The Ricky Davis Rebirth: One Fan Removes the Media Blinders
By Mark
I hated Ricky Davis, and may have hated Danny Ainge more for making the trade to bring Ricky Davis to town. The trade that involved sending a personal favorite, Kedrick Brown, to Cleveland. Try and read that last sentence and still hold an open mind to the message. It’s not easy, I admit.
Ricky Davis was, in my mind, anathema to the mold of a Celtic. Davis was a “me first”, stats-driven prima donna. The poster child for a minimum age in the NBA. He shot on his own basket to get a rebound for a triple double!!!!! He was almost universally despised by the entire State of Iowa, which is not easy to do. Those plains-staters are easy going.
When the trade went down, we were treated by our local NBA experts to literally weeks of “What the hell is Ainge doing?????”. The yahoo calls to WEEI started, and now we were treated to “Ricky Davis is a thug”. One particularly short radio man with a Ned Flanders flavor-saver deftly fanned the flames of the Ricky Davis pyres while appearing to keep his proportionally tiny hands singe free.
I bought it all hook shot, line and sinker. Jim O’Brien, who at the time was a legend from this quarter, resigned six weeks after the trade went down. It was pretty clear That OB wasn’t buying into the program. As the name coming to the C’s in that trade Ricky suffered more slings and arrows from the yahoos, both amateur and professional.
A funny thing happened during the mob rule, Davis did the two most important things a Celtic can do 1) played his butt off, 2) kept his trap shut. His offensive numbers dropped slightly from what they had been with the Cavs, but not significantly.
Last year, Davis conducted himself as a consummate professional. He was the Celtics’ sixth man when clearly he had the talent to be a starter. Ricky barely squeaked about coming off the bench, even when Jiri Welsch was ahead of him in position and went through a scoring outage that resembled the great NYC blackout of 1977. Davis brought with him an infectious energy level that could even ratchet up the energy level of the starters.
Somewhere along the line, I started to look at Ricky as a player and as a man instead of some media construct. I realized, fairly early in the 2004-2005 season, that RD was playing his tookus off and more importantly playing the Celtic way. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Davis may be in a unique position amongst Celtic players to exploit the up-tempo game with his physical skills. No Celtic last year adapted to the system in a more seamless fashion. Not Pierce. Not Banks. Not Tony Allen or Al Jefferson.
And guess what?? It turns out that Davis is a decent person too. He spends a ton of time off the court with his kid. He does some good charity work, and doesn’t pimp his involvement the way so many athletes seem too. He’s made more of an effort to reach out to the fans than any Celtic in recent memory (a big shout out to the boys of the Get Buckets Brigade who know what I’m talking about).
In summation, I think that the whole Ricky Davis episode has shown me the true power of the sports media here in Boston and nationally. Warts and all. And believe me there are plenty of warts. The local scribes and disembodied talking heads decided that Davis was bad and that became the story. The story was repeated in print, on TV, on the radio and before you know it perception has become reality. I am here to bear testament to the value of thinking outside the box. Plus, it’s basketball…..so it’s fun.
