The Morning According to Us

There's simply no replacement for KG in Boston

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"Ya'll got problems."

One of the great mysteries of science, something that truly can't be accounted for, is the mind's power over the physical body. In science, perhaps the greatest example of this is the placebo effect: if a person believes they are being cured, the mind overpowers the disease, or source of pain.

But for the Boston Celtics, the source of pain is no Kevin Garnett, and we can truly see there is no mind over matter option here.

As New Scientist explains, in a real life version of the experiment, "Several times a day, for several days, you induce pain in someone. You control the pain with morphine until the final day of the experiment, when you replace the morphine with saline solution. Guess what? The saline takes the pain away. This is the placebo effect: somehow, sometimes, a whole lot of nothing can be very powerful."

In Boston, there was a sense at the beginning of their series with the Chicago Bulls that the combination of Kendrick Perkins, Leon Powe and Glen Davis might serve as some kind of suitable placebo. Of course we all knew they couldn't mimic the curing powers of KG, even as a three-headed dose of morphine on the open wound the Celtics are staring at in their frontcourt. But now we know that even the mind can't overcome this kind of absence. In two games in Boston, the Celtics have lost once and been saved by the miraculous.
The explosion of endorphines released last night when Ray Allen hit a game-winning three seemed like a great thing until viewed even moments later, when the reality hit that the shot really only served to stave off almost sure elimination. And for a team that a quarter of the way through the season seemed the model of perfect health, the current reality seems dire by comparison.

The bad news is the trip to Chicago now looms. The good is that if there is a mind-over-matter team from a collective standpoint, Boston might be it. Of course, the other bad news might be the final dose. It is that not only do we seem more certain than ever that KG can't be replaced, even by powers of the mind, he is also at best third in line for this playoff season among the truest curing formulas in pro hoops—behind Kobe and LeBron.

Boston can rest, assured knowing they won once, and no dose of anything could have cured them against either of those two.

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