Some people might argue that the Celtics’ brutal annihilation of the Lakers in Game 6 was anything but exciting.
The game was all but decided in the second quarter, and by the third quarter I was counting down the minutes until a long-awaited (twenty-two years!!!) championship celebration that I don’t think I ever thought would happen, not after the tragic deaths of Len Bias and Reggie Lewis and the seemingly endless incompetence of the Celtics front office. When Red Auerbach died last year, I grieved a once-great franchise unable to lift itself out of the awful depths to which it had plunged.
So I didn’t exactly want Game 6 to be exciting. I saw an exciting game earlier this year, the Giants versus the Patriots in the Super Bowl, and it took me about a week to recover. I didn’t want a repeat of that. I wanted the Celtics to dominate from the openings minutes, never let up and basically stomp their way to an easy victory. And that’s exactly what they did, winning by 39, giving little-used guys like Glen Davis quality minutes and administering a beat-down of the Lakers so complete and ruthless that I’m sure I’m not the only person wondering how in the world the Lakers managed to beat the Nuggets, Jazz and Spurs and make it to the NBA finals. (Personally, I’m a little disappointed the Celtics didn’t win by 50, because it’s such a nice round number. But whatever. Thirty-nine is good, too. I’ll take it.) I despise Kobe Bryant, but I actually felt a twinge of sadness for him, because it must be a little disconcerting to find yourself surrounded by daisies like Pau Gasol and Vladimir Radmonovic in an elimination game. These guys simply wilted, going down without a fight or even so much as a whimper. It was embarrassing, and I actually began to feel a little sorry for the poor fans in L.A., until visions of Jack Nicholson and Paula Abdul sitting courtside flashed through my brain. Oh, yeah, I hate L.A., I thought, and chuckled gleefully. Unlike the Super Bowl, which I watched in an increasingly horrified and stupefied state, I was able to relax during Game 6, joke around, cheer. It was nice. Fun, even. Boring for the rest of the world, maybe, but for diehard Celtics fans who never thought this day would come? Well, for us, Game 6 was a gift.
In terms of Boston sports, the Celtics were my first love, although I didn’t begin following them closely until the tail end of the Bird-Parish-McHale reign, when I was in high school. They were on the decline, to the point that one of my friends — a Pistons fan — used to refer to them as “The Old Three,” rather than “The Big Three,” to irritate me. But I watched them whenever I could, and I remember listening to games on the radio in my bedroom while doing homework. As the team slipped into irrelevance (Rick Pitino, anyone?), I comforted myself by thinking about the 16 championship banners, and the fact that the Celtics would always, at least historically, be a great franchise. I scoffed at Danny Ainge’s promise to bring a championship to Boston. It will never happen, I thought, as he traded for the likes of Ricky Davis, Sebastian Telfair and Chris Mihm. Then, of course, he got Kevin Garnett. I’ve been hard on Kevin Garnett in this blog. But I can’t deny that he did everything he was asked to do when he came to Boston. He delivered a championship, and one of my favorite moments of the post-game celebration was when he knelt to the parquet and kissed the leprechaun, then stood up and embraced the great Bill Russell.
My New England Sports Fan Friend and I were beside ourselves throughout Game 6, though it wasn’t long before the Sports Fan, who likes to quantify things, began asking questions. By what percentage, he wondered, does a Celtics victory assuage the pain from the Super Bowl loss? (There aren’t that many opportunities to use the word assuage, and neither of us could resist this one.) A friend of the Sports Fan suggested 17 percent. Due to my longstanding affection for the Celtics, I proposed something in the 50 percent range. I’d waited for this day for a long time, I reasoned. But as we watched the festivities unfold, the percentage inched upward, past 50 percent. Sure, the Super Bowl would have been great. But it was hard to deny that this was pretty terrific, too.
Of course, the Sports Fan predicted that the Celtics would repeat. He suggested that one Celtics championship wasn’t enough, because in Boston, we’re accustomed to basketball dynasties. I agreed. Then I wondered whether the Red Sox would repeat, and how good the Patriots would be in the fall. I don’t follow hockey, but all of a sudden I found myself fervently wishing that the Bruins would win the Stanley Cup next year. For Boston sports fans, this has been an amazing decade, and you know what? When you get used to winning, you expect to win, you become a little greedy and you want to keep winning. You want to win everything you possibly can, in fact. So give me hockey. Then I’ll have it all.
