Going Green can’t be beat today
The Celtics won’t be hosting an NBA draft party tonight, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have one.
And, really, you should have a party, right down to green streamers, Jayson Tatum “0” jerseys and a ceremonial lighting up of Red Auerbach’s go-to cigar, the vaunted and vast Hoyo de Monterrey.
Maybe go for broke —
Danny Ainge always does, right? — and spring for some of those green New Balance sneakers Governor Baker and Mayor Marty Walsh were sportin’ the other day at the uncorking of the Celtics’ sparkling new practice facility in Brighton.
The Celts are not defending NBA champions. Didn’t even make it to The Finals. And yet these are the good times. Celtics fans adore their players. They believe in president of basketball ops Danny Ainge. They see owners Wyc Grousbeck and Steve Pagliuca as local
guys who are in it for the long haul.
So, yes, wearers of the Green, light up your cigar and make a toast to the future during tonight’s NBA draft, but maybe keep a pot of strong coffee ready since the Celtics won’t be shopping for the groceries until the 27th pick.
The Celtics could go big (un-enrolled 7-footer Mitchell Robinson) or they could look for a point guard. If they choose the latter course, and if Ainge rolls the dice on UCLA junior Aaron Holiday, the headline in tomorrow’s Herald will be a nifty follow-up to the party you’re having tonight: “IT’S A HOLIDAY FOR CELTICS.”
To illustrate the positive feelings Celtics fans have about their team, consider what’s gone on around here this century. The four big-league sports franchises have combined for 10 championships — five by the Patriots, three by the Red Sox, one each by the Celtics and Bruins — and because of that teams that don’t win it all, even if they’ve gone deep into the playoffs, don’t even get a participation trophy on the Boston sports mantelpiece.
Even the 2007 Patriots, undefeated during the regular season, make for inappropriate discussion at the dinner table. The Red Sox won back-to-back AL East titles the last two years but there also were backto-back first-round eliminations, leading to lots of finger-pointing and blame assessment. The morning after last year’s Division Series failure against the Houston Astros, Sox manager John Farrell had toast, coffee and a side of pink slip for breakfast. As for the Pats’ 41-33 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LII, low-lighted by Bill Belichick’s decision to bench Malcolm Butler, it reduced the entire 2017 season to a spectacular failure.
Deep down, everyone knows the Celtics gagged against the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference finals. There’s really no getting around that, right? They should have won Game 6. They should have won Game 7. But in the blink of an eye the Celts became uncertain, intimidated, clanky, and that’s why it was the Cavs advancing to the NBA Finals and confronting their own uncertainty.
Whatever anger people had about Games 6 and 7 didn’t last long. Look at it this way: In any given day, at any given moment, there’s still more grousing about Belichick’s mishandling of Butler than the Celtics’ feet-first in the Eastern Conference finals. Tell me I’m wrong. Kawhi Leonard trade or no Kawhi Leonard trade, people around here feel good about the Celtics. If it’s a healthy Kyrie Irving and a healthy Gordon Hayward hanging out with the year-older-year-wiser tandem of Tatum and Jaylen Brown, the possibilities are endless. It used to be “In Bill We Trust,’ but now it’s “In Danny (and Brad Stevens) We Trust” and “In Bill We Sort of Trust But We Still Want to Know What Happened to Malcolm Butler.”
The cool kids at NBC Sports Boston took to Twitter yesterday to ask this question: “Which Boston team is it the most fun to be a fan of?” When last I checked it was a two-team race between the Celtics (45 percent) and Patriots (34 percent).
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they’re the station that carries the Celtics, so perhaps their Twitter followers are a tad more hoops-centric. But not to the degree that nearly half the respondents would be goin’ Green, especially at a time when the Red Sox (at just 6 percent) are sporting the second best record in baseball.
All this love for a team that didn’t get it done in the postseason. In this town, in this century, that’s a first.