The Bostonians

["Ozersky, Joshua A" <OzerskyJA@corning.com>]

Going Home for the First Time

Being a Celtics fan and living far from the Boston area puts the devoted
booster in an awkward position.  Like the Moslem who can never reach Mecca,
or the would-be gourmand making do on restaurant reviews and canned stock,
the Celtics diaspora leaves much to the pining imagination.  As the Celtics
columnist for Bskball.Com, however, I thought that it was incumbent on me to
visit the City of Boston for two home games and report back with all the
rat-a-tat-tat immediacy of war journalism, or at least the Boston Globe's
lazier reporters.

Arriving to the Celtics-Bucks contest, I found myself wandering the bright,
antiseptic Fleet Center more as a mall than as a gladitorial venue.  Any
thoughts I had been entertaining of how to defend Ray Allen were banished by
the sight of the Celtics Pro Shop, a cornucopia of team merchandise that
left me paralyzed with the urge to buy and consume.  Having relentlessly
hustled my wife from bedtime the night before, into and out of cars, through
a series of payphones and direction queries, I was immensely relieved at
having got to our seats on time to see the pre-game warmups.  From our
courtside/loge seats (two rows from courtside, near the corner of the floor)
we could see the Milwaukee bucks lazily shooting around, rolling layups
carelessly against the backboard, and making small talk with each other.
Ray Allen pretended to be guarded by a Celtics ballboy, languidly putting up
a turnaround jumper which, I was unnerved to see,  barely stirred the net.
Robert Traylor looked enormous, and looked bigger and bigger as the contest
began, through the magic of not boxing out.  Oddly, considering the sea of
white faces that are the good seats at the Fleet Center, my neighbors fore
and aft were African Americans.  Behind me were a couple of sweatered
youths, one of whom was handsome and burly in a familiar way.  In front of
me, a black man in his late thirties was wearing a beautiful suit and tie,
the latter which I had complimented him on.  This fellow, it turns out, was
well-dressed for a reason, as he was honored before the game as the
community hero of the night by standing between Antoine and Ron Mercer as he
accepted a plaque from anonymous team officials.  "Look, there he is," his
beaming girlfriend or wife pointed out to me, as the man's face appeared,
Big Brother-style on the Jumbotron.

Once the game began, however, I quickly became a nuisance to these good
people.  Encouraged by my proximity to players I had spend half a lifetime
addressing through the TV screen, I found myself  shreiking out imprecations
at the top of my lungs.  "Cup your hands," my wife told me.  "You're
spitting on everyone."  But her advice went unheeded as the fervor took hold
of me.  That the game was marked by an absurd inequality of whistles only
worsened my temperament.  "Ref, where's our whistles?" I yelled, and I heard
a voice over my shoulder agree.  "Yeah, he was fouled, man!"  said the young
man.

Having established myself as a senior official, I now took it into my head
to direct the players on offense as an assistant coach.  To me it was
perfectly obvious that, having traded Andrew and our lottery pick for Vitaly
Potapenko, a young, strong, skillful and aggressive center, it hardly made
sense to send him out to the perimeter to set picks and pass.  "Get it to
Vitaly!  Inside out!"  I yelled, and although the box score shows the
Ukraine Train as having only scored five points, you can take it from me.
Every time he set up down low something good happened.  Either a lane opened
up, or he got the ball and scored, or he got the ball and got fouled, or he
made a real pass outwards, as opposed to the desperate fumbles he showed in
the high post, where he tended to hold the ball as if it were a scratching
wildcat instead of an inanimate rubber sphere.  Equally disconcerting was
the presence, long-rumored but never experienced, of the obstreperous Crunch
and Munch man, a wildly aggressive vendor whose MO was to run shreiking at
the top of his lungs towards a spectator, and then wordlessly thrust a box
of Crunch and Munch at him.  Crunch and Munch man showed considerably more
moxie than many players, and would no doubt be signed by Pitino to a 10-day
contract were his services not needed more urgently for fan morale.

Between the third and fourth quarters, a child Michael Jackson impersonator
called Russell  (after the fashion of one-word stars like Charo or Prince)
danced vigorously on the floor to much applause, flanked by two 10 year old
backup girls.  Russell refused to cede the floor to the players at the
buzzer, insisting on finishing his moonwalk, and from the way the Celtics
played it was hard to blame him.  Again and again, despite my protestations,
the Celtics were dismantled by the methodical Bucks offense.  With their
reckless doubling (why?) the Celts presented Milwaukee with many good looks,
while ensuring that on their own trips down the floor Kenny "Adrian Dantley
Jr." Anderson took it to the rim and didn't get fouled.  On one memorable
trip, Anderson was fouled and made the shot, only to be called for an
offensive foul by the referee.  This inspired a burst of comment by the
young men behind me.  "Man, what game is he watching?" asked one.  "The ref
is killing us," his friend agreed.  (Later, after the game, Kenny Anderson
would concur.  "The refs didn't give us no love," he said mournfully.  "We
were in our own home, and they didn't give us any love.")

Still,the team was keeping it close, even taking a brief lead - largely as a
result of my commands to "get it to V" in the halfcourt set.  At halftime, I
met Mike Dynon, a fellow Celtics e-mail listee, at the customer service
desk.  Mike was a forty-something fellow, distinguished looking with his
grey moustache.  Mike made a cogent point about our defense, which impressed
my wife mightily.  "He knows more than you!" my wife exclaimed, but this was
of course a matter of dispute like everything else.  Returning to my seat
with a rather poor hot dog (at the Bucks stadium, I remembered ruefully, you
get delicous bratwurst) I was pleased to see that Russell had retaken the
stage, this time with an elderly white man who danced behind him.  Russell
fell on the floor and pretended to be asleep while the man pranced around in
a vaguely funky way.  Russell showed his disdain by floppling over in his
sleep, as if the aging hippie was a dream inspired by too much Count Chocula
before bedtime.  Eventually rising, Russell showed off some rather weak
breakdance moves before finishing up with his strong suit, the moonwalk.  

The second half was blur and worry, as I began to fear that the Celtics
would lose at home yet again, and that I was being tuned out by the players
like Rick Pitino.  The game by this time was very tense, and the crowd
should have been as involved as two gunfighters in a staredown - were they
not corrupted by the sound system and the cameras of Fox Sports New England,
who rewarded them for dancing foolishly to old pop songs, oblivious to the
game they had paid to see.  Worst were the children, who shimmied about as
if  performing in a JonBenet Ramsey pageant instead of attending a Boston
Celtics game.  I too mugged for the camera, pulling a celtics jacket up
around my wife's shoulders and yelling, crunch-and-munch style.  Consult the
video.  

The team defended the Bucks well enough, including the dangerous but not
driven Ray Allen and the lazy-ass finesse of Glen Robinson.  Alas, offense
did us in.  On two posessions in a row at the end, Kenny Anderson insisted
on driving into the heart of the defense, amazed that he didn't get a call.
("The refs didn't give us no love.") Antoine, who had been active all night
in every facet of the game, came up with the rebound but was unable to
inveigle the ball into the basket.  We had lost by one point.

After the game, I dragged my wife around the Celtics pro shop, feverishly
debating with her whether to buy a Celtics warm up jacket ("where would you
wear it?")  or the official shorts ("it's made of miracle fabric which draws
away sweat!").  After finally giving up on getting what I wanted (we ended
up at Niketown the next day), we left the building.  As we did, I noticed a
group of kids in green gear holding up 3-ring binders and basketballs to the
door of an SUV.  So these are the autograph hounds!  I said to myself.
Seated in the SUV was Greg Minor, with a patient look on his face, who sat
there for a good 20 minutes signing basketballs and books.  I said to him,
"you're playing great, Greg!  We all see it," at which he smiled warmly.
Not a bad guy at all - as long as you're not his girlfriend, and I wasn't.
The next car, a 4 year old Ford thunderbird, was Marlon Garnett, who, a
security guard later told me, was Minor's only rival for generosity to the
autograph hounds.  Keeping it real!  Following Garnett, a large and very
beautiful SUV carried Paul Pierce, and next to him the familiar-looking
young man who had sat behind me.  I kicked myself for missing the
opportunity to question Paul's brother!  And yet what could I do.  Pierce
didn't sign any autographs, and the next car, which contained M.L. Carr
wasn't asked for one either, although it didn't stop.  The SUV which
followed in this four-wheel-drive parade was the most impressive yet, with
dark tinted windows which didn't even allow a glimpse of the driver as it
swung briskly out onto the street.  The receding "EMPLOY 8" licence plate
let us know who it was, but far too late.  Eventually I left the Fleet
Center with some warm memories of my visit.  Surely the game against New
Jersey would be just as good.

New Jersey

The Nets game started at 12:30 the day the clocks sprung forward.  I rushed
out of Easter mass after receiving communion with but one thought on my
mind:  don't be late!  Happily, I was able to cajole and bully my
long-suffering wife into checking out of the hotel and taking the train to
the Fleet Center.  Boston is a tiny city, and the trains only cost 85 cents,
so this was a short and inexpensive trip.  If we had had any less time, I
might have had us airlifted in.  Upon arriving, I made my way over to the
scorer's table, where young Antoine Walker was stretching and chatting with
somebody.  "You're playing great, Antoine!"  I told him.  "Such great
effort!"  My oft-defended hero gave me a nice big smile, and I moved on the
Celtics bench.  El Jefe was nowhere to be seen, so I called over to
Associate Coach Jim O'Brien and got his attention.  "Get it down low to
Vitaly," I advised.  "The inside-out game,"  I added meaningfully.  O'Brien,
taken aback by my impudence, smiled sarcastically, but was my advice any
less valid for that?  The game itself was gruesome, and from my very close
vantage point it was obvious to me that Pierce was merely standing around
much of the time.  Several times I yelled (I as only ten or twenty feet
away) "Get involved, Paul!"  or "Wake up, Paul!" or "You're too good for
this spot-up crap, Paul!" at which he often became active, as if hearing me.
Meanwhile, as if to spite me, the team seldom got the ball to Vitaly,
choosing instead to let Antoine do the work for everybody, and blowing what
layup opportunities did come along.  The halftime entertainment consisted of
a troupe of dunking acrobats who sprang from a circular trampoline under the
basket.  This was a visually interesting but tepid entertainment at best,
little more enjoyable than the ritual humiliation of the random fan whose
inevitable three-point airball costs him or her thousands of dollars.  The
fans seemed to be unhappy with the game as well, as the well-known boobirds
came home to roost in the second half.  As those who watched the game know,
the Nets feasted on Celtics turnovers which led to dunks.  Awful.  Pierce
was not the only celtic who looked and played tired as the team turned it
over again and again to the aggressive Nets defense.  Battie had a nice
block on Van Horn, and Kenny had a few of his one-man-show drives, which, as
I reminded every around me, was bad medicine for a point guard.  "Nice
drive!" a man yelled in front of me.  "Nice drive, but try passing it,
Kenny!" I amended.  My volume levels were getting louder, and my wife asked
my to cup my hands so as not to spray atomized spittle on the other fans.
The man next to me deserved little better, as he left midway through the
fourth quarter.  Bum!  I stayed until the bitter end, and noted Tommy
Heinsohn walking away slouched over, taking this loss to heart as he always
does.  Well, I thought to myself, a real Celtic sticks with the team through
thick or thin.  Especially here at home, where the game is actually played,
for the fans who are supposed to care most.
Joshua Ozersky
Marketing Communications
Environmental Products Division
Corning Incorporated.
HP-CB-02-C6A
Corning, New York 14831
Phone:  (607) 974-8124
Fax:      (607) 974-2233