Oh Well at Least the Celtics are on Fire

Links featuring…the Yankees spending spree, say it ain’t so Tex and you just got Rondo’d.

The Yankees will pay a 26.9 million dollar Luxury tax this season. The only other team that will have to pay luxury tax this season is Detroit. Both failed to make the playoffs last season…so when will teams learn that signing as many big name free agents to huge contracts isn’t the best route to the playoffs…see Rockies, Colorado and Rays, Tampa Bay. To be fair the Sox paid 13.9 million for being over the cap a couple years ago.
(ESPN)

And that’s going to go up because unless there is some kind of Rafael Furcal thing going on here the Yankees just landed Mark Teixeira for 8 years 180 million…nice…at least that will put an end to all the Manny to the Yankees rumors. Seriously though the Yankees have committed over 400 million to three players…that is ridiculous. I think I know where to get some of that money that the automakers need. Apparently the Yankees missed the whole people that bought houses they couldn’t afford and are now defaulting and losing said houses memo. I will excited to see one of those comparison charts that espn or si run showing how many good teams you could field with the Yankees payroll.

I have to admit when I heard that the Yankees signed him I was pretty deflated I think he would have been a great signing for the Sox. He really would have helped to fill the void that is left by Manny. No matter how much we might say they don’t miss him we do and weei’s phones will be ringing off the hook in May if the team is struggling to score runs. With that said the Sox are still in good shape. They’ll get Mike Lowell back healthy, Youk won’t have to move back to third, they have the reigning MVP, top flight pitching and they don’t have 400 million invested in three guys. If I could have one Christmas wish it would be for those three signings to turn out like Carl Pavano and AJ Burnett. I really feel like we’ve got a good shot at two out of three.
(Extra Bases)

ps – I read a great comment on Deadspin today in regards to Teixeira signing with NY. It read something along the lines of ‘No way I am learning how to spell his name now’. I thought that was great.

Luckily my depression over the Teixeira signing was quickly swept away thanks to the Celtics.

The Celtics are…well you get the point. The Green captured their 19th straight win tonight cruising to a 110-91 victory over the 76ers. This is one of those times where the scheduling really works out well for the league and TV because now the C’s put their streak on the line against the Lakers in a Christmas day Finals rematch. I wonder how many storylines they’ve gone through with Kobe for Christmas day, there were at least two Shaq-Kobe games now this year we have the Celtics-Lakers rivalry renewed – Kobe is like the Detroit Lions on Thanksgiving, you know except he’s actually good.

That should be a monster game and speaking of monster games you know who’s playing monster games right now…yup…my guy Rajon Rondo. Rondo scored a team high 18 (tied with KG) against the 76ers and this season he’s averaging 11.3 points, 5 boards and 7.5 assists. I think it goes without saying that the Rondo trade was one of the best moves Danny Ainge has made, but maybe more important and more overlooked is the fact that while trying to bring KG and Ray Allen to Boston he refused to deal Rondo. I love this guy, it’s almost unhealthy…almost.
(Hoops World)

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Bill Simmons and thanks (I would imagine) to his recent tiff with the WWL he’s started a Sports Guy Unplugged blog. It takes a little digging but you can find some of his old BSG posts that he put up a few months ago. I do hope he’ll write some non-espn stuff for this site. I’ve always liked most of the things he writes for Page 2 but sometimes its like Sports Guy-lite. I realize that he draws ire from a lot of people because he talks about Boston so much but you have to appreciate that he’s tried to stay true to himself as a sports fan. For some reason the whole Simmons-ESPN thing reminds me of the Cartoon Wars episode of South Park. Eventually we’ll find out that Simmons is really a group of Manatees that move balls with pop culture references, athletes, teams and point spreads across a big tank and drop them in an idea bin thus creating his column. It will all end with someone telling the head of ESPN that he has to cancel Simmons column because it’s offensive while another person tells him either it’s all ok or nothing is ok.
(Sports Guy Unplugged)