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In most professional sports, I don't really have divided allegiances, but I do have more than one favorite team. In football, the Chefs are right below the Chargers. In baseball, the Royals are essentially a farm club for the real contenders, so I've had a soft spot in my heart for the Red Sox (as factored partially by geography and also for their role as counterbalance to the Evil Yankee Empire). In hockey, there's always been the Bruins, but when longtime Bruin Ray Bourque got dealt to the Colorado Avalanche in an attempt to hoist the cup once in his 22-season career (and he finally did), so I still owe them for that (and then there's the late lamented Hartford Whalers, for whom I've always had a soft spot).
But in basketball, there's only ever been the Celtics.
In football, when I first discovered it, I liked the passing game, so I immediately gravitated toward the San Diego Chargers who were running the Air Coryell scheme with machine-like efficiency. Basketball was about the same way -- it had geography and tradition (Bill Russell's team winning 11 titles in 13 years in particular, legendary coach Red Auerbach chomping mercilessly on his cigar), but it had perimeter shooting embodied in Larry Bird. There was no team like them. My loyalties were never divided.
Unfortunately, the wheels came off the Celtic bandwagon when their first-round draft pick Len Bias died as a result of arrhythmia exacerbated or even caused by cocaine use two days after he was drafted -- twenty-two years ago tomorrow. The Celtics, who'd won the championship the previous season, began a long slide into irrelevance. This didn't deter people like me and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
daethkow from keeping hope alive.
When NBA Jam came out in arcades, featuring digitized versions of two of our favorite then-Celtics, we fed that thing quarters like it'd eat us if we didn't. I'd play as Reggie Lewis, he'd play as Kevin McHale. Occasionally we'd get confused and accidentally switch players, which given the lack of similarities between the two players, was just ridiculous. We'd correct each other: "No, wait, remember, I'm the small black guy and you're the big white guy." The next season McHale retired and Lewis died of a heart problem shooting hoops at Brandeis at the age of 27. So we added another qualifier to our descriptions: "No, wait, remember, you're the big white retired guy and I'm the small black dead guy."
The Celtics' tailspin continued for two agonizing decades. The NBA changed a lot in that time, and I think you could make the argument that the star system changed the way the game is played. Instead of being a cohesive group, teams became a superstar and his supporting cast. I never liked the Bulls; it was too easy. Never liked Shaquille O'Neal, because his talent seemed to be "being large," and maybe that's unfair to him, but he was also sufficiently full of himself that I've had little more than disdain for him. The Lakers are the Enemy. No other team ever had the appeal, the legacy of the Celtics, even when they were being coached into oblivion by Rick Pitino, cursed be thy name.
But this year everything changed for gang green. Celtics GM Danny Ainge -- on the court a half-way decent player but all-out dickhead -- made significant moves before this season, bringing in Kevin Garnett (who spent 12 years with the Minnesota Timberwolves before being traded for seven players), Ray Allen (movie star and perimeter shooter) and Sam Cassell (three inches taller than me and one of the hardest-working players in the league). Teaming them up with Paul Pierce (who has never been proven to use a spitball), they gelled into a cohesive team, which is reason enough to be impressed.
But last night, finally, after lows that were so very, very low, the Celtics returned to form, appropriately beating the Lakers, their longtime nemesis from the other coast. And while a few games in the series were close, competitive and thrilling, last night was a rout. Allen got poked in the eye and still broke and tied three-point shooting records. The defense was overwhelming. The passing was brilliant. Wasn't one guy pulling the strings or calling the shots. It was a beautiful and somewhat heartbreaking thing to see. Couldn't help but think about Red and Reggie and Len.
An interesting aside: after writing a rational and fair (I typoed "fail," but I'm getting ahead of myself) column about the impending collapse of the Lakers and Kobe Bryants's role in not preventing it, ESPN.com columnist Jemele Hill wrote an...interesting screed about how she hated the Celtics. Which is fine; we've all got our biases and preferences. I don't see how that's worth writing a sports column, though. "I have a least favorite team! Here it is!" doesn't register as an idea worth sharing with a body of readers, but I've essentially distilled most of Bill Simmons's work right there (I'm sorry,patchsassy, I know you like the guy, but God, I can't even read him anymore), and though writing about events that can't quite escape your own gravity of self-infatuation has a place, it's not as a sports column (I'll buy both of them LiveJournal accounts if that's what it takes). Columns that make no effort to reach the reader are wastes of paper and ink. But I digress. You see, Jemele Hill went one step too far:
“Rooting for the Celtics is like saying Hitler was a victim. It’s like hoping Gorbachev would get to the blinking red button before Reagan.”
Those sentences, in typical online Soviet revisionist fashion, have been scrubbed from the column. As a Celtics fan, I'm not offended. The last thing I'm going to be troubled by is what a Pistons fan thinks, especially a point as puerile as that one. As a former columnist, though, I don't see how that line makes it "to print," or really, why that column needs printing. She almost wanders onto a possible topic, the racial disparity between Detroit and Boston, between their fans, but falls into her own gravity again: "If the Celtics win this title, there is a sense that this isn't a punctuation mark to the careers of Pierce, Garnett and Allen, but the beginning of an era of anguish for Detroiters." Yes, that's exactly what they said as the clock ran down and the Gatorade bath hit Doc Rivers, nothing about the Celtics winning or Lakers losing, it's all about how this would affect Detroit. *rolls eyes* This isn't sports journalism, it's ego in words. It's a bad column, but that's never stopped ESPN before. Hill got suspended -- and rightly so, especially when she'd called for Don Imus's firing not too long ago. But that treats the symptoms, not the disease. She'll be writing self-centered screeds again before we know it, never once trying to bridge the gap between writer and audience, and thus every word will be wasted.
Okay, so that was a bit more than an "aside." Sorry. I'm still a little gleeful. It was a good night.
But in basketball, there's only ever been the Celtics.
In football, when I first discovered it, I liked the passing game, so I immediately gravitated toward the San Diego Chargers who were running the Air Coryell scheme with machine-like efficiency. Basketball was about the same way -- it had geography and tradition (Bill Russell's team winning 11 titles in 13 years in particular, legendary coach Red Auerbach chomping mercilessly on his cigar), but it had perimeter shooting embodied in Larry Bird. There was no team like them. My loyalties were never divided.
Unfortunately, the wheels came off the Celtic bandwagon when their first-round draft pick Len Bias died as a result of arrhythmia exacerbated or even caused by cocaine use two days after he was drafted -- twenty-two years ago tomorrow. The Celtics, who'd won the championship the previous season, began a long slide into irrelevance. This didn't deter people like me and
daethkow from keeping hope alive. When NBA Jam came out in arcades, featuring digitized versions of two of our favorite then-Celtics, we fed that thing quarters like it'd eat us if we didn't. I'd play as Reggie Lewis, he'd play as Kevin McHale. Occasionally we'd get confused and accidentally switch players, which given the lack of similarities between the two players, was just ridiculous. We'd correct each other: "No, wait, remember, I'm the small black guy and you're the big white guy." The next season McHale retired and Lewis died of a heart problem shooting hoops at Brandeis at the age of 27. So we added another qualifier to our descriptions: "No, wait, remember, you're the big white retired guy and I'm the small black dead guy."
The Celtics' tailspin continued for two agonizing decades. The NBA changed a lot in that time, and I think you could make the argument that the star system changed the way the game is played. Instead of being a cohesive group, teams became a superstar and his supporting cast. I never liked the Bulls; it was too easy. Never liked Shaquille O'Neal, because his talent seemed to be "being large," and maybe that's unfair to him, but he was also sufficiently full of himself that I've had little more than disdain for him. The Lakers are the Enemy. No other team ever had the appeal, the legacy of the Celtics, even when they were being coached into oblivion by Rick Pitino, cursed be thy name.
But this year everything changed for gang green. Celtics GM Danny Ainge -- on the court a half-way decent player but all-out dickhead -- made significant moves before this season, bringing in Kevin Garnett (who spent 12 years with the Minnesota Timberwolves before being traded for seven players), Ray Allen (movie star and perimeter shooter) and Sam Cassell (three inches taller than me and one of the hardest-working players in the league). Teaming them up with Paul Pierce (who has never been proven to use a spitball), they gelled into a cohesive team, which is reason enough to be impressed.
But last night, finally, after lows that were so very, very low, the Celtics returned to form, appropriately beating the Lakers, their longtime nemesis from the other coast. And while a few games in the series were close, competitive and thrilling, last night was a rout. Allen got poked in the eye and still broke and tied three-point shooting records. The defense was overwhelming. The passing was brilliant. Wasn't one guy pulling the strings or calling the shots. It was a beautiful and somewhat heartbreaking thing to see. Couldn't help but think about Red and Reggie and Len.
An interesting aside: after writing a rational and fair (I typoed "fail," but I'm getting ahead of myself) column about the impending collapse of the Lakers and Kobe Bryants's role in not preventing it, ESPN.com columnist Jemele Hill wrote an...interesting screed about how she hated the Celtics. Which is fine; we've all got our biases and preferences. I don't see how that's worth writing a sports column, though. "I have a least favorite team! Here it is!" doesn't register as an idea worth sharing with a body of readers, but I've essentially distilled most of Bill Simmons's work right there (I'm sorry,
patchsassy, I know you like the guy, but God, I can't even read him anymore), and though writing about events that can't quite escape your own gravity of self-infatuation has a place, it's not as a sports column (I'll buy both of them LiveJournal accounts if that's what it takes). Columns that make no effort to reach the reader are wastes of paper and ink. But I digress. You see, Jemele Hill went one step too far:“Rooting for the Celtics is like saying Hitler was a victim. It’s like hoping Gorbachev would get to the blinking red button before Reagan.”
Those sentences, in typical online Soviet revisionist fashion, have been scrubbed from the column. As a Celtics fan, I'm not offended. The last thing I'm going to be troubled by is what a Pistons fan thinks, especially a point as puerile as that one. As a former columnist, though, I don't see how that line makes it "to print," or really, why that column needs printing. She almost wanders onto a possible topic, the racial disparity between Detroit and Boston, between their fans, but falls into her own gravity again: "If the Celtics win this title, there is a sense that this isn't a punctuation mark to the careers of Pierce, Garnett and Allen, but the beginning of an era of anguish for Detroiters." Yes, that's exactly what they said as the clock ran down and the Gatorade bath hit Doc Rivers, nothing about the Celtics winning or Lakers losing, it's all about how this would affect Detroit. *rolls eyes* This isn't sports journalism, it's ego in words. It's a bad column, but that's never stopped ESPN before. Hill got suspended -- and rightly so, especially when she'd called for Don Imus's firing not too long ago. But that treats the symptoms, not the disease. She'll be writing self-centered screeds again before we know it, never once trying to bridge the gap between writer and audience, and thus every word will be wasted.
Okay, so that was a bit more than an "aside." Sorry. I'm still a little gleeful. It was a good night.
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