Like a lot of Celtics fans of a certain vintage, I’m stuck in permanent Larry Bird nostalgia mode. That means I tend to bore younger Celtic fans with my tedious memories. As is the case with many wizened Celtics fans, this reflex is involuntary. What I experienced as a young Celtic fan can’t be improved on. I was in the Garden when the Celtics and Larry beat the Lakers and Magic in Game 7 of the 1984 Finals. For a Celtics fan, it can’t get better than that. But the 2007-2008 Boston Celtics were a remarkable team, a team that accomplished several things even the Bird Era Celtics never approached. This year’s Celtics went the entire season without getting blown out. Did you know that? Even when they were playing their fourth road game in five nights, the Celtics showed up, played hard and won. Even the best Bird teams submitted their share of stinkers. They had nights when they clearly had little interest being on a basketball court. This year’s Celtics elevated basketball professionalism in this town to a new level. Allow me a brief digression – About a decade ago, I had a close friend who played for the Boston Bruins. One afternoon, the Bruins were losing a playoff series 3-1 and hosting Game 5 on their home ice. The Bruins won that game, and I walked out of the stadium with my friend and one of his teammates. As we passed the security guard, the guard said “Thursday!” in reference to the night the Bruins would host Game 7 if they could manage to win Game 6 on the road. After we were out of earshot, my friend and his teammate said to each other, “Yeah right. Thursday. Sure.” They couldn’t wait for their season to be over. Their wives were a bit annoyed that they had won that afternoon’s game. On the day of Game 6, I had a dentist appointment and my dentist, a huge Bruins fan, expressed his optimism for that night’s game. I broke it to him gently that the Bruins not only wouldn’t win, but wouldn’t even show up. If had been paying for my tickets, I would have found the whole experience really irritating. The men who play the games are human beings. Just like you have pouty guys at your office, professional sports teams have pouty players. And just like you may work for an organization that’s unfocused and indifferent to the quality of its work product, there are pro sports teams that are the same way. Professional athletes aren’t inherently more likely to live and die with their professional commitments than everyone at your office is. And that’s what made this year’s Celtics team so amazing. They took every game with the complete seriousness. They showed up mentally every night. Playing a season that stretches over eight endless months, this was a remarkable achievement. These Celtics got the most out of their considerable talent – not just on some nights, but every night. Until the playoffs, anyway. Once the postseason began, the Celtics inexplicably lost their confidence on the road. The team that had swept the Texas three-step, something that hadn’t been done in seven years, suddenly couldn’t win in Atlanta. Or Cleveland. Many of us feared that the Celtics were paper tigers. I actually wrote an ill-advised piece in these virtual pages suggesting that the Celtics just weren’t that good. Yes, I’d like a mulligan on that one. The Celtics early playoff woes are traceable to the fact that they entered the postseason with a core that had little playoff success. Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen and Doc Rivers all had enormous question marks hanging over their careers as the playoffs began. For all of them, either a championship or at the very least a strong playoff run was necessary for their reputations. The pressure must have been suffocating, especially given how much this particular team wanted to win. By the time The Finals had rolled around, the Celtics had rediscovered what had made them so special. When they fell behind by 24 in Game 4 against the Lakers, I told my brother, “It will be close – this team doesn’t get blown out.” Earlier in the series, it had become apparent that the Celtics were the much better team. In addition to having more talent, the Celtics worked much harder than the Lakers. A friend emailed me yesterday asking why Phil Jackson seemed so indifferent to the proceedings. Even in the early 90’s when he had the best team in basketball by a country mile, Jackson always had a bit of that Zen detachment thing going for him. But in this series, he really seemed not to care. He knew by the time the series headed back to Los Angeles that he just didn’t have the horses. The Lakers didn’t have quite enough talent and not nearly enough heart. Los Angeles was fortunate to stretch things out to six games. In Boston, we were frustrated that what should have been a sweep or at most a five game series went on so long. But it worked out perfectly. The Celtics got their reward in Game 6 where they played their best 48 minutes of the entire season. Everything came together – the energy, the desire, the skill. For young Celtics fans, I imagine Tuesday’s clincher will assume the place in their hearts that 1986’s final game has in mine. On both nights, great teams played a perfect game when it mattered most. Tuesday night’s game was the signature of a great a champion.
