I was a 12 year old, playing in a soccer tournament and the Celtics were playing the Nets in the ECF. I was obviously interested... I'm an Irish-American kid from Boston who was good at basketball as a youngster. I even had gone to a playoff game that year against the 76ers. I was all ready and geared in to take in just another game. I just didn't know what was about to happen...
They were down 20 points. We're definitely going to lose this game, I thought. But in a strange way that I can't fathom today, it was all okay. I was going to continue to watch because I had just about as much fun yelling with my dad as I did watching the game. I particularly was fond of complaining about Jason Kidd and Lucious Harris' move of sliding underneath to take the charge even when Pierce and Antoine were in the air.
They came back. I fell in love with the team, the Celtics returned to glory, and the rest is history, right? Well, not so fast...
There WAS that period where the Celtics were god awful. Where the Celtics played .500 ball under interim coach John Carroll and I was convinced he was the next great coach. And then there was my love affair with Jiri Welsch. He had size, strength and could even play some PG! He would become an All-Star, I had told my father. Obviously it took a while for my basketball acumen to kick in.
But that wasn't the only element that shaped my Celtics experience as a kid. There was the fact that I watched EVERY game I could. I would refuse to hang out with my friends because the Celtics were playing the Pistons at Detroit and I really needed to prove to myself that Ricky Davis was better than Rip Hamilton and that Mark Blount had it in him to become a great big man--he just needed that competitive fire on a consistent basis. It got to the point where my parents were almost worried. They would let me do whatever I wanted because it was finally a time when I wanted to be social!
(Note: This payed dividends in my older years, as the trend of letting me do everything continued just a LITTLE longer than it should have)
I was a homer! I empathized with Tommy's sentiments to a crazy extent, and didn't understand why my father told me he wasn't going to watch the first three quarters of EVERY Celtics game.
I remember the day the Celtics got Ray Allen, and vaguely a few weeks later when we got Garnett. I remember sitting there next to my dad when we won it all, and he could see how happy I was. In a weird way it was the happiest I've been for something non-personal in my life. I had grown up believing Danny Ainge was a boy-genius (who just happened to get old eventually), and Paul Pierce has always been a hero of mine as a player (though I admit to myself often we are probably nothing alike).
I just would like to say thanks to this board for all it has given me over the years. I was a lurker until my mid-teens, and made an account a while back. I don't post often but always had an account just to chime in when I felt particularly compelled.
It's nice having a group of people (although the separation and veil of the internet exists to an often humorous level) who I can talk to about Marcus Banks back in 2003 or when we traded DeClerq and a 1st for Vitaly, or when Ryan Gomes was the first of Danny's 2nd round steals and no one will look at me strangely as if I have too much time on his hands.
It's a celebration of 10 years as a Celtics die-hard and nearly that long as a Celticsblog vistor and poster. Just want to say thanks, and here's to 10 more.
Cheers.
Jojowhite10
Topic: Look How Far We've Come (Read 5344 times)