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Bob Ryan On The Unhappy Boston Fans
[The Boston Globe Online][Boston.com]
[Boston Globe Online / Sports]
Problem with Celtic fans isn't likely to
blow over
By Bob Ryan, Globe Columnist, 04/16/99
Here is what Rick Pitino was really
saying after Wednesday night's
latest tedious evening at the Fleet:
''Can't we all get along?''
The sad answer may very well be no, at
least not for the forseeable future.
The players don't understand the fans and
the fans don't like the players. The
president/coach wishes the season weren't
even taking place. The 1999 Boston Celtics
campaign, declared Rick Pitino, is a
''debacle to me.''
The only good news is that, starting
tonight, only seven home games remain.
It is not hard to understand why things
are so bad between the Celtics and the
fans. Bear with me as I try to explain.
Begin with the idea that the Boston
Celtics as an organization have spoiled
this city and its basketball fans. From
1956 until approximately 1992 (Larry
Bird's last year) the Celtics were
winners, and often champions. Down periods
were brief. The two specific rebuilding
periods took five and two years,
respectively, to produce a championship.
It was quite natural to think that the
Celtics would always be great. Worse yet,
it was quite natural to start thinking
that they actually owed it to you to be
great, just because you were you,
wonderful you. (This is a corollary of the
narcissistic entitlement view held by so
many Red Sox fans.)
Those people may or may not still be going
to games. Some are disillusioned. Some
have been priced out. Some detest the
NBA's New World Order of Noise and Hype,
preferring, instead, sport to quote,
entertainment, unquote. I suspect the
diehards of the 1960s and 1970s, and even
their offspring, are now basically
stay-aways.
But some of them undoubtedly do go, and
they are very unhappy patrons. They have
known too many good times and they have
been privileged to see too many great
players. They are very hard markers.
That's one category of unhappy Celtic fan.
Next up are the people who got overly
excited about the arrival of Rick Pitino
and who may not have understood that going
from 15 wins to 36 was the easy part. They
underestimated the ramifications of having
so many important young players on the
team and never thought that having 17 of
the first 26 games on the road would have
such a detrimental effect on the team. You
can include me in that group, but now I
understand. The schedule was a killer.
This team could not handle it.
The three key players are very young.
Antoine Walker is 22. Ron Mercer is 22.
Paul Pierce is 21. Larry Bird, in case
you've forgotten, was a 23-year-old
rookie. Sam Jones was a 24-year-old
rookie. These are different times. The NBA
is a vulture's league, preying on the
emotional weakness of the young. Is it any
surprise that the best teams - Utah,
Miami, Portland, Houston, Indiana, etc. -
all depend on players who have been around
anywhere from six to 16 years? I think
not.
I believe there is only one real reason to
boo, and that is lack of effort. Repeated
stupidity is aggravating, but not booable.
And anyone can make a bad judgment. You
think Larry Bird didn't take some foolish
shots?
Fans at the Fleet have become so hostile
they now boo Just Because. On Wednesday
night Walker came down on a fast break -
yup, an honest-to-God fast break - and
pulled up for an open foul line jumper. He
missed. And he was booed.
That was ridiculous. The shot in question
would have been taken by John Havlicek and
Larry Bird, because it was the proper
basketball judgment. Antoine takes it, and
when it doesn't go in, he gets booed? This
is irrational fan bahavior.
But that's where we are now, and in this
case some of it is Antoine's fault and
some of it is Pitino's fault. Antoine
would not accept the fact that all the
shoulder-wiggling and hot-dogging he
indulged in during his first two years did
not amuse his own fans. He would not
accept that his fruitless coast-to-coast
ventures, often ending in a strip
somewhere in the foul lane, were
counter-productive. At his best, the fans
have been tolerating him.
Pitino made matters much worse by naming
him captain before his 22d birthday. That
naive act insulted the savvier fans. It
amazes me that Pitino couldn't see this.
He was recklessly setting up Antoine for a
fall from grace. I guess I shouldn't be
surprised. Rick Pitino is such a 24-hour
conglomerate he no longer has any real
contact with the outside world.
What we now have at the Fleet is a fandom
that pines for the old days; that loathes
the truly insulting and irrelevant ''game
presentation'' that assumes you really
haven't come for the game; and that is
extremely resentful of the player salaries
and the high ticket prices (it cost me $3
to see Game 7 of the 1966 Finals from the
loge, and I've got the ticket stub to
prove it). Mixed in are a large number of
kids whose only interest in being in
attendance is to see themselves on the
jumbotron, and who will mimic their elders
when the booing starts.
The basic 1999 NBA game, of course, is
beyond dreadful. It is positively numbing
compared to its glory days of the
mid-1980s. Instead of T-shirts, the
Parquet Patrol should be shooting refunds
into the stands.
The players have raw skill, but few are
grounded enough in fundamentals to have
anything resembling a Plan B if the
defense takes away Plan A, which it so
often does. Worse yet, the coaches, as
exemplified by tonight's guest, the
thoroughly reinvented Pat Riley, have
strangled 99.9 percent of the offensive
life out of the game.
Fast breaks are as frequent as human
sacrifices on Boston Common. With the game
lacking all semblance of grace, flow, and
beauty, winning really does become the
only thing, and the Fleet fans really do
expect the Celtics to lose. Thus, on-court
mistakes are self-fulfilling prophecies.
The players, who know so little about
their athletic ancestry, are absolutely
clueless. The fans think they stink and
hate them for the money, which, the
players reason, was not extracted at the
barrel of a gun, so far as they can
recall. Being immature, they cannot
understand how they can be booed at home,
where things are supposed to be
lovey-dovey. They tighten up, play worse,
and down come the boos. Pitino is correct.
The booing serves no purpose. The players,
Walker included, really are trying.
Now everyone is overreacting. It wasn't
even that bad at the Fleet on Wednesday.
There have been many worse nights this
season. Hey, with less than a minute to
go, they were a good Pierce shot away from
winning. But when the game was over Pitino
yelled at a fan - Rick, this has got to
stop - and then he was practically begging
people to stop booing Walker and Walker
was in ther locker room feeling sorry from
himself, and then we run a poignant
full-color picture of a frustrated Walker
and when I first saw the headlines I
thought the Serbs had landed on Revere
Beach.
Whoa.
We've had bad teams and unpleasant
atmospheres around here before (Hello,
Sidney), but this is something different.
The entire Boston NBA experience is
somehow off its axis. The real problem
isn't Pitino, and it isn't Walker and it
isn't the 14-24 record. The real problem
is that even if the Celtics were 24-14, or
even 34-4, and on their way to the
playoffs the fun we once knew in this
league is gone. Our beloved game has been
hijacked by some weird, alien force. It's
all sadly wrong. The Fleet fans may not
realize it, but what they're really doing
when they boo is lament an NBA, that, for
us, at least, no longer exists.
Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist.
This story ran on page E01 of the Boston
Globe on 04/16/99.
© Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.