A Banner Day For Anecdotal Bullshit

I wanted to write something substantial tonight, but between trying to finish off Scoop Jackson's hilarious Randy Moss column that I started yesterday and working on a fantastic Dennis Dodd puff piece about Les Miles, I didn't have anything really solid to give you. Until I checked over at ESPN.com and saw Bill Simmons has a new article up. It's basically 14 or so paragraphs of fellatio for the Celtics, which isn't really a surprise or worth my time to complain about. But two of those 14 paragraphs stuck out from the rest. I'm pretty sure that between them we have some kind of record for consecutive sentences filled with anecdotal bullshit. Take a look and tell me if I'm wrong. I'm not sure I've ever seen anything like this. First, the setup.

Much has been made of Boston's team slogan -- "Ubuntu," an African word meaning unity -- but you need to attend a Celtics game to understand why they're on pace for 139 wins this season.

Either I've missed the coverage (unlikely), or this is false and no one actually gives a fuck what their team slogan is. Has anyone heard anything about this on a national level? If anyone out there is from the Boston area (Google Analytics says there's at least a few of you... come on, speak up), can you let me know if this is even a story on the local level? All I do all day is consume sports media from a wide variety of sources, predominantly the Celtic-loving ESPN, and I've heard just as many stories about the Celtics and their "ubuntu" since the NBA season started as I have about that version of basketball they show on the Spike channel with all the trampolines and ridiculous dunks. Which is too bad, because I really like that trampoline basketball game. I just haven't heard anything about it in a while.

Anyways let's get to Bill's amazing consecutive sentence streak of AB.

In the layup lines, everyone is high-fiving and joshing.

Every single team in the NBA does this. Go to a meaningless November game between the Sonics and Timberwolves. It's happening, I promise.

Before the opening tip, Posey greets each starter with a prolonged man-hug and inspirational words. The nightly sequence might hark back uncomfortably to Rocky and Apollo's beach snuggle, but it works.

Before he throws every pass, Peyton Manning thinks about pudding. Is that why the Colts won the Super Bowl last year?

During games, bench players stand and cheer as if they're being coached by Mark Madsen.

Also a practice of every team in the league.

In garbage time, the starters root just as passionately for the scrubs.

Again.

These guys eat dinner, hang out, work out and play video games together.

No way. NBA teammates doing stuff like that? Why isn't this a bigger story? I bet they even sometimes go to parties together! Maybe the Knicks should try that kind of thing.

They don't care about stats, acclaim, shots or minutes.

Wow. None of them? Not even the bench guys, many of whom are probably hoping to crack a starting five somewhere else in the next couple of years? That's so refreshing. I'm tired of all the selfish athletes out there who only care about stats, like Fish Fillet-Rod. Or Buffet-Rod, if you like that better. I can't decide.

It's a team in every sense.

A fitting conclusion to this sequence. So let's tally it up- that's eight straight sentences which are meant to prove a point, yet fail completely to do so because they contain no real information which is relevant to the attempt in question. Instead they're filled with vague descriptions of things that are completely non-unique to the team/individuals in question, or things that almost definitely have little or nothing to do with how well a team plays. That's the wordiest definition I can think of to describe anecdotal bullshit, and Bill is a master of it. I'm very impressed with his work here. I don't think this streak will be matched for a while.

The sad part is, I can tell you why the Celtics actually are winning a lot of games: they have a lot of good players whose styles of play work well together. Weird, right? If I hid that answer amid like fifty other wrong possibilities like "They all like the same breakfast cereal" and "The whole team went to see a movie together, and they all liked it equally," how long would it have taken you to find it? Hopefully not very long, or you're too stupid to be using the internet.

Now, I'm not saying team chemistry doesn't matter. It most definitely exists and affects the makeup of teams. But ultimately, winning is a function of talent. A lack of chemistry can sometimes slow teams down, but there are countless examples of times bad chemistry didn't affect a championship caliber team at all. And sometimes team can play over their heads and use chemistry or some other intangible to have success in the short term. But in the end, teams that have talented players whose on-court styles mix well is 95% of winning.

Of course, this kind of explanation is boring for people like Bill. He wants to believe that there is some other kind of mystical force driving his favorite teams. It's not good enough for him to just acknowledge that they're really good. He needs more. I can't say I blame him for that, although I do find it a little strange. When my favorite baseball team went on an absurd hot streak and won the NL pennant last fall, I wasn't thinking that maybe they had started a book club together and that was the reason they won all those games. I just figured they had some talented guys and were lucky enough to win a bunch of close games in a row. Is that crazy? Is it boring? Does it really matter? At least I wasn't grasping at magical straws and suggesting that their success happened because they cheer for each other from the dugout and give hugs during the pregame stretching routine.

The point is, the Celtics have three of the top 40 or so players in the NBA on their roster. One is a big man, one is a guard, and the other is a tweener. It just so happens that Garnett draws a lot of double teams, which leaves the other two guys open for kickouts. Allen is a lights-out shooter and Pierce is a great slasher, but Allen can also slash and Pierce can also shoot. Add in a bench full of guys that don't suck, a not overly difficult schedule, a little luck, and boom, there's your 27-3 record. The real factor is that their three best players' styles perfectly compliment one another. Is their relationship off the court part of that complimentary nature? A little bit. Maybe.

If you want to write an article full of speculative crap like Bill has here, you have to approach it from the vantage point of "Wow, I can't believe how good my favorite team is, so I'm going to offer some alternative theories as to why they win all the time! I'm not saying these are true, I'm just kind of talking out of my ass!" At least that way you look like someone who's just really giddy about the team's success and wants to write something about it, instead of someone stupid who thinks no other team in the league does stuff like hang out together or cheer for each other from the bench. And yes, before you leave your snarky comment, I know Simmons mentions that talent is a part of the equation in his article. But really, look at it- where do you think his heart really lies when it comes to the question of what leads to wins?