Garnett’s knee is just fine. It has been a concern in camp, but apparently KG has his explosion back. In a recent practice, he caught an alley-oop and slammed it home. The Celtics’ fortunes depend heavily on the health of Garnett’s knee. Without him at full strength, they’ll have a tough time competing with the Cavs and Magic. As an NBA fan, a healthy KG is good for the league.

Is Russell Westbrook turning into a dependable point guard? The Oklahoman reports that is A/T ratio in the preseason is 5.4. Last season it was 1.6, which is quite bad. It’s a small sample size, but if Westbrook can get his A/T ratio above 3.0, it will reap dividends for the Thunder. From a fantasy perspective, if he were to cut his turnovers in half and have the same number of assists (which would result in a A/T ratio of about 3.0), then he’d be the 15th most efficient point guard (just below Mo Williams) instead of the 21st most efficient.

Stephen Jackson will play for the Warriors, but he’s not happy about it. There’s a good chance the Warriors will acquiesce and try to fulfill Jackson’s wishes to be traded, but the 31 year-old has three more years remaining on his contract at the tune of $9.3 per season, so there’s no guarantee that a playoff team would be willing to make a move for him. Miami could move Michael Beasley, but Jackson’s contract would ruin the Heat’s financial flexibility next summer. The Suns could use Jackson to replace an aging Grant Hill, but they’re in financial trouble. The Hornets probably make the most sense, but are they willing to spend?

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This is not how it was supposed to go.

The Cavs were destined to make the Finals and face the Lakers, with LeBron turning in a fantastic Game 7 performance in front of his loyal fans at the Q to bring the city of Cleveland its first championship since 1964. With a title already under his belt, and a few more on the horizon, he would happily re-up for another four or five seasons. Or at the very worst, the Cavs would lose to the more talented Lakers, leaving fans with the feeling that “one more piece” would be all that is needed to finally bring a title to Cleveland. Under that scenario, there would be no way that LeBron could leave, right? Not when the Cavs were thisclose to a title…

Just over a year ago, I wrote that “The Cavs have failed LeBron James,” which was posted about three months before GM Danny Ferry pulled the trigger on the trade that brought Mo Williams to Cleveland. That trade, along with LeBron’s renewed focus and an improved work ethic (which was inspired by his seeing first hand how Kobe prepared during the 2008 Olympics), pushed the Cavs to a league-best 66 wins this season. Williams was named as an alternate to the All-Star Game (after grousing about not being voted in by the coaches) and all was well with the world.

The Cavs received some more good news when Kevin Garnett struggled with injuries down the stretch of the regular season and was eventually shut down for the playoffs. At the time, the Celtics were considered the Cavs’ biggest threat in the East, but KG’s injury might have allowed the Magic, one of four teams that beat the Cavs twice during the year — the Celtics, the Lakers and…um…the Wizards were the other three — to advance to the Conference Finals when they otherwise wouldn’t have survived to face the Cavs. The Magic were a very bad matchup because the Cavs simply didn’t have anyone that could cover Dwight Howard. When they didn’t double-team him, he would make a living on the post, and when they did send another guy, it would free up the Orlando sharpshooters for open jumpers.

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The plot thickens in the ever changing world of the NBA playoffs, and several scenarios could play out this weekend. Will KG play or not? Celtic management has repeatedly stated that Kevin Garnett will not see action in this playoff season. Okay, then why hasn’t he had surgery to repair the knee and begin rehab for next season? Please Kobe, don’t let Ron Artest crawl inside your head because he will do damage. Just play your game and get ready for the inevitable showdown with King James in the Finals.

All times ET…

NBA Playoffs
Fri, 7 PM: Boston Celtics @ Orlando Magic (ESPN)
Fri, 9:30 PM: Los Angeles Lakers @ Houston Rockets (ESPN)
Sat, 5 PM: Denver Nuggets @ Dallas Mavericks (ESPN)
Sat, 8 PM: Cleveland Cavaliers @ Atlanta Hawks (ABC)
Sun, 3:30 PM: Los Angeles Lakers @ Houston Rockets (ABC)
Sun, 8 PM: Boston Celtics @ Orlando Magic (TNT)

NHL Playoffs
Fri, 7 PM: Washington Capitals @ Pittsburgh Penguins (Versus)
Sat, 7 PM: Pittsburgh Penguins @ Washington Capitals (Versus)
Sun, 7:30 PM: Carolina Hurricanes @ Boston Bruins (Versus)

MLB
Sat, 3:40 PM: Tampa Bay Rays @ Boston Red Sox (Fox)
Sun., 12:30 PM: Atlanta Braves @ Philadelphia Phillies (TBS)
Sun., 8 PM: Tampa Bay Rays @ Boston Red Sox (ESPN)

Celtics GM Danny Ainge (seemingly) confirmed what the rest of us have been thinking all along: KG is done for the year.

Fans have been holding out hope that if the Celtics can get by the Bulls in the first round, then Garnett would have enough time to recover and return for the remainder of the playoffs. But they’re fighting for their lives against the Bulls and still, Garnett remains sidelined. It really doesn’t seem like he’s close to returning.

I guess all we can get out of Garnett in these playoffs is a lot of chest pounding, several weird faces and repeatedly saying “yeah, motherf****r” on the bench after the Celtics make a good play.

Every so often, I’ll be sitting at a bar, throwing back a few adult beverages with a buddy or two and I’ll pose the following question:

If you could have one current NBA player to build your franchise around, with the goal of winning a NBA title in the next five years – who would it be?

Since the 2009 NBA Playoffs are in their infancy, it seems to be as good of a time as any to kick around this question. My criteria are simple – a franchise player has to be able to carry his team, while being reasonably young and injury-free.

We’ll count down from #10 to #1. My top nine guys were pretty easy to list, but #10 was a bitch. Maybe you can help me decide. Feel free to provide your own top 10.

HONORABLE MENTION

Yao Ming, Rockets (28 years-old)
I love Yao’s post up game, and he is a skilled passer, but the chances are only 60/40 that he’ll be healthy for any given playoffs and those odds are only going to decrease as time wears on. He’s like Robert Downey, Jr. — he’s great at what he does, but you just don’t know if he’s going to be there when you need him.

Chauncey Billups, Nuggets (32)
He seems to be more responsible than ‘Melo for the Nuggets’ great play this season, but he’s 32 years old. Still, his effectiveness depends more on strength, steady play and good shooting than it does his (somewhat limited) athleticism, so he should be able to play into his late thirties.

Al Jefferson, Timberwolves (24)
Jefferson is one of the few young, back-to-the-basket post players in the league. He averaged 23/11 on a bad team, which leads me to believe he could post 19/10 on a playoff team, and should only get better with age.

Amare Stoudemire, Suns (26)
He’s four years younger than our next guy, but he’s already had two serious injuries in his career so one wonders if this is a trend. He also seems to be a little bit on the selfish side and has a rep for being a bad defensive player.

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The Boston Three Party is beginning to look like one all-star (Paul Pierce), one struggling shooter (Ray Allen), and one injured player (Kevin Garnett). And any lingering hope of a Garnett return in these playoffs should come to an end soon. According to the Boston Herald, The Big Ticket is seeking a confirmation date for the surgery to repair his injured right knee.

According to sources with knowledge of the situation, Garnett had sought opinions from non-Boston Celtic medical personnel on types of rehabilitation that would allow him to play in the postseason. And it seemed the program of rest and rehab was working until soreness and increased pain inside the knee had returned.

Injuries like this are really a tricky thing,” one medical person who has worked on NBA players said. “Most of the time you just need to rest it and let the area calm down, but sometimes it’s different.”

Surgery seems to be a good investment option for the Celtics, as Garnett is signed through 2012 season. Their plan for next season should be to acquire another quality big man to help out on the frontline and cut down on KG’s minutes.

The Celtics can regroup and make another push for a ring. But it will tougher, as the key components will be one year older and their championship window will continue to close.

One point that Bill Simmons made in his “woe is me” column about how the Celtics will be without KG in the playoffs was how the truth about Garnett’s injury didn’t come out until the franchise let it out.

There’s a hidden sub-story lurking here: It involves the fall of newspapers, lack of access and the future of reporting, not just with sports but with everything. I grew up reading Bob Ryan, who covered the Celtics for the Boston Globe and remains the best basketball writer alive to this day. Back in the 1970s and early ’80s, he was overqualified to cover the team. In 1980, he would have sniffed out the B.S. signs of this KG story, kept pursuing it, kept writing about it, kept working connections and eventually broken it. True, today’s reporters don’t get the same access Ryan had, but let’s face it: If 1980 Bob Ryan was covering the Celtics right now, ESPN or someone else would lure him away. And that goes for the editors, too. The last two sports editors during the glory years of the Globe’s sports section were Vince Doria and Don Skwar … both of whom currently work for ESPN.

For the past few years, as newspapers got slowly crushed by myriad factors, a phalanx of top writers and editors fled for the greener pastures of the Internet. The quality of nearly every paper suffered, as did morale. Just two weeks ago, reports surfaced that the New York Times Company (which owns the Globe) was demanding $20 million in union concessions or it’d shut down the Globe completely. I grew up dreaming of writing a sports column for the Globe; now the paper might be gone before I turn 40. It’s inconceivable. But this Garnett story, and how it was (and wasn’t) covered, reminds me of “The Wire,” which laid out a blueprint in Season 5 for the death of newspapers without us fully realizing it. The season revolved around the Baltimore Sun and its inability (because of budget cuts and an inexperienced staff) to cover the city’s decaying infrastructure. The lesson was inherent: We need to start caring about the decline of newspapers, because, really, all hell is going to break loose if we don’t have reporters breaking stories, sniffing out corruption, seeing through smoke and mirrors and everything else. That was how Season 5 played out, and that’s why “Wire” creator David Simon is a genius. He saw everything coming before anyone else did.

Ultimately, Garnett’s injury doesn’t REALLY matter. It’s just sports. But I find it a little chilling that the best player on the defending NBA champion could be sidelined for two solid months, with something obviously wrong, and nobody came close to unraveling the real story. We still don’t know what’s wrong with his knee. We just know it’s screwed up. And, yeah, you could say that Garnett has always been guarded — with just a few people in his circle of trust — and yeah, you could say that only a few members of the Celtics organization know the truth (maybe coach Doc Rivers, GM Danny Ainge, majority owner Wyc Grousbeck, the trainers and that’s it). But this was a massive local sports story. Its coverage is not a good sign for the future of sports journalism or newspapers in general.

It’s a good point, and one that has been made before (without the references to “The Wire” — Bill’s specialty). With the death of the newspaper, there won’t be 5-10 hungry reporters sitting in a press room at the Boston Herald waiting to dig into a story. Most reporting is done from a distance these days, and even those with “access,” don’t have that much access. What’s lost here is that franchises are more guarded about information than they’ve ever been, because they’ve been burned by the Bob Ryans of the world before. Ryan was/is just doing his job, and doing it well, but there is little to no incentive for teams to be up front about injury information. For this, we have Bill Belicheat to thank.

LeBron posted 29 points (including 5 of 8 from long range — take that, Bill Simmons), seven assists and four rebounds as the Cavs rolled over the Celtics, 107-76. They’re one win away from matching the 1985-86 Celtics for the best regular season home record in league history.

Chris Sheridan comments on the state of the Celtics…

The defending champs will be there when it counts, once they have Kevin Garnett back at 100 percent, right?

Problem is, Boston coach Doc Rivers is keeping No. 5 under wraps until Wednesday night, meaning he’ll have seen Garnett play about 80 minutes of total floor time over the final 26 games to get himself prepared for the postseason.

Or: The Orlando Magic are going to be a heckuva matchup for someone, especially the Cavs, with their deadly inside-outside game anchored by Dwight Howard and all those shooters. The problem with that one (aside from Jameer Nelson’s absence) is that the school of thought that produced those kinds of pronouncements underwent a curriculum change when Hedo Turkoglu’s ankle crumpled Saturday in East Rutherford, N.J. on the same night that Brook Lopez was outplaying Howard. This came one night after David Lee of the Knicks outplayed Howard, and the Magic’s dreams of the No. 2 seed began to die a quick death.

Anyone want to buy into the premise that the Cavs might have their hands full if they meet up with the Chicago Bulls in the first round? That’s about the only pre-weekend thought that endures even a little.

“The teams at the bottom, that’s where you have to look who’s surging,” Boston coach Doc Rivers said. “Chicago is playing really well, and if that’s who you have to face, so be it.”

As good as the Cavs have played this season, it would have been nice to see LeBron and Co. seize the bragging rights in the Eastern Conference instead of having it handed to them on a platter. Sure, they still have to go out and win games, but what was shaping up as a really interesting Eastern Conference playoffs is looking more and more like the Cavs’ tuneup for the Lakers in the Finals. Kevin Garnett’s knee is bad, Jameer Nelson is out for the rest of the season with a shoulder injury and Hedo Turkoglu just sprained his ankle. Barring a semi-miraculous return for KG, I just don’t think there’s anyone in the East that can upend the Cavs right now.

The Spurs are going to have a tough time winning their fourth title in seven years without their star wing.

The stiffness Spurs guard Manu Ginobili felt in his right ankle during Sunday’s game against the Cleveland Cavaliers turned out to portend the worst possible news for the star guard and the Spurs: A stress fracture that will cost him the remainder of the season, and the playoffs.

Ginobili had returned to game action March 25 in Atlanta after missing 19 games with a stress reaction in his right distal fibula. Sunday’s game was his sixth since returning to the lineup, and followed three games in which he had totaled 50 points. After scoring 16 in a victory in Indianapolis on Friday, Ginobili had reported that he felt “super.”

When the ankle stiffened Sunday, he sought advice from the team’s athletic training and conditioning staff, and was sent back to San Antonio for a CT scan and MRI. The results of tests conducted Monday morning showed the stress fracture, and the determination that the team’s starting shooting guard would miss the remainder of the season.

Laker fans will be dancing in the street when they hear this news. When healthy, the Spurs posed the biggest threat to L.A.’s title hopes. With Ginobili out and Kevin Garnett hobbled, it’s looking more and more like we’re destined for a Cavs/Lakers Finals.

Doc Rivers revealed that the Boston Celtics plan to shut down Kevin Garnett for a few games due to pain and swelling in his troublesome knee.

Kevin Garnett will miss at least the next four games with a sore right knee and may return for the final three games of the Boston Celtics’ regular season.

The emotional leader and defensive star of the defending NBA champions has missed 15 of the last 19 games, including the last two. The Celtics hope the rest will help him get healthy for the playoffs.

“After watching him move today, we’re just going to shut him down,” Rivers said. “It probably won’t be for the year. He’ll probably play by the end, last couple of games or last three games. It’s just not progressing the way we anticipated it would progress.”

The Celtics began the day in third place in the Eastern Conference, five games behind the Cleveland Cavaliers and percentage points behind the Orlando Magic. They resume play Wednesday night at home against the Charlotte Bobcats.

“We’re just going to shut him down until we feel like he’s ready,” Rivers said. “It’s nothing structural. It’s the same thing that it’s been. It’s just not reacting the same way we thought it would react. He didn’t react to the games we thought he would and he’s clearly not reacting to practice the way we thought he would.”

The Cavs look like the favorite to come out of the East given the injuries that both the Celtics and the Magic have suffered this season. Boston will struggle if KG isn’t close to 100%, and right now he clearly isn’t. Orlando lost Jameer Nelson earlier in the season, but are still a threat after trading for Rafer Alston to fill his role.