16 Years of Longing
Did I start writing this before giant blowout loss, then refuse to come back to it until a week after the last game? Yes, yes I did.
It's June 17, 2010. I’m sitting at the Buffalo Wild Wings in Richmond, Kentucky. Tonight is going to be a great night for me. At midnight Toy Story 3 premiers, and I’ll be there smiling from ear to ear (please note that I had no idea of the emotional trauma held within that film before going to see it). Before the screening starts I’m going to enjoy a meal, some drinks, and I’m going to watch the Boston Celtics beat the LA Lakers in game seven of the NBA Finals, securing the second title in three years for the Celtics and beating the franchise’s biggest rival to do so. Nothing could go wrong.
Until everything went wrong
The Celtics held Kobe Bryant to a terrible shooting night (6-24), the ideal scenario to clinch a title, only to see Ron Artest go off for 20 and bail out Kobe and the Lakers. I have blocked most of this game from my memory, but I recall feeling dread for most of the game. Still an emotional mess after losing my mom 14 months prior, and dealing with a severe drinking problem from that, I responded the only way I knew how. I ran up an insane bar tab, drank myself stupid, yelled at the TV and wallowed in my despair. With the game finished I realized I was in no shape to enjoy Toy Story 3, but also very drunk and unable to drive, so I went to see the other movie opening that night to try and sober up for a couple hours. Within five minutes of Jonah Hex starting I was asleep in my theater seat, only waking up after the credits rolled and the lights came on, with the theater employees gently asking me to wake up and leave. I drove home that night sad, but feeling convinced that the Celtics would be back in this spot next year, and the year after, the stars on the team were ready to compete and we’d be back in the finals in no time.
No time turned into 12 years.
I won’t bore you with a recap of the NBA of the early 2010s, but the Celtics window to compete shut abruptly. The stars of the 2008 championship team either left in free agency, or pushed for a trade to a franchise that felt a little closer to competing for a title. Over the next few years players were drafted and signed, the team never fully tanked like some teams do in hopes of great draft picks, and still wound up with amazing picks almost entirely because of the moves made when those star players left. By the start of the 2017 season the core of team for the next decade was in place.
Sports do weird things to us fans. We should not care as much as we do, if you really think about it. There are so many things in our lives more important than the outcome of games we have no impact on, and yet, when a team in ingrained in your DNA, the success of that team feels like success in your own life. Think about it, we savor our successes. Maybe it’s adding another plate to your bench press or squat, maybe its running a race, could be finally landing a job that lets you live a better life, all of these things are an endpoint with a long journey preceding them. Before you got to benching two 45 pound plates you had to start with 25 pounders. Before you ran that half marathon you had to run that first mile. Watching a team you love build for years, stumbling occasionally, and finally reaching the mountaintop brings that same satisfaction, if you’re one of the countless people (myself among them) that wound up deeply invested in a team even if you can’t pinpoint why.
From that 2017 season onward the Celtics have overachieved, and underachieved. It’s a tale as old as time for NBA fans. Sure, Michael Jordan went 6-0 in NBA Finals appearances, but it took him seven years to get to there, losing every step of the way before that. LeBron has five championships, but he had to lose in 2007 and 2011 before he got his first ring. Watching these Celtics learn and grow felt special to me, probably because I was learning and growing myself.
I watched both the 2016 and 2017 from the same Buffalo Wild Wings where I watched the 2010 Finals. That 2017 draft was the last big sporting event I watched as a resident of Kentucky since I moved to Ohio a few weeks later. I pursued my dream of working in sports, slowly falling out of love with watching games as a fan. I didn’t pay as much attention to the Red Sox, or the Bruins, or the Wildcats, but I always stayed locked in on the Celtics.
That team was a lifeline to everything that made me who I was, and who I’d grow to be. As I watched Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum develop into amazing talents, I felt myself developing in my field too. I had become a reliable writer, while Brown more than doubled his points-per-game average. I grew into a prolific in-game tweeter for women’s basketball as Tatum got his first MVP votes. I watched this team get so close to greatness, losing to LeBron and the Cavs in the 2018 Eastern Conference Finals from a bar in Arlington, Virginia, to losing in the 2022 NBA Finals to the Warriors in a sweaty bar in Columbus, surrounded by friends I loved dearly and the girl I thought I was going to marry. I left the bar that night just hoping she’d get to see the Celtics win a title, if for no other reason because she liked seeing me happy, and that title would make me the happiest person on earth.
Before the 2022-23 NBA season the Celtics suspended and later fired the head coach due to some infidelity and inappropriate activities with staffers. One of the assistants got the interim head coach tag and slipped into the biggest pressure cooker role in the league. A team that just came off a Finals appearance, now coached by a guy that looked out of his depth. The team showed flashes of brilliance, yet still lost in the conference finals. Denver, winners of the western conference, looked unbeatable, so maybe not making the Finals that season was a blessing, but being so close and failing yet again left a sour taste in everyone’s mouth.
If you have known me for any amount of time you know that I am a man that remains deeply and fully committed to the bit. I will run a bit into the ground, and then ensure it’s at least 100 yards deep in the ground before I’m finished, and the longest running bit of mine is connected to the Celtics. I can’t recall exactly when it began, asking friends gave differing timelines but we all agree it’s been at least a decade. Any time someone said anything about the NBA, or slandered the Celtics I’d reply with BOSTON CELTICS (insert whatever year we were in) NBA CHAMPIONS. It became a rallying cry. I have multiple items in my home either hand written from friends, or even signed by famous people, proclaiming that this was the year. At some point I slowed down with posting it as many time as I had in the past, but the agenda was always the agenda, it was always the year.
The 2023-24 Celtics felt like a class above most of the league the entire season. The team finished with the best record in the league, and cruised through the playoffs. After years of stressfully watching us grind out games against inferior teams we entered the NBA Finals having lost only twice during the playoffs. I felt… overly confident… entering the Finals. I watched game one from a work conference in Virginia, doing karaoke and blowing kisses at the screen. I did “Since U Been Gone” and dedicated it to Kyrie Irving, to the cheers of three dudes there with us. I never once felt stressed during any of the games in the finals, not even game four when everything went to trash and none of our starters played in the fourth quarter. Nothing could shake me from what I knew to be true in my heart…
Boston Celtics 2024 NBA Champions
As the final seconds ticked away during game five, with Boston comfortably in the lead, I felt everything. I started crying when Al Horford got subbed out for the home crowd to shower him with cheers (if you told me 20 years ago that I’d be crying happy tears for Al Horford, the same prick that helped destroy Kentucky so many times while playing at Florida I would’ve fought you). I sobbed as Tatum and Brown came out, embracing each other on the sidelines and getting mobbed by their teammates. I thought of all those losses, those close calls, those brushes with greatness.
I thought of my dad, the man that, upon hearing that Rick Pitino was leaving Kentucky to coach the Celtics asked me if I wanted to be a Celtics fan, and when I said yes he rushed us to All Sports at the Fayette Mall to get some Celtics gear. We eventually had matching jerseys, shirts and hats, and his new favorite coffee mug had “From Bluegrass to Beantown” and was adorned with pictures of the Wildcats that wound up in Boston. I thought of how cool it would be to watch this team win with him, even if it meant he rooted for a Gator and a Dukie.
After that 2010 Finals loss I felt that the Celtics would be back there, winning a championship in no time. And for some folks waiting 14 years to be back there, and 16 years since the last title would be an eternity. For me, it was an eternity and a blink. All those years, all that suffering, gone in a flash. All that matters is what is happening before my eyes, the Boston Celtics celebrating a championship, and feeling so grateful to watch it all happen.
Boston Celtics 2024 NBA Champions.
I got genuinely excited when I saw this in my inbox this morning. Still read it despite it being about Boston Sports, and the fact you call yourself a sports fan and have never watched Remember the Titans.