Plaschke Hatin'

The L.A. Times' Bill Plaschke, who seems to want to be the Michael Medved of sports writers (regular viewers of Around the Horn know what I'm talkin' about), expressed his disgust the other day at the way the Boston Celtics rested their players at the end of the season. Bill's argument was that "it might be the only game that a person would be able to attend all year and that person's getting cheated because Doc Rivers isn't even trying.".

What garbage.

First off, if you buy a ticket to ANY sports event for the last game of the season, you're basically making a bet. Either that game is going to be of huge significance with playoff hopes riding on the line or else completely meaningless for one or both of the teams involved. More often than not it's going to be the latter and you'll be treated to bench players and guys who didn't have time to have their names stiched on their jerseys. Second, if Doc Rivers plays 'Toine Walker and Paul Pierce 45 minutes each for no other reason than entertaining one guy who saved up empty beer cans until he could afford a ticket to the Fleetcenter, then he should be fired like yesterday. This ain't college football (which, last time I checked, is about the only sport L.A. has left anyway) where you gotta win every week. The Celtics spot was assured and risking injury to key players just to inject a little more drama into the Cavaliers/Nets race for 8th is retarded.