While I agree sully has worn out his welcome in Boston and that his lack of discipline in getting himself in top shape means he has to go because it effects his play, I think the people saying Sully had an exceptionally bad game or was the reason for this loss are just taking their dislike of Sully and having it cloud their opinion of his play and what he did last night.
That's not the case at all.
Anybody who tries to claim Sully had anything but an absolutely horrible game either didn't watch the game, or knows nothing about basketball.
Whether you can blame him for the loss - well, that's another matter altogether. We lost the game for a number of reasons, and Sully sure as hell wasn't the only one. He was however, probably the biggest one.
As Isaiah said in his "letter", this is the playoffs - where every single play matters. When you are in the playoffs the quality of competition is so high that you simply cannot afford to either make (a) careless mistakes, or (b) take plays off. One layup allowed, one poorly chosen shot missed, or one careless turnover could very easily turn out to be the difference between a win and a loss.
I don't ever expect a guy to shoot well every night - everyone has their on and off games, and I totally accept that. But I do expect a guy to play hard, play smart, and play with composure/confidence. This is the Playoffs, not the summer league.
Today Sully made far, far too many mistakes. He played defence with 70% effort on too many possessions, he missed too many defensive rotations, he committed too many unforced turnovers, and he took (and missed) too many ill advised shots. I can accept one error, I can accept two errors. Hell, I can even forgive three errors. But Sully was making team-hurting errors (on both ends of the court) almost the entire time he was on the court, and those errors when added up, were easily enough to cost us the game.
Sully certainly was not the only guy who I could say that of Crowder was nearly as bad as Sully was today. He had some flashes of really poor defence, and he took some REALLY poor shots.
The key difference is that for Sully, this wasn't a one off. He makes mistakes like this far too frequently - today was just the significantly worse than usual...but the fact that it's the errors he made to day are pretty typical for him (rather than a one off freak bad game) that concerns me.
As for the "physical" argument - people can argue that all they want, but there is only so much you can blame on Sully's conditioning. You can argue he missed rotations because he was too slow or too tired, you can argue he got scored on in the paint because he lacks the agility and leaping ability to contest the shot, and you can argue that he missed a shot because his legs were tired.
But you can't blame poor shot selection / hero ball, careless turnovers or poor defensive court vision entirely on his conditioning. Those are mental things - they are either result of poor basketball IQ (not knowing what to do in the situation) or arrogance (knowing what is the right thing to do, but doing the wrong thing anyway).
How do I know it's more mental then physical? Because of the inconsistency.
There have been games this year where Sully's defense has been well and truly fantastic. There are times where he's dominated the boards, despite fighting for them against a physically dominant (and more talented) player. There have been games where he's made smart decisions, took smart shots, and took good care of the ball.
All of this proves that regardless of Sully's conditioning issues, he is still very capable of being an effective player WHEN he uses his head and plays the right way.
If Sully's flaws were all a result of his conditioning, then he would play badly ALL the time, because there hasn't been a single point in this season where Sully has been in anything but poor shape.
