374    Games Played

Carlos Quentin      130      96      136     26     36     100     7     .288    .398     HR/OBP

Just looking at the 9 catagories above, Pedroia is the leader in 5 of them. If you go by that alone he is clearly the American League MVP.

Posted by Mike Petraglia

The Patriots placed cornerback Terrence Wheatley on season-ending injured reserve on Monday with a bad left wrist, injured in the 18-15 loss to the Colts on Nov. 2. The team also made a move to bolster its linebacking corps by signing Darrell Robertson to the practice squad while re-signing Tyson DeVree to the active roster from the practice squad. The release from the Patriots is below:

Wheatley, 23, was selected by the Patriots in the second round (62nd overall) of the 2008 NFL Draft. The 5-foot-9-inch, 183-pound cornerback played in six games with one start for the Patriots this season, recording two solo tackles and two passes defensed. After seeing reserve action in five of the Patriots’ first seven games this season, Wheatley made his first NFL start against Indianapolis on Nov. 2 and left that game due to a second-quarter wrist injury. He had been listed as a day-of-game inactive for each of New England’s last two games. Wheatley attended the University of Colorado, where his 1,350 kickoff return yards rank second in school history and his 14 interceptions were tied for second in school annals. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Mike Petraglia

Some thoughts from the Celtics training facility while watching Donovan McNabb admit for the 5000th time that he didn’t know overtime ended after 15 minutes, President-elect Barack Obama heroically calling for an abolition of the ridiculous BCS system and Kevin Garnett taping a voice-over for his upcoming NBA Entertainment DVD. (Speaking of the BCS, check out the news on the Boston College Eagles below.)

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Patrick O’Bryant spent some time with the regulars on Monday, replacing Kendrick Perkins in the visible portion of practice. Perkins struggled on Saturday night in Milwaukee, scoring just two points while grabbing four rebounds in 28 foul-plagued minutes. He fouled out of the game while making just 1-of-3 shots on the night.

Doc praises his troops: “It is a brutal stretch,” Rivers said of his team making it through eight games in 12 days with just one loss. “I don’t I think I’ve seen a stretch, ever, in the 24 years I’ve been around this league, eight games in that little time this early in the season. I was very proud of what we did, 7-1, in it. The game the other night, I was the most proud. You could see in the fourth quarter, we had nothing left. Physically, we were tired, we were emotionally tired and we were losing bodies as the game went on and we still found a way to win. That’s a great sign for your team. And I told our guys that after the game. I was so proud of all our (guys) maybe the Milwaukee game is the game I was most proud of.”

Kevin Garnett was even more passionate. “I think everybody is a little gassed,” Garnett said of the team’s 7-1 record over an eight-game stretch in 12 days. “This has been a tough schedule. But somehow, some way, we’re finding ways to win and that’s a good thing. If we’re playing like this when we’re fatigued, imagine what we’ll look like full throttle.”

Kudos for Scal: Rivers said Brian Scalabrine was one reason the team was able to weather the storm on Saturday: “Scal was terrific. We went to him early in the game. Scal, he does what he does and he does his role. Before the game, I talked to our role players about getting back to our roles, doing your role. The reason I went to Scal first was because of all the guys, he’s the one that will absolutely do what we ask him to do out on the floor. And I thought he did that, and did it well.”

Film Study: “We went long in film (study) today,” Rivers said. “We went over an hour in film, which is rare for us. I thought as a group, we chose not to show any film in the eight-game stretch because I was worried about their mental focus. But we used it all up today. We went hard today and it was good for our guys to get back on the floor.”

Now for the aforementioned Boston College football squad, which pulled off an impressive 27-17 win in Tallahassee against Florida State on Saturday night. Safety Marcellus Bowman was recognized by the ACC on Monday. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Paul Flannery

Just finished reading the complaint against Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, that was filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission today. The SEC (not the one with Knowshown Moreno and Tim Tebow) is charging Cuban with insider trading and asking for 750K in connection with a PIPE (econ talk for when a public company asks for money).

The gist of the argument is Cuban sold his shares in something called mamma.com (now known as Copernic) before he was legally allowed to divest after learning information about the PIPE. That would be ‘insider trading.’

Government documents are always fun, so let’s see if there’s anything in the complaint that might make our Monday more interesting. Read the rest of this entry »