Re: celtics center 1/25

[Josh Ozersky <josh_ozersky@yahoo.com>]

btw, when I say below "leaving them to their own
folly" I mean the team, not the email group.  

--- "Ozersky, Joshua A" <OzerskyJA@corning.com> wrote:
> A Question of Heart
> 
> Celtics fans have not been spared much in the last
> ten years.  They've seen their greatest hero 
> fall, his heir apparent drop dead, and the ship of
> state driven into an iceberg for the sake of a 
> losing gambit.  They have been jeered, melvined, and
> forced to watch the Lakers rebuild a 
> championship squad.  But the one thing we haven't
> had to deal with is a team we don't 
> understand -- until now.
> 
> As I write this, the Celtics are an unfathomable
> position, even by the standards of this strangest
>  basketball season of my life.  The team stunk up
> the league in December, thanks largely to an 
> injury to Paul Pierce and a very cruel bit of
> scheduling.  Neither of those factors excused losses
> 
> to the LA clippers and other beatable teams, nor did
> it help much when we got Pierce back, 
> returned home, and lost games to Chicago and
> Vancouver.  I threw in the towel after the grizzly
>  loss.  I stopped watching the Celtics, unsubscribed
> to the Celtics email group, and made a 
> point of leaving them to their own folly.  I knew of
> course that this was a head game I was 
> playing, and that a few wins would bring me right
> back on board, with all my fragile, battered 
> hopes intact.  And a few wins came!  We won back to
> back road games against division rivals, 
> and then came from fifteen points down in the fourth
> quarter to beat rival Toronto.  Two nights 
> later we blew the Sonics out of the building.  Tommy
> Heinsohn announced the Celtics as having 
> arrived, shaken off their ills, and having put the
> painful past behind them as breezily as Jim and
>  Tammy Baker.  
> 
> The math was simple.  We have to be at .500 to have
> a chance at the playoffs.  We won four in 
> a row.  We needed one more win, a road game against
> the underwhelming Charlotte Hornets.  
> Yes, Pierce got hurt again.  Why not just kill him,
> Basketball God?  What are you waiting for?
>   But more to the point, with so much at stake, the
> team didn't come to play.  They let the 
> Hornets walk all over them.  Three nights later, the
> sleepwalked through a game to Miami, a 
> team they know they can beat.  We have got to come
> to the conclusion that the only guy who 
> cares as much as we do about these games is Rick
> Pitino.  
> 
> So now the Celtics are Three Games Under again. 
> They play Orlando tonight.  If they lose to 
> this grabasstic crew of journeymen and nobodies, all
> of the hard work (and good luck, and 
> momentum) of the streak will be lost.  The Celtics
> will again be down in the hole, and the team's
>  attendant seers will all opine about our record in
> the next night of back to back games on the 
> road.  
> 
> More importantly, the loyalty of a million henpecked
> husbands, alcoholic office workers, high school
> outcasts, and god knows who else will have been
> betrayed.  I'm not talking about the jerks and
> gaylords
>  who dance for the jumbotron at games.  I mean the
> true fans.  This is the real event, the seventh or
> eighth year of 
> frustration as we wait for the team to arrive.  The
> talent is all here.  We have our center.  We 
> have our veteran point guard.  We have a shot
> blocker.  We have Danny Fortson, although we 
> don't seem to have the minutes for him yet.  Even
> with Griffin and Pierce out, we should be able 
> to take care of these teams.  (And Pierce needs to
> take care of his damn body.  Stretch, tape 
> up, ice down, whatever).  The excuses won't cut it
> anymore.  We've seen what the team can do 
> when Pierce and Walker both bring their A games, and
> everyone else shows up ready to play. 
> I won't accept anything less, and if the celtics
> cough up all their recent headway, I will seriously 
> consider surrendering this column and all my
> loyalties to that reckless, heartless group of men. 
>  The Celtics have a chance to get out of the dark
> wood of error.  They are facing another cruel 
> western road swing in February which could put them
> out of the action entirely.  I don't care if 
> they lose; I don't even care if they miss the
> playoffs.  But they have to struggle and compete, 
> and put forth the effort that every Celtics team has
> showed, from the Chris Ford teams to the ML
>  Carr teams to the first year Rick Pitino team.  So
> many cumulative failures and letdowns are 
> taking their toll on Celtic nation.  If they don't
> care, why should we?  Get out and there and fight, 
> damn you!  FIGHT!  Make them pay!  We don't deserve
> anything less, and we demand a whole lot 
> more.
> 
> Beat Orlando!  Beat Phoenix!  Beat Indiana!  Beat
> Miami!  Beat Toronto!  
> 
> Fight!
> 
> 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
> 
> 
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