At one point during last night’s broadcast of the NBA Draft, ESPN’s Bill Simmons said that watching Kentucky center (and Everett, MA’s own) Nerlens Noel drop out of the Top 5 was one of the most stunning things he had ever witnessed in the NBA Draft. For me, however, the most stunning drop both at the time it occurred and still today was seeing someone else currently making headlines, Paul Pierce, drop all the way to Rick Pitino and the Celtics in the 1998 draft. Marginal players like Michael Olowokandi, Raef LaFrentz (Pierce’s Kansas teammate), Robert Traylor, Jason Williams and Larry Hughes all came off the board while someone who at the time was widely considered the best player in the class waited to hear his name called. But thankfully for the Celtics’ faithful, nearly a third of the league blundered that night, giving Boston a player for the ages at selection no. 10.

Word broke yesterday that on or about July 10, Pierce will traded to the Brooklyn Nets along with Kevin Garnett and Jason Terry for draft picks and a cacophony of Brooklyn's extras. Garnett’s passion and attitude will surely be missed in these parts, but for all of his contributions, he’ll always be remembered first as a Timberwolf. In this deal, the loss of historic proportions for Boston is Pierce. He’s not the first Celtics legend to be traded as Dave Cowens, Jo Jo White and even the 41-year old and coming-out-of-retirement Bob Cousy all were peddled away off before him, but Pierce’s pending departure marks the first time the current face of the franchise is being dealt.

Take a look at the Celtics record book and you’ll see Paul Pierce everywhere, standing shoulder to shoulder with (and in some instances, ahead of) Celtic Green giants. Here's where he ranks in most of the major statistical categories in Boston's storied history:

• Games: John Havlicek (1,270), Robert Parish (1,106), Paul Pierce (1,102)
• Points: Havlicek (26,395), Pierce (24,021)
• Career Scoring Average: Larry Bird (24.3), Pierce (21.8)
• True Shooting Percentage (min 10K points): McHale (.605), Parish (.587), Pierce (.561)
• 3 Pointers: Pierce (1,823)
• Free Throws: Pierce (6,434)
• Assists: Cousy (6,945), Havlicek (6,114), Bird (5,695), Pierce (4,305)
• Blocks (since 1973): Parish (1,703), Kevin McHale (1,690), Bird (755), Pierce (668)
• Steals: Pierce (1,583)

Pierce also owns three of the top 10 scoring seasons in franchise history, six of the top 8 in made free throws, and six of the top 7 in usage percentage which takes into account the percentage of a team’s plays that a player was on the court, and calculated just for the players from the Larry Bird era on. Only Bird (11) averaged 20 or more points in more seasons than Pierce (8, tied with Havlicek) and Pierce is the only Celtic to score 50 points in a game since Bird in 1989.

Looking back on his the league-wide impact, Pierce wasn’t purely a Celtics phenomenon, he's a 10-time All Star, Finals MVP, and four-time member of an All NBA team. With hindsight being 20-20 he’s clearly one of the top two players taken in that 1998 draft, along with the eighth pick, Dirk Nowitzki. In fact, since the day Pierce was drafted only Nowitzki and Kobe Bryant have scored more regular season NBA points, a testament to his tenure of excellence as Celtic and an NBA superstar.

On more piece of truth about The Truth: Once his playing days are done, Pierce's 34 will be proudly displayed with numbers of Russell, Cousy, Bird and the rest of Boston's basketball legends in the Garden's rafters. He certainly earned his spot.

Having already lost Doc Rivers to the Clippers and with the futures of franchise cornerstones Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett very much in question, the Celtics enter tonight's NBA Draft at a crossroads. Barring any late transactions, Danny Ainge will be picking in the unenviable 16th slot, a position that has failed to produce an NBA superstar in nearly three decades since the Jazz took Hall of Fame point guard John Stockton from Gonzaga in 1984. During that time there have been some other quality NBA players selected 16th (Ron Artest, Tony Delk, Hedo Turkoglu) but those men fall under the heading of complementary players, not the face-of-the-franchise player Boston currently needs.

That got me to thinking, with so many great players to suit up in the green and white over the years, who were the best Boston has selected in the entry draft? To do so, I looked to basketball-reference.com’s Win shares rating, which evaluates players based on their contributions to wins, over the expected contributions of any other average player. The stat admittedly has some flaws, as many individual statistics used in it were not kept in the earlier years of the league, necessitating estimates for many players, but from the standpoint of comparing players from different eras, it does a decent job. Taking role of the 442 men the Celtics drafted since 1947, we were able to determine the alltime top 10 players picked. To say the results were unexpected would be a major understatement.

Let’s start off with the aforementioned Billups who amazingly places as the fourth best Celtics pick in terms of career NBA WS. In fact, he ranks 36th alltime in the NBA according to the metric. The leader of the Pistons 2004 title team and Finals MVP that season earned the nickname Mr. Big Shot by repeatedly burying clutch shots throughout his career, was taken third overall by Rick Pitino in 1997. Just 51 games into his rookie year however Billups shipped to the Raptors as part of a package for Kenny Anderson, Popeye Jones and Zan Tabak. Billups along with—Antoine Walker ('96), Paul Pierce ('98) and Joe Johnson ('01)—is just one of four All Star players drafted by Boston over the past 25 years.

The greatest Celtic of them all, Bill Russell, wasn’t eligible for the list because he was taken out of the University of San Francisco, not by the Celtics but by the St. Louis Hawks. What was surprising from the list however is one of the two men Boston traded for him, guard Cliff Hagan, made the list as the no. 9 Celtic pick of alltime. Hagan, a 6’4” two-time All America guard from Kentucky was selected in the third round by Boston in 1953 but returned to play for the Wildcats in 1954 (leading them to an undefeated 25-0 season). He then served two years in the military, playing basketball at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland with the Celtics holding his rights the entire time. When St. Louis wouldn’t only accept Ed Macauley in exchange for Russell’s draft rights, Boston sweetened the deal by adding Hagan who went onto become a five-time NBA All Star.

And while seeing Larry Bird atop the list comes as no surprise to anyone, it is of note that with all of the Hall of Famers that played on the parque, it’s current captain Paul Pierce who contributed the second most win shares to the storied franchise. Pierce currently ranks in the top 4 in virtually every significant statistical category for the celtics and ranks second to John Havlicek in total points and second to Larry Bird in points per game.

And that leads us back to Danny Ainge, the man who’ll be at the helm for tonight’s draft charged with rebuilding the storied franchise that took him from BYU with the eighth pick of the second round in 1981. One of the NBA’s first three-point marksmen, Ainge ranks 10th in WS among players the C’s ever drafted.

Here are the top 10 NBA careers from players drafted by the Celtics according to basketball-reference.com’s career Win Shares (Note: Heinsohn was a territorial pick)

The Red Sox kicked off off a nine-game homestand with an impressive offensive outburst against the Rockies, racking up 11 runs and a season-high 20 hits in an 11-4 win. The explosion raised their major league-leading runs total to 505, an average of 5.13 runs per game, also tops in the bigs. The game was a microcosm of a new-look to this offense: Although they didn’t hit a home run, they managed to manufacture runs using speed. Ladies and gentlemen, the 2013 Red Sox are the American League’s most aggressive team on the basepaths.

Boston leads the league with 20 triples, the 20th coming in the fourth inning on Stephen Drew’s fourth of the season. By contrast, that’s already four more triples as a team than last season’s squad managed in 162 games in setting a new low water mark in Red Sox history. The last time that the Sox paced the league in three-baggers was 1972 when 17 different batters had at least one, paced by the “speedy” Carlton Fisk whose nine tied Oakland’s Joe Rudi for tops in the AL. In more than 11 decades they’ve led the AL in triples just eight times total (1903, ‘04, ‘08, ‘13, ‘14, ‘34, ‘40, ‘72), under three names (the Americans, Pilgrims and Red Sox)

These Sox also steal bases. Shane Victorino and Dustin Pedroia each successfully stole against Rox catcher Willin Rosario, adding to Boston’s AL-high total of 62 (32 of which have been contributed by AL-leader Jacoby Ellsbury). That’s nearly two-thirds of the way to last season’s team total of 97 swipes from Bobby Valentine’s team, and already more than Boston managed to steal in 48 other entire seasons. Incredibly, since 1901 when the AL was founded, the Red Sox have led the league in stolen bases exactly once, in 1935, when Billy Werber (29) and Mel Almada (20) stole more than half of the team’s 91 bags.

The victory over Colorado also marked the 11th time this season that the Red Sox both tripled and stole a base in a game, the most such games in the majors this season, and something they did just seven times all of last season. And while offensive stats are nice in themselves, what’s even better is that the team is turning that aggressiveness on the basepaths into winning, going 8-3 when both of those things happen. Since 1976 when the Mariners and Blue Jays entered the AL, only five teams have led the AL in both triples and stolen bases, the 1979, 1980, and 2002 Royals, the 1984 Blue Jays and 1986 Indians.

Last but not least, John Farrell’s team takes the extra base. Among the AL’s top eight players who have scored the most runs from second base on a single, three—Daniel Nava (10), Shane Victorino (10) and Mike Napoli (!, 9)‚—are Red Sox. While that might not seem like a lot, it is when you realize that only three Red Sox—Dustin Pedroia (17), Mike Aviles (12) and Nava (9)— managed to score as many as nine such runs all of last season, a vivid indicator of the differences between a team in first place and a team in last.

The Bruins road to the Stanley Cup took a critical turn on Saturday night when the Blackhawks captured Game 5 of the Finals by the score of 3-1, bringing the series back to the Hub with Boston on the brink of elimination. But before you despair, these Bruins seem to play their best when they’re faced with the prospect of an unfulfilled season.

Monday night’s tilt will mark the second time this postseason that the B’s find themselves in a win-or-go-home situation, the first coming in the stunning come-from-three-down-in-the-third-period overtime win in Game 7 against the Maple Leafs at TD Garden. However even before that massive comeback for the ages, Claude Julien’s group was no stranger to playing with their backs against the wall.

Starting in 2008, Julien’s first season guiding the Black and Gold, his teams have faced elimination 14 times. They’re an incredible 10-4 in those games, including two series —in 2008 versus Montreal and 2009 vs. Carolina — where they were down 3-1 and forced a Game 7 (although they lost in both instances).

In the last seven backs-to-the-wall games the playoff tested-squad has gone 6-1, with the only loss coming in last season’s opening round loss to the Capitals. That’s the best elimination game record of any team in the NHL over the past three playoffs and tied with their current nemesis, Chicago, for the most "must wins" during that period. In other playoff games Boston has gone just 27-19, for a winning percentage of .587. Obviously urgency counts.

Here's another reason to believe in the Bruins chances of extending Chicago to Game 7: When down three-games-to-two in a series, Julien’s B’s have not lost a Game 6, beating the Canadiens, Hurricanes, Capitals and Canucks. While all but the Canucks series ended with a Game 7 loss, the Julien Bruins have been solid overall in Game 7’s, splitting evenly the eight they’ve played since 2008.

Here are the teams with the most wins since 2011 while facing their postseason mortality:

Prior to Game 4 of the Finals Tuukka Rask’s 2013 Stanley Cup Playoff performance was being compared by many to Tim Thomas’ incredible 2011 run through the postseason. Although Rask hasn’t been as spectacular as Thomas was in leading the Bruins to the Cup two years ago, his numbers hold up well against Thomas, even following the Game 4 overtime loss to the Blackhawks in which he gave up a career-playoff-high six goals. Here’s a comparison along with some stats of note about the Bruins backstop off night.