First, the Celtics played great defense to take the last two from Detroit. The clincher was especially notable, as the Celtics won with Walker and Pierce on the bench for most of the fourth quarter with foul trouble. Kenny Anderson, Tony Battie and Rodney Rogers each scored in double figures.

But the difference is obviously the defense. There’s no way the Celtics could have won a game like that one last year. With their porous defense, they would have dug a huge hole so deep that Walker and Pierce’s time on the bench would have been much more costly than it was on Monday.

So now the Nets. It will be a tough series, but it’s hard to think the Celtics will be able to pull it out. Anderson won’t have free reign against Kidd the way he did against poor Chucky Atkins. And Kidd really has the Nets playing great right now. It will be a fun series, but Pierce and Walker will have to play fantastically and the Celtic defense will have to shine for them to have a chance.

It’s been much noted that the Celtics played two old-time rivals in the Sixers and the Pistons in their first two series. Now they are back in the conference finals for the first time since 1988 and it’s against a team that has never, ever been to a conference finals. Even the Kings have been to one, back in 1981.

The Lakers-Kings series should be excellent, and in all honesty is the true NBA Finals, though it won’t get that billing. The Lakers will win, of course, unless Shaq’s injuries make it impossible for him to play. He’s obviously a lot less than 100 percent now, and Kobe is carrying the burden. But as long as he has a presence and can contribute his 20 points, the Lakers should win in five. It would be interesting to see it go seven games, though, with those Sacramento cowbells and all.

The Lakers haven’t won a game seven since their victory over Portland in the 2000 playoffs. That was a long time ago, and Shaq was healthy then. We’ll see.

Oh, but back to Beantown. The Red Sox were stung by Manny Ramirez’ injury, but the good news is that his finger won’t require surgery. The Red Sox were showing what kind of firepower they could put together with a healthy lineup this year. But it seems like they’re <a href=”rolling right along without Ramirez.

Shea Hillenbrand and Brian Daubach, among others, are making up the difference. And actually having starting pitching besides Pedro Martinez is nice. This story discusses the contributions of Derek Lowe and John Burkett thus far. Lowe, in particular, has been Pedro-like. He is now 6-1 with a league-leading 2.16 ERA. Amazing.

Is it only a matter of time before the Red Sox are pulled back to Earth? It’s a question the Cubs wish they could be asking of themselves. Instead, they’re asking why every attempt to dig themselves out of the hole they’re in only seems to deepen the hole.

Another pitiful outing by the Cubs last night. They were held to only four hits and lost their seventh game in a row, including two consecutive sweeps by Milwaukee and St. Louis. I thought after they won two consecutive series against the Dodgers and Cardinals that the Cubs would be able to really get into a groove against Milwaukee.

Instead, the Cubs got swept and the fourth game was rained out. I think that really broke their backs. Baylor’s outburst on Tuesday and Kerry Wood’s tongue-lashing of his team on Monday night apparently weren’t enough to shake the Cubs out of their doldrums.

This seven-game losing streak is especially bad because, on paper, this team has the talent to go on seven-game win streaks. McGriff and Alou continue to fail in the clutch, and the team as a whole is making every opposing pitcher look like an All-Star, as Baylor put it.

And where’s Mark Prior? Still in the minors, where he’s impressing many but not doing much to help the big club. Add to all of this Alex Gonzalez trip to the disabled list, and you’re looking at a club without much reason to look forward to playing every day.

They know they’re playing like crap, their manager knows they’re playing like crap, and yet they continue to play that way. I really don’t think that this awful start is Baylor’s fault, but I wouldn’t mind his getting fired as a result. He certainly deserves it for his astoundingly idiotic handling of pitchers, young players and dumbfounding in-game moves. You know, maybe the offense might respond better if Baylor started the same lineup more than two games in a row.

Particularly frustrating was his decision to start Delino DeShields last night, the day after Bobby Hill went 2-for-4 with a double. Aargh!

I don’t now see reason for optimism. It’s true that individual players have shone at moments, but the team as a whole has not really shown that it can put together the kind of string of victories necessary to contend over the course of a long season. But Cubs’ management feels differently. As Teddy Greenstein reported in the Tribune yesterday:

Cubs officials say Baylor is in no immediate danger of being fired. They cannot promise he’ll remain on the job for the rest of the season, but that remains the most likely scenario.

“We remain supportive,” club President Andy MacPhail said Wednesday. “We know better days are coming.”

How do they know that? Where is the reason to be so confident? OK. Farnsworth, Gordon, Gonzalez and Hundley are injured. The Cubs may be better when they come back, though the bullpen has not had much chance to blow any games since the Cubs rarely have leads that last so long. Gonzalez was doing OK before getting injured, but he wasn’t exactly a sparkplug in the lineup. As for Hundley, he didn’t produce all last year and there’s no reason to believe that he’ll begin to do so now.

So what do you have left? Alou and McGriff. They are the keys. But they are both old. Alou is 37 and McGriff is 39. There is a good possibility that time has finally caught up with them, especially so for McGriff. For Alou, it may just be those nagging injuries that have gotten in the way of a better start. But it doesn’t really matter — either you produce or you don’t. And he hasn’t.

Here’s another story by Greenstein on the Cubs’ poor offense, and it’s a pretty sad state all around. The Cubs are batting .220 with runners in scoring position, and .214 in day games.

Baylor will be kept for the time being, if for no other reason than that there’s no reason to think that a change in management will have an immediate positive impact. MacPhail & Co. think the team will improve once Alou and McGriff start hitting (if they do) and the rest come back. So they’re willing to be patient.

Prior will probably be brought up to pitch one half of the May 22 doubleheader against the Pirates, and will probably be moved into the starting rotation to replace Cruz, who has lost all ability to go past the fourth inning.

The Cubs will win a game sooner or later, one hopes, but there’s not much cause to pay them serious mind unless they run off a string of wins and start hitting. A five- or six-game winning streak and nine or 10 out of 12 is the kind of run they need to get back into things at this point. They are not just fighting against the other teams in the Central Division. They are battling to stop their faith in themselves from fading into nothingness.

It annoys me when sports fans complain that they don’t like a certain “style” of play. For example, people complain that too many basketball teams focus on defense because that’s what wins in the playoffs. So we wind up seeing games like the Celtics-Pistons game last night.

Or they complain that too many teams have no inside game — they live and die by the three. Needless to say, these folks are misguided. As Bob Ryan pointed out in a recent column, the NBA has changed dramatically in the last 20 years. “The Celtics launch, therefore they are,” Ryan writes. More to the point, they have two gifted three-point shooters in Pierce and Walker — why should they try to build some kind of inside game when that is not their strength?

Teams have to work with their personnel. If the Celtics had drafted Tim Duncan the way Rick Pitino thought they would, I’m sure they’d have a much stronger inside game. But things didn’t work out that way. Likewise, defense is what wins in the playoffs. If that’s what it takes to win, that’s the way teams will play. Their job is not to make the game look pretty; their job is to win. Coaches are only playing by the rules of the game and working with what they have been given by management.

The sooner fans realize that and get over their ideal of what their team “should” play like, the sooner they’ll enjoy the game actually being played on the court.

And, as Ryan points out in another column, things are actually looking pretty good for the NBA. The style of play is becoming more up-tempo and the number of young and exciting stars is astounding. But it’s a natural development, not the result of coaches dictating a certain style.

Well, either that or a firing. The oldest cards in the sports columnist’s deck. The Tribune’s Phil Rogers says the Cubs should deal for a catcher.

Yes, the Cubs’ current output from the catcher’s position is pathetic, but the alternatives aren’t much better. In a way, it’s a good thing that Hundley‘s on the DL with his sore thumb. The only advantage he theoretically offers is a left-handed bat with power, but it’s all theoretical. He doesn’t call a particular good game and his defensive skills are subpar.

So why not just write off the position as an offensive contributor? Just let Machado catch most of the games and throw in Girardi once or twice a week. Bill Mueller is back and looks like he will contribute. Bobby Hill is up and will add some offensive power. Yes, it stinks that McGriff and Alou haven’t done much so far, but those are positions we can’t do much about. So let’s just consign the catcher’s spot as a defensive specialty. A deal is not advisable. Here is what Rogers suggests:

There’s no GM sneaky enough to find a team to take Hundley. So unless Tribune Co. agrees to write off Hundley as if he were an oldies radio station in a college town—not a bad option—MacPhail will have to use Girardi in a trade to upgrade at catcher.

One immediate possibility is to send a starting pitcher, Matt Clement or Jason Bere, to Seattle for talented backup Ben Davis or even regular Dan Wilson. Kansas City’s Brent Mayne and the White Sox’s Sandy Alomar Jr. could also be made available.

It’s a long shot, but Texas might cut the cord with Pudge Rodriguez now that it’s playing better behind backup Bill Haselman. If that is pie in the sky, sorry, but grim reality is the mother of implausible dreams.

Clement has way too much upside to trade for a slight upgrade in the catcher’s slot. As for Bere, I’d be behind that deal — especially with Prior itching to come up — but who realistically will give up much for a guy who’s making last year look like a fluke. He’s 1-5 with a 6.62 ERA and really hasn’t had a good start all year. Why not throw in Fassero into the deal as well? I’m sure teams will go for that.

As for the Pudge trade — yeah, keep dreaming. A Hall of Fame catcher for Jason Bere and Joe Girardi? This isn’t one of those video baseball games where you can trade Ken Griffey Jr. for Damon Buford. Pfft. Sports columnists.

If you ever happen upon a Buffalo Wild Wings location, please do yourself a favor: do not order the blazin’ sauce on your buffalo wings. The description for the sauce is “Taste the pain.” There are five little fires next to it. But I was a hot shot. I ignored the warnings. By the last two wings of my dozen order, I was wiping them down with a napkin to get the sauce off. The entire area around my mouth was swollen and red.

It makes for a funny story, but it was truly painful.

If you know the tune that goes along with those words, you’ve seen “Chuck & Buck.” And the memory of the tune may bring a smile to your face or it may make you squirm — if you’re like me, it makes you do both.

“Chuck & Buck” is a remarkable movie. Not only because it is a stalker movie without any violence. Not only because it wrings laugh out of painfully awkward situations. But because, looking at who worked together to make the movie, you’d wonder how it ever got made. The star and screenwriter, Mike White, got his first big break in the movies by writing the screenplay for “Dead Man on Campus.” Exactly.

OK, so he’s also written for “Dawson’s Creek” — a good show in its early seasons — and “Freaks and Geeks,” which unfortunately did not stick around long enough to get bad. How about the director? Miguel Arteta directed “Star Maps.” Precisely.

But here’s what’s especially surprising: it co-stars Chris Weitz as Chuck — or Charlie. Weitz was the producer of “American Pie,” wrote the screenplay to “Nutty Professor II: The Klumps,” and directed and wrote the new Hugh Grant clunker, “About a Boy.”

It just goes to show that you never know what gem will be produced by people who are otherwise Hollywood hacks. You may not like “Chuck & Buck,” but it is definitely a moviegoing experience you won’t soon forget.

I bet you didn’t know that. Sure, they may have won four World Series in the last six years, but they suck on a moral level, you see. Express your hatred by buying Yankees suck gear, here. A man wearing a t-shirt from this site was tossed out of Seattle’s Safeco Field to satisfy their family-friendly policy.

In my mind, nothing could be more family-friendly than expressing the truth about the evil, evil Yankees (26 championships, 38 pennants, 52 human sacrifices).

Though he went 0-for-4 with a walk in his first major-league game today, Baylor is magnanimous enough to let Bobby Hill play tomorrow. He told the AP’s Nancy Armour:

It’s not one of those trial things. He still probably has to learn how to handle things at this level. He’s really come a long ways in the last two to three weeks as far as his batting average.

Great. It’s not “one of those trial things.” I’m surprised, with that “proven veteran” Delino DeShields on the bench, after all.

What an ugly, ugly game. The Celtics’ 66-64 win over the Pistons broke by 12 points the previous record for lowest combined points in a playoff game since the introduction of the 24-second shot clock.

And what was Kenny Anderson thinking when he fouled Chuck Atkins behind the three-point arc with 2.8 seconds left in the game? The Celtics were up by four, so even if he had made the shot, the Celtics still would have been ahead. It was an inexplicably dumb play which almost cost the Celtics the game.

Notice on the last play that Pierce reached in and slammed the ball to the ground on the rebound, making it bounce high into the air just long enough that Stackhouse’s three-pointer was still in his hands when the buzzer went off. Smart play, Pierce. It was a terrible game, but the Celtics won. That’s what matters.

Hopefully, Pierce, Walker and company will find their shooting touch on Sunday and go up 3-1. A note: The Celtics still have not lost a playoff game in the Fleet Center. Everyone talked about the ghosts of the Boston Garden. I wonder what kind of spirits inhabit the Fleet Center. The phantasms of corporate naming rights?

The Cubs finally got some sense and brought up Bobby Hill. Not only that, he’ll be starting at second base in place of the awful, irredeemably bad Delino DeShields. Bye bye, grease!

Now the only question is how long it will take before Mark Prior is brought up. It’s a tricky question, though. Juan Cruz has pitched well and doesn’t really deserve to lose his spot in the rotation. On the other hand, the guy who really deserves to be pulled from the rotation, Jason Bere, has started his entire career. So what to do with him if Prior takes his place?

The Cubs have played well recently, and winning two out of three from the Cardinals was big. But, again, they need to take advantage against weak teams like the Brewers, which they didn’t do by losing yesterday. Hopefully, Hill will make an immediate impact and the Cubs will take the next three against the Brew Crew.

On the Cubs radio broadcast, when they’re coming back from a commercial they sometimes have a short musical intro but it fades before any singing begins. I knew it sounded familiar. It was some mid-’90s alternative hit, I knew. Then one day it came to me. It’s Matthew Sweet‘s “Sick of Myself.”

The song starts off with a great guitar riff and is a wonderful power pop gem. I can understand why they’d use the intro. But the lyrics are so fitting for introducing a Cubs broadcast. Here’s a portion:

You don’t know how you move me
Deconstruct me
And consume me
I’m all used up
I’m out of luck
I am starstruck
By something in your eyes
That is keeping my hope alive
But I’m sick of myself when I look at you
Something is beautiful and true
In a world that’s ugly and a lie
It’s hard to even want to try
And I’m beginning to think
Baby you don’t know

If that doesn’t describe Cub fandom, I don’t know what does. Here are the complete lyrics.

Or something. He sure is angry. Settle down, buddy. It’s just insurance. What the duck is wrong with you? By the way, you can get your Aflac duck paraphernalia here. That includes a six-inch plush doll that talks! Perhaps I watch too much television. Heresy, I know.

His old tricks are (1) vastly improving the pitching staffs he coaches and (2) providing sportswriters with colorful material. His success with the Texas Rangers is profiled here by Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News. Grant writes:

In his first job as a major league pitching coach, with the Chicago Cubs, Acosta oversaw the single-biggest staff ERA improvement in the NL from 2000 to 2001. The Cubs’ ERA fell from 5.25, which ranked 14th of 16 teams in the league, to 4.03, which ranked fourth.

He seems to be doing the same thing with the Rangers. The team began the final day of April with a staff ERA of 4.69, more than two runs better than their 6.72 ERA for the first month of 2001.

In particular, the starters, who usually spend more time with a pitching coach than do relievers, have a seen a drastic drop. They took a 4.28 ERA into Tuesday’s game, the fourth-best rotation ERA in the league.

Indeed, the reason for the Rangers’ poor start hasn’t been pitching, but some untimely injuries. The line on Texas at the beginning of the year was they’d score a lot of runs, but give up just as many. Acosta is working the same magic he did with the Cubs to give them a chance to win these ballgames.

Of course, Don Baylor was too stupid to realize that, pressuring Larry MacPhail to fire Acosta because he badmouthed exercise guru Mack Newton. While new pitching coach Larry Rothchild has a lot of experience, I wonder how much better the Cubs’ relievers would be doing with Acosta barking at them every day.