Smooth Criminal, Billie Jean, Beat it, Bad... the hits are numerous, but sadly, the man is no more. The King of Pop, Michael Jackson, was found dead earlier today. I know he's morphed into the child-molesting Wacko Jacko over the past few years, but this guy revolutionized pop music. He will be missed but not forgotten, as evidenced by this ill-advised Ocho Cino twitter post.

        

The B's struck it big at today's NHL Awards as Zdeno Chara, Tim Thomas and Claude Julien all took home some hardware. Timmy earned a ridiculously one-sided 22 first place votes to win the Vezina Trophy, Chara won the Norris Trophy, and Julien was named Coach of the Year.

All well-deserved. Unfortunately, it doesn't count for much as the B's still took an early exit (at least much earlier than we all were hoping and the experts all predicted) in the playoffs.

        

Here's the short and skinny: a rumor involving the Celtics has been picking up steam so it's time we got on here and addressed it. It's being suggested that the C's and Phoenix Suns could be mulling over a deal that would result in the Celts acquiring Amare Stoudemire, Leandro Barbosa and the Suns' 14th overall pick for Ray Allen and Rajon Rondo.

My initial thought: Initially taken aback, but ultimately, very intrigued.

First, the negatives: Both Rondo and Allen have become staples of the starting five. Rondo has blossomed into one of the premier point guards in the East, and Ray is... well, he is what he is at this point — a sniper from beyond the arc with perhaps the sweetest jump shot in the entire league and decent defensive abilities. It would be sad to see him go after just two years, but the real question here is clearly Rondo.

At just 23, Rondo is still developing his game. He made monumental strides this season on both ends — especially in the rebounding and assist departments — and should he develop a better shot soon, he'll easily be a top-5 PG in the league. But does the promise of nabbing two players presumably entering their prime, as well as a top-15 pick in the draft, outweigh the possible potential for growth in Rondo's game?

In my humble opinion, it does. Allen's contract is up after next year, and at the same time, Rondo is slated to become a restricted free agent. Paul Pierce needs to be re-signed in 2010-11, so the money simply won't be there for all three. On the flip side, the last year of Stoudemire's deal is 2010-11, and Barbosa is locked up through 2011-12, for which he holds a player option.

Now, the numbers: From the forward and center positions, Stoudemire has a career per-game average of 21.1 points, 8.9 rebounds, 1.47 blocks, .541 FG% and .76 FT%. Guard Barbosa has racked up career averages of 12.9 points, 2.4 rebounds, 2.7 assists, .471 FG%, .404 3PT%, .824 FT%. And depending on who's still around at No. 14, the Celts could find their point guard or center of the future.

Bottom line here is you'd be giving up a past-his prime All-Star (Allen) and a possible star-in-the-making (Rondo) for a four-time All-Star (Stoudemire), a SG who could presumably score like Ray Ray alongside Pierce and Garnett (Barbosa), and a pick that could help solidify the starting five for years. Lost in the shuffle is what would happen with Kendrick Perkins; it would be my guess that he'd be relegated to the bench in favor of Stoudemire at the 5 (Imagine a 3-4-5 of Pierce, Garnett and Stoudemire...) with Barbosa at the 2 and a free agent pickup — perhaps a matinee for Marbury — at the point. Whether or not you believe Rondo is the next great PG in the league, that's a pretty exciting prospect for Celts fans.

        

(Nice playoff beard, Pete!)

Hot on the heels of their re-signing of forward David Krejci, the Bruins today announced that GM Peter Chiarelli has been inked to a multi-year extension. The new deal guarantees that next year, which was the fourth and final of his initial deal with the B's, will not be his last in Boston (barring an unforeseen firing or resignation, of course).

Nothing but good news here. In what was easily his most productive and successful year with the team, Chiarelli proved he deserves the chance to guide the Bruins for several more years. Just a few items on the list of achievements from this past year: guiding the Bruins to a 53-19-10 finish (116 points) the second-best mark in the NHL; making moves that allowed the B's advanced to the conference semifinals (the first time they've done so since 1999); being named the NHL Executive of the Year from a poll of his peers by The Sporting News; extending the contracts of key contributors Krejci and goalie Tim Thomas.

Among a slew of brilliant moves, Chiarelli was responsible for signing current head coach Claude Julien, who is 94-48-22 in two seasons with the club. He brought Michael Ryder, Blake Wheeler and Stephane Yelle on board last offseason and trusted them to right the ship when every Bruins fan — myself included — was clamoring for him to sign Marian Hossa. He traded for Mark Recchi (and Steve Montador, but we'll let that one slide), who was pivotal down the stretch. More recently, he re-signed Krejci and Thomas to reasonable deals and will hopefully do the same with Phil Kessel in the near future. Outside of the Montador and Manny Fernandez moves, it's pretty tough to find fault with anything he's done since becoming GM in 2006. Hopefully he keeps up the string of good moves; there's no reason to think he can't.

        

Straight from the horse's — actually, in this case, llama's — mouth:

(Dwight Howard) is allowed to do physically a couple more things here at home.

For my taste, yes (those things are too physical). I have no control, so it's a little bit unfortunate. There's nothing you can do about it. You just have to play through it and continue to compete.

What specifically is he doing? He's just playing hard and using his body, that's it. You just have to play through it.

So let me get this straight — because Dwight Howard is doing what every big in the league should do and does (playing physical, using their body for positioning, backing down opponents with said physicality, etc.), Gasol whines to reporters in an attempt to set him straight or something? As if this guy needed more people questioning him and slapping him with the "SOFT" label... Talk about not helping your own cause. Look for the Orlando faithful to respond in kind with merciless jeers referencing the softness of one Pau "don't call me Paul" Gasol.

And apparently, even Gasol's own countrymen are tired of his weak act. Here's a comment from commenter "Spaniard" on the LA Daily News website:

i am spanish, and a fan of the lakers, but i feel that gasol (aka big bird) needs to stop being a b!tch. he makes us spaniards look like wimps. he complains after every play, flops all over the court and then these complaintss to the media? cmon just play the game. the lakers say they wanted to be a tougher team but i dont see it. when they have the home court advantage they rely on the refs to protect them. Every time the lakers get hit by a screen they flop n try to draw the foul. just plain soft basketball. Gasol has a lot of talent but he needs to stop b!tchin up.

        

(Napolen Dynamite plays hockey?!)

A bit of good news coming out of Bruins camp today that has most certainly gotten me to snap out of my Bruins funk of late, which obviously was caused by their disgraceful early exit — the B's today announced the re-signing of soon-to-be restricted free agent David Krejci to a three-year extension valued at $11.25 million.

Well, now we know who the top priority was between Krejci and fellow forward Phil Kessel. The B's definitely made the right decision here in terms of locking up Krejci first as he is much more versatile (as evidenced by his 22 goals and 51 assists vs. Kess' 36 goals and 24 assists) and likely has more room to grow than Kessel, who showed himself to be rather one-dimensional this past season. Obviously Kessel now becomes the next top target, but it will be interesting to see if they're able to squeeze all three of Kessel, Matt Hunwick and Byron Bitz under cap.

One other side note: As a commenter on Boston.com noted, Krejci will still be a restricted free agent when this deal expires, so the B's have first dibs at re-signing him, and if that falls through, they'll get draft pick compensation. Phenomenal move.

        

By my count, this Todd Tichenor jabroni is batting .250 in terms of valid ejections right now. You have to toss Twins backstop Mike Redmond in the seventh because he made contact with the aforementioned umpire, which is obviously a big no no, but every other early exit (Ron Gardenhire, Jason Varitek, Terry Francona) was complete bullshit. Not only that, the dude seemed to revel in each ejection, several times pulling complete 360* spins than made him look more like a twinkle-toed ballerina than a Major League umpire! This guy is even more ridiculous than that dickhead that screams "STRIIII-EEEEEAK!!!" every time he calls a strike on a batter.

Hope you enjoy Portland, Todd, because the best you'll be doing after the league reviews your actions last night is Double A ball in the boonies.

        

(Think Delta's regretting this choice these days?)

In spite of a persistence to the contrary, Sox manager Terry Francona has finally realized David Ortiz is costing the team runs and dropped him from third to sixth in the order for tonight's game against the Twinkies. J.D. Drew will move up to third and hopefully not suck as bad, while Papi's new lineup protection is a dude that hit less than he weighs last season (Jason Varitek, 230 lbs., .220 2008 AVG). Oh, the irony!

Well this is way past due. I definitely believe you have to let Ortiz work through his struggles and not bench him or bring in some scrub like Nick Johnson to share DH duties, but there's no doubt Big Papi was really starting to negatively effect this team in a big way. After sitting for three straight games, Papi socked his first homer against the Blue Jays in a nice 2-for-5 night on May 20, but since then he's gone 1 for 16 with 7 whiffs and just one walk. Just a couple weeks ago, he left 12 runners on base in a SINGLE GAME, finishing 0 for 7 with three strikeouts against the Angels.

Thanks to the production of guys like Jacoby Ellsbury, Kevin Youkilis, Mike Lowell and even the aforementioned Varitek, Papi's power outage hasn't been too costly to the team. Yet. Hopefully with this move, Captain Clutch will be back to some semblance of his old self soon enough. If not, it'll be an unfortunate and inglorious end to a solid five-year stretch; that, and the re-signing of Jason Bay becomes a whole lot more important to the Sox.

        

So the Celts' season has come to an end. Boo hoo.

It's very hard for me to get upset about last night's Game 7 loss to the Magic because by all right the C's had no business advancing as far as they did without arguably their best player on both ends of the floor (KG) and arguably their best player off the bench, big man or not (Powe).

Unlike the Bruins, who utterly shit the bed in crunch time when it mattered most, the Celtics gritted their way through 14 games and what felt like 50 overtimes to give us one of the more exciting postseason performances in recent Boston history. They easily would have succombed to the Cavs, maybe holding on to win a game or even two, just like the Magic will in the Eastern finals and Kobe and the Lakers will in the NBA finals, but the run they went on to even make it that far was as fun to watch as last year's banner season. Here's looking forward to a healthy Garnett, a hopefully re-signed Powe and Big Baby Davis, an upgrade in the Big Man department, and another title run next year.