Celtics win Eastern Conference Title

It's amazing to see them wrap it up this early, months before the season even starts, but barring injury, I don't know how they're going to lose, given a core of Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, and oh yeah, former league MVP Kevin Garnett. Yeah, that guy. After twelve long years including the entirety of his adult life, Kevin Garnett is no longer a Timberwolf. An earlier trade to the Celtics fell through, to the relief of a lot of Wolves fans who didn't think it offered fair value for The Big Ticket. So when KG nixed a trade to Boston, the Celtics went out and did what they needed to do, trading away Wally Szczerbiak,who the Wolves previously shipped out to Boston because of tensions with Garnett (reportedly KG wanted to send him a card and mend fences, but couldn't remember how many z's there are in Sszz... Sczz... in Wally's name) and bringing in Ray Allen, whose all-star appearances have finally made him famous for something other than playing the lead in "He Got Game". Not to mention his supporting part in that Sarah Michelle Gellar cheerleader disaster about dropping acid and fixing Ivy League basketball games. So now we have a worse deal, since the original deal offered a #5 overall pick, and Kevin McHale is one step closer to his dream of having a team with nobody above 6'7"... you hear that Mark Blount?! I saw earlier that Bracey Wright is headed to play in Europe, and the Timberwolves are trying to buy out Troy Hudson's contract, so that's the #11 and #12 guys off the bench gone to little fanfare, and with the guys who are added, it's still a team of shooting guards with even less presence in the front-court, so this is really going to be ugly. On the plus side, the Wolves have some young talent, a couple more draft picks back, and perhaps most importantly, they have some expiring contracts and dumped KG's salary, the highest in the NBA last year. The stage may be set for a new GM to take over and build a team, if McHale is really going to step back and let The Mayor run the team. On the down side, they're still stocked with shooting guards and overpaid mediocre player signed forever, and after two trades with Boston, the Celtics are looking good and the Wolves have, as one fellow Wolves fan put it: all the players who couldn't win in the East with an all-star, are now stuck in the West without one. Yes indeed, this could be uglier than the Vikings passing game.