Father's Day - June 15
There's a certain acknowledgement you have with people.
One you may not even be fully aware of, it's just second nature, a reflex.
With people you know, you work with, been around for years. People you pass in the halls. People with whom you've established a certain comfort level that there's no long "what's up" kind of greeting required every time you see them.
Our Greatest Hopes - June 8
There are those of you, without question, who never saw him work. Some who might, at some level, wonder why so much of this sports weekend has been devoted to man who never played the game, never hit a jump shot, never caught a pass, hit a homerun or scored a goal.
Most of you know Jim McKay died yesterday. And if you're not lucky enough to know why it's a big deal, and why it matters here tonight, I'm truly sorry.
Your Time - June 5
I sat on the plane Friday night, early Saturday morning actually. It's the same seat I've been in for the last seven years. And really the all ten years I've been in the NBA. Superstition retains a very high value in the world in which I live.
About ninety minutes earlier, the most important quarter of Celtics basketball in a good two decades had just played out. KG hitting shots, Paul Pierce taking over, Posey's steal, Rondo's step-in jumper and the suffocating defense that won 66 games, not waiting for the Eastern Conference torch to be passed, but rather taking it from the Pistons, on their own floor.
In the moment, I sat quietly, pondering both the salmon in front of me and the Eastern Conference crown the C's now wore.
Seven - May 4
Deja vu...all over again.
And I mean, really, we need to stop meeting like this. Sunday afternoons, weight-of-the-world seventh game pressure. No time really for small talk.
And I know what you're thinking. I think we've developed a certain simpatico here in our "From the Booth" world. You think this is going to be another piece about how last year this team won twenty four games, and today, they're playing a seventh game with the whole of the basketball world watching. One of those essays, one of those speeches that would point out that if the Celtics win today, they will in the span of twelve short months, have gone from pining for the draft lottery, to playing the game at which they hold it at halftime.
Wet Cement - May 4
History is rigid.
It is finite.
And it is forever unaltered, frozen in time.
But the concrete that forms it, the concrete that ends up standing that test of time, forever in place, rigid, to be judged and reviewed, appreciated or rebuked -- the concrete that provides the foundation for the future, was at one point fluid. Wet cement.
Altitude - April 18
Everyone has that friend.
You know the one. The rain on the parade, glass half to two-thrids empty, Chicken Little Debbie Downer one, even in the midst of one of the greatest seasons in NBA history.
"I don't know," mine told me. "Sometimes it's seems like it's not really the Celtics...like it's a fantasy team or something." Point being that because this team hasn't been together, building for this season for years, it felt somehow less than.
Trading Places - March 31
I know it was mean, but come on, how many chances like this are you going to get?
The Miami Heat are two years removed from a championship and a year removed from crowing about it, and flaunting it under the prime-time national spotlight only enjoyed by the precious few NBA elite. Those Heat show up at the Garden to play the Celtics, here and now the NBA's best team, on the exact same day the Harlem Globetrotters play the Washington Generals/Nationals.
And I'm not supposed to make jokes about that?
The Snapshot - March 5
March 5, 2008 - 4:22pm - TD Banknorth Garden - Three-plus hours to tip-off.
This one really is from the booth.
I'm not saying all the other times this space has been a lie, but it's more of a concept, than a literal meaning.
Besides, any of you who've looked down at us from your seats at the Garden, or spotted me during a game telecast, windmilling from side to side, doing wax-on, wax-off, to avoid getting screened by Doc Rivers, know we don't really have a booth, anyway. It's more like a couple of chairs and a table.
The Homecoming - February 8
Some of us just have an internal soundtrack that's impossible to turn off.
When you come to a Celtics game, those of you still able to get tickets these days, you know there's a whole show that goes on around the game. There's music playing, videos on the jumbotron, Scot Pollard reciting movie lines, KissCam and that beloved relic of a simpler time, Gino, making us all feel like dancing. And although hardly the kind of thing that I ever would notice, I'm told now we also have a dance team.
TNT - January 31
He ended up wearing the hat on the air that very same night, which believe me, was not the plan.
You always remember the first time you saw certain things; things you just knew were going to have a place of semi-permanence in your world. Maybe the first time you saw Tiger Woods. Maybe the time you saw Michael Jackson at Motown 25, or a 21-year old Eddie Murphy steal an episode of SNL by blowing the doors off a 12:55 a.m. sketch. Sometimes your eyes and ears just know special when they see it and hear it.
The first time I saw Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith together on Inside The NBA, going through the highlites, I knew it would become the center of the league. It just had that feel, you knew it instantly. Sometimes something magical just clicks immediately, without explanation. Take for example, I don't know, a team constructed almost from scratch over the summer that wins 29 of its first 32 games, matching the best start in NBA history....
Martin Luther King Day - January 21
A year ago, the Celtics were in Atlanta on this day, seventy-eight years after Martin Luther King was born there. It was pretty cool.
His name invokes different images to different people across the country and across the world. Across every line that he tried so successfully to blur. Generational, cultural and racial.
Of course, it's unlikely that of all his visions, one was ever a national day to honor his memory, a day which the NBA has adopted as its own. A national holiday around the league of matinees and celebrations to shine the spotlight the league has earned back on a man whose ideas outdistanced his life.
And that's an honor the NBA has earned, as a league where diversity isn't a distant concept, it's the reality.
While You Were Sleeping - January 2
By now, you've become familiar with the mantra.
Doc Rivers has perfected it.
His players have followed it.
Even the citizenry of Celtics Nation have been spotted thinking it, heard saying it and read posting it online.
"We haven't accomplished anything yet."
Right Now - December 12
It's something I've heard a lot over my ten years in the NBA. Not a lot, but just enough so that it plays on my mind.
Max, too, he gets it from time to time.
"Why can't you guys be homers?"
And of course, there are many reasons, not the least of which being it's a violation of everything I believe about myself, my business and what's right with the world. But the best one is that that was Johnny's gig. And no one does Johnny's gig better than Johnny. (Although Tommy comes awful close.)
But for everyone who's ever wanted it, everyone that's ever wanted us to keep our mouths shut when the Celtics got the benefit of a bad call, everyone that's ever wanted us to pretend that the officials, and David Stern and the heavens above all conspire against the Green...this one's for you. Ready?
The Celtics are the best basketball team on the planet.
Go on, read it again. And know it's true.
The Big Brothers - November 27
"You must be having fun."
Five words I've heard in that order, more than any other combination of permutation of words in the English language over the last few weeks. From Toronto to Indiana, from Charlotte to Cleveland, from Fanuiel Hall to the Burlington Mall.
If my life were a question on Family Feud, that'd be the number one answer right now.
Show me "You must be having fun." Ding!
Even Jim Ross, the Hall-of-Fame play-by-play voice of the WWE, said those five words to me during a chance encounter in Charlotte the other night. (As I write, I'm staring out the window of the Celtics team plane, at the WWE corporate jet on the tarmac. Waiting for Vince McMahon to emerge from the door, strut across the tarmac and try to fire someone.)
And I mean, yeah, of course this is fun.
Sugar Ray - November 17
Let's dispatch with the obvious, ok?
Yes, it's only eight games.
I mean of course it is.
But the eight games, the two weeks are all we have. And if you can't enjoy the fact that your Boston Celtics are the best team in the NBA, then you're not getting enough iron in your diet or something.
The Noble Chase - November 2
The answer was no.
Didn't take long either, it wasn't like I had to think about it.
The question, of course, was whether I'd be willing to blog this season.
Blog.