I hear you, eja. As I alluded to at the time of the lock, I understand where you're coming from, and it's nice reminiscing about old members. However, we try to respect members' privacy; sometimes, there are reasons that people leave, and generally if they wanted those known, they'd tell us before moving on.
I'll throw this out as a compromise: if your intent was to honor past members, re-launch your thread as a "Great members from CelticsBlog's past", or something like that. Stay away from the "whatever happened to so-and-so" aspect, and just talk about guys you liked, and what you liked about them. Stay away from the speculation, and concentrate on the positive, and you'll be well within our rules.
In terms of Dons' point, though, I agree whole-heartedly: if a thread directly violates one of our rules, we have to lock it, regardless of the original posters' intent. We try to enforce things as uniformly as we can; if we start picking and choosing which rules to enforce, we'll come across as arbitrary and inconsistent.