I am a diehard fan and I am extremely grateful for this past season when they gave in my darkest days and night another reason to live
Forever green
The 2022-23 Celtics squad is the 150th NBA team to fall into an 0-3 deficit in a playoff series. The first 149 teams all lost their respective series.
"Don’t let us get one,” Brown said during Tuesday’s morning shootaround.
2004 Red Sox.
The Curse no more.
1968 Celtics.
The following day my father brought home two crystal radio sets shaped as rockets. They were made in Japan. My father was an electrical engineer with New England Bell and explained their workings, “You attached alligator clips to a metal object. The signal is transmitted to the antenna and you tuned the radio with a retractable space needle jutting from the nose of the rocket.”
“They aren’t going to get electrocuted, are they?” My mother’s fear was for our own good.
“There’s no electrical charge. The radios capture the airwaves. These are better than TV.” TV reception is Maine was limited to three very snowy channels during the day. “You can hear the rest of the world with them.”
“Okay.” My mother didn’t sound convinced and at bedtime I dressed in my Davy Crockett pajamas.
Before I could plant the earpiece, my mother ordered us to hand over the sets. My brother surrendered his and rolled over to sleep.
I needed any explanation.
“Because I said so.” She held out her hand.
“But they don’t have any batteries.” I had read the flimsy instruction sheet. One side was in Japanese.
“At night they play things you shouldn’t hear,” she exhaled with adult exasperation.
“Things?” This cryptic comment reanimated my dozing brother.
As a devout supporter of Tailgunner Joe’s battle against the Reds my mother was deeply concerned about the subversion of the airwaves.
“Yes, things.”
“There’s nothing on the radio in Maine that can hurt them.” My father came into the bedroom and contradicted my mother’s demand, “Let them listen to the radio. It’s a free country and the radio scares away the snakes.”
“You shouldn’t be telling them stories.” She gave him a withering glare.
“I just want a night’s sleep,” he whispered with a wink.
My mother begrudgingly returned my brother’s set and kissed us both.
“Sleep tight.”
“And don’t let the bedbugs bite,” my brother and I replied in unison.
Once the light went out, my brother fell asleep and I attached the alligator clips to the metal bed frame. The little rockets range expanded across the country at night.
The airwaves soared with voices from Montreal, Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Wheeling, West Virginia. Their accents scared away the snakes. Music and radio shows could be heard between the squawks of static, until a hoarse man cried out, “And Cousy has the ball.”
I soon divined this broadcast was a basketball game at Boston Garden between the Seventy-Sixers and the Celtics.
Each play mattered to the excited announcer and the roar of the crowd was as bloodthirsty as the Romans in the Coliseum. I rooted for the Boston team, since my mother had been born in Jamaica Plains, but Bill Russell was not stopping the dreaded giant, Wilt. Luckily the Sixers were befuddled by the Jones boys and at breakfast I recounted the two brothers’ defense stopping the Philadelphia team.
“When did you fall asleep?” my father asked and I answered, “Around midnight.”
“Don’t tell your mother or the Jones Boys will have a curfew.”
After that night I listened to every game.
Without touching a basketball.
Today the Boston Celtics kicked off the NBA Sunday games against the Charlotte Hornets. They played like a team who had survived a BBQ dinner followed by a clandestine soiree at a crack den whorehouse and a dawn limo ride to their hotel. This team has no soul and have no chance of going anywhere in the playoffs. Brad Stevens sucks as a coach and the all-stars are exhausted by the schedule. I waited through a time-out to be subjected to ads from the three worst products in America; Gas, Fast Food, and Cars.
Gas is culled from coal, tar pits, and deep veins of oil beneath the surface of Earth.
If all the carbon in the air were to drop to the surface, mankind would be buried under three feet of toxic ash extinguishing all life on the planet.
Fast food genetically modifies its consumers into obese non-human stricken with a multitude of life-threatening diseases. I have warned my friends in love with Mickie Ds and Burger King about their eating doom, but how can an old drunk argue against the pretty photos of Fast Food empires?
By saying nothing.
What's the use?
I figure the world population in 2050 to number 500 million.
And cars will not help anyone escape the the end of the world.
I will be 98 in 2050.
The last old man on Earth.
Despite my team losing today, I will be wearing my green.
I will drive a motorcycle fueld by the last gas in this world.
And dining on fried clams at Tony's at Wollaston Beach.
98 and more alive than ever.
I am a die-hard Boston Celtics fan.
I listened on the radio to their games in the late 1950s.
I watched the Green on TV in the 1960s.
I still consider Bill Russell the greatest player ever in the NBA.
I was lucky enough to see their battles at Boston Garden in the 70s.
Hondo, Cowens, Silas, Jo-Jo, Don Nelson.
I loved that team and they beat the Bucks to win a 12th Championship for the Celtics.
The Bird years.
The Big Three.
And now the new team.
Blown out twice by the Cavs.
Isiah Thomas out for game 3.
Then they fuck Cleveland at home.
An LA friend asked for my prediction.
"Celts in 6."
"How?"
"28-3."
"28-3?"
I can't even remember who the Patriots beat in the Superbowl other than they blew out their lungs and had nothing left for the 4th quarter.
28-3.
Go Green.
The Boston Celtics are a storied team in basketball.
No NBA franchise has won more championship and suffered fewer losing seasons.
Last year Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett were traded to the Brooklyn Nets to complete the break-up of the Big Three.
"This is my team," Rajon Rondo declared to the Boston media, except the all-star point guard hasn't played a single game due to off-season surgery.
The other night the Celtics went down to the Houston Rockets.
The game wasn't even close and I wondered whether this year's squad was as overwhelmed by the rest of the league as the 1998-99 Celtics consisting of Kenny Anderson, rookie Paul Pierce, Ron Mercer, Antoine Walker, and Tony Battie, which went 19-31 in a strike shortened season.
The only Celtics team to rival that record was the 1978–79 Boston Celtics.
29–53 to finish 5th in the Atlantic Division.
The next year the revived squad lost to the 76ers and Doctor J in Eastern Conference Finals and won the NBA championship with the first Big Three of Bird, McHale, and Parrish.
I don't see that reversal of fortune happening this year or the next, but I am a Celtics fan forever.
No matter how high the hoop, I believe in the green.
Last night I expected big things from the Boston Celtics. ESPN analysts were predicting another fold from the Heat in Boston Garden. What happened was LeBron James going crazy for 45 points to single-handedly push the series to even at 3 wins a piece. The Celtics looked flat with Paul Pierce shooting like he was recovering from a celebratory hang-over. The refs only had to make two questionable calls in the first half to assist the visiting team in the blow-out.
David Stern wanted Miami-Thunder and after last night it looks like the commissioner got his wish.
No one is giving the Celtics a chance to win game seven in Miami.
No one.
No one but me and the little green leprechaun.
