It's been a long time since I've cared a whit about professional basketball. But I'm happy to say that's starting to change, thanks to the "new look" Boston Celtics.
Call me a clover-green member of the "pink hat" society of fair-weather fans, but I'm not ashamed to say that it feels good to be able to care about what's going on with the Celtics after two decades of underachievement and disappointment.
I will also admit that, as professional sports go, basketball has always been way down on my list. When I was growing up, it was all about the Bruins—until the Celtics drafted an Indiana farm boy named Larry Bird. Then the Collins house began to split its sports interests between the Causeway Street ice and its famed parquet floor.
My interest in the Celtics actually took root in the 1980s when I was a student at Eaglebrook School. My two best friends were rabid NBA fans. Jeff was a native of Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan and a died-in-the-wool Philadelphia 76ers fan. This was back in the days of Julius Erving, Mo Cheeks and Moses Malone, the last time that team was really relevant until a diminutive Georgetown point guard named Iverson arrived on the scene a few years later.
My other pal, Ray, was a Southie native and a passionate Celtics fan. Given the rivalry between the two teams at the time, it made for some pretty interesting conversations on the walks to class and sports practice.
Their enthusiasm couldn't help but rub off on me, and I began to follow the Celts with the same interest as my treasured Bruins. I did have one problem, however—I didn't really understand basketball much. But I became a quick study, thanks in part to my new hardwood heroes in green.
Even when my high school interests transitioned from professional sports to nubile young females, I still kept up with the Celtics. I can remember being at a graduation party in my senior year watching Bird and Co. dispatch the Houston Rockets to win the NBA Championship. It was the last time the Green would come within a sniff of that title for the next two-plus decades.
The departure of Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish, coupled with some bad personnel decisions and the tragic deaths of number-one draft pick Len Bias and team captain and star Reggie Lewis, would render the Celtics mostly irrelevant for much of the late '80s, early '90s, and much of this decade.
That worm appears to be turning, however, thanks to a couple of blockbuster off-season moves made by Director of Basketball Operations Danny Ainge. First, Ainge went out and got one of the best shooting guards in the game in Ray Allen, and followed it up with a blockbuster trade for former league MVP Kevin Garnett.
All of a sudden, the Celtics are back in business. Not only do they have a new "Big Three" consisting of Garnett, Allen and team captain Paul Pierce, but they've got a lot of good bench support and a good inside game and some new young talent, most notably first-round draft pick Glen "Big Baby" Davis.
Normally it takes some time for a newly constituted team to develop a chemistry and rhythm. But that doesn't seem to be the case with the "new look" Celtics, who have rolled over pretty much everyone who has stood in their path this year. At press time, the Big Green had lost only two games this season: one in overtime, the other because they couldn't hit the shots they needed to down the stretch.
Boston has become so dominant that a lot of people are already polishing up room in the trophy case for another NBA championship cup. I think that's a bit premature. But the fact that anyone even cares shows you that people in New England—even the "fair weathers" like me—are excited again about Celtics basketball, which really hasn't been the case since that big country boy from Indiana walked off the parquet for the last time.
