Let the Arguments Begin (And the C's Begin to Win)

ESPN ranks the 50 active NFL players they believe have a chance to go to the Hall of Fame. Number one is a no brainer: Brett Favre. there will be little argument about the guys in the top ten or twenty, but I imagine that the order might raise some eyebrows. At number two, just one point in ESPN's system from Favre, is Tom Brady. Manning is third.

A few words on the Celtics blockbuster trade for Kevin Garnett, which Sportsguy loves. I'll admit it -- when the rumors were flowing in the days leading up to the final announcement, I was not thrilled. I love Garnett, I really do. But Al Jefferson is going to be a star in this league for a decade. And to give him up along with several other guys (some, admittedly, dross) and draft picks seemed like an awful lot for a brief window given that Pierce, Allen, and Garnett are all at the tail end of their primes.

But after a lot of thought, and reading thousands and thousands of words of analysis, and seeing the press conference and realizing that you want your teams to win championships when they have a shot, I am fully on the bandwagon. This is one of those "Buy Stuff Events": Even though I have tons of Boston sports stuff -- t-shirts and googaws and hats and key rings and Red Sox win the World Series radio call ring tones (and Red Sox win the World Series radio call bottle openers) -- this is the sort of trade that has me looking at the C's team store not to decide whether to buy something, but to decide what and how much to buy. Certain transactions -- huge trades, free agent signings, and the like -- inspire the fan base to spend money. This is undoubtedly one of those events.

With all due respect to the rest of the Eastern Conference, if the C's have even marginal development of their young guys, this will be the team to beat for the next few years. Cleveland has faced a remarkable amount of dismissal given what they accomplished this past season and in the postseason. When people talk about the top teams in the east, even after the Cavs' run to the Finals, they tend to mention Detroit and Miami and Chicago, and then, in passing, almost perfunctorily, Cleveland. I find that bizarre. Nonetheless, if this year's Cleveland team is the best that the Celtics confront in the East in the next three years, I'll feel really, really good about the Green.

Any time you have a chance to win, you have to go for it, especially if, as has been the case with the Celtics, your cupboard has been pretty bare for most of the last two decades. AJ will be a superstar in this league for a long time. But Garnett is a superstar now. And he, Allen, and Paul Pierce now have a chance to redefine the Eastern Conference. All three of them asked for a chance like this. Now they have it.