Playoffs excelling this spring

The NBA playoffs this year have been perfect. Usually, when discussing the most exhilarating sporting events to watch each year, for me it's usually the NCAA Men's basketball tournament. I love everything that comes with March Madness, and it usually separates itself from every other sporting event/tournament out there.

This year, the NBA playoffs have been maddeningly interesting. Each series so far has an interesting subplot and a collection of great match ups. The No. 1 vs. No. 8 tilt is usually devoid of anything resembling intrigue. The Warriors upset of the Mavericks a few years ago notwithstanding, that first round match up usually sucks.

The Grizzlies have battled valiantly against the dynastic Spurs, pushing them to six games and making a once-proud franchise seem extremely vulnerable. In the East, the Bulls dispatched of the Pacers in five games, but if you watched any of those games, you would know it was anything but easy for Derrick Rose and Co. to push aside a spunky Pacers team that won 37 games in the regular season and featured one player (Danny Granger) who can kinda sorta be considered a star player.

The problem is Rondo

Lamenting the loss of Kendrick Perkins can only go so far.

Yes, the Celtics were a far more physical, in your face, grind-it-out team when they had their 6 foot 10, 275-pound monolith patrolling the paint with the intensity of a polar bear.

There probably wasn’t a single team in the league who looked forward to playing the Celtics on a given night. Perkins and Kevin Garnett became arguably the best interior defensive tag-team in the entire league for the past few seasons, and made it impossible for opposing teams’ big men to get anything going in the paint.

His absence, however, is not the reason for the team’s current spiral toward mediocrity. It’s the play of Rajon Rondo. Since the Feb 24 trade that sent Perkins and Nate Robinson packing, the Celtics have been uneven and without direction. There is nowhere else to point but at No. 9.

Worry about the Red Sox? A little early for that.

Should we be worried?

The Red Sox are off to a 0-4 start and everyone and their mother is ready to hurl stones at Theo Epstein and the Sox brass. After all, they did just acquire the two top free agents and have the third highest payroll in baseball—behind only the Yankees and Phillies. (And that doesn’t count the contract extension the team is inevitably going to hand to Adrian Gonzalez to in the not-so-distant future.)

It's a little too early for any collective dissension.

It’s like Avon Barksdale telling Stinger Bell he isn’t worried about the threat of Omar sneaking up and stealing his stash, and maybe a little bit of his reputation in the process. Deep down, you know he is, and we all know the Red Sox are going to start feasting on mediocre ball clubs when the weather warms and the heart of the season is upon us.