Celtics won’t hit bottom of the league

The Boston Globe:

The Celtics beat the once-great Pistons, 118-111, at the Garden Sunday night in front of a hearty sellout crowd.

Yowza. In Tankville parlance, we’d call this a 4-point game — in reverse. The Celtics move further away from the basement of the NBA and the Pistons inch closer to Boston among the bottom feeders.

And here’s a little fun fact to go along with the perverse thinking in the spring of 2014. Sitting on the Detroit bench Sunday night, inactive because of left knee surgery, No. 1 in your program, Mr. Chauncey Billups.

That name ring a bell? Billups represents all that can go wrong with tanking games.

…

“Losing is not fun, but I really haven’t heard anybody in our room talking that way [tanking]. We need to build in a lot of different ways and we’re making progress. The best part of all this is that our locker room hasn’t been affected.”

He said he’s been following the philosophy of his favorite book, “Mindset” by Dr. Carol Dweck. The book touts “the new psychology of success’’ and “how we can learn to fulfill our potential.’’

Far as I can tell, there’s nothing in there about tanking. And the Celtics played good and hard against the Pistons. You can forget about the bottom rung of the conference. The Bucks and Sixers are plummeting like anvils in the ocean. The Celtics are probably going to have to settle for the fifth-worst record. Or sixth. Or seventh.

Read the whole story: The Boston Globe