As the final buzzer sounded and a veritable blizzard of confetti created a haze over the Boston Garden, my phone rang – a call from my daughter much like the one I made to my father from a hotel room in Orlando back in 2008 when the Celtics wrapped up Banner 17 and the call from our married student housing on the Minneapolis/St. Paul line when the Celtics won Banner 16 in 1986. This year, FaceTime was an upgrade over those calls and, of course, there had been increasingly less nervous texts throughout the night as the Celtics held onto a 20-point lead.
There were also calls to my Dad from a hotel room in San Antonio in 2002 when the Patriots won their first Super Bowl and from here in Maine on that October night in 2004 (complete with a total lunar eclipse) when the Red Sox Reversed The Curse and finally won their first World Series Championship in either of our lifetimes. Those were special, each in their own way, but they weren’t the Celtics.
As I wrote in a previous Father’s Day post, we are a basketball family, we bleed green, and we are reveling in only the second Celtics championship in my daughter’s lifetime. By the time that I was her age, the Celtics had already hung sixteen championship banners in the Garden rafters and retired just as many jersey numbers (actually 15 numbers and one name).
While celebrating Banner 16 in 1986, I never could have wrapped my head around the idea that it would take twenty-two years to hang Banner 17 and another sixteen for Banner 18. It was unthinkable.
True, by the time I started following professional sports in the summer of 1967, it was no longer a foregone conclusion that the Celtics would win the championship, but neither was it a rare event.
I recall lying in bed with my transistor radio trying to stay awake as the Celtics topped the Lakers in 1968 and learning the next morning of the “World Champion Lakers” balloons that never fell in 1969.
In 1974, my father and I were at the Garden for Game 6 of the Finals, all set to witness and celebrate the Celtics first championship of the 70s – until Kareem’s sky hook at the end of the second overtime dashed those dreams (at least until Game 7). It was a slog of a game that ended 86-86 in regulation and only became a classic as each overtime unfolded. It was also the night that I learned that m&m’s do in fact melt in your hand.
That double overtime penultimate game was one-upped in 1976, my junior year in high school. We gathered around my grandparents’ TV as the triple overtime Game 5 against the Phoenix Suns went on and on and on – the night before the SATs.
In 1981, we watched the first championship of the Larry Bird era on the “huge” 25-inch color console TV (an impressive piece of furniture) that my father and I had carried up the street earlier that afternoon – a generous hand-me-down gift from my parents’ neighbors.
In 1984, as I flew back to Boston to get married after my first year in graduate school in Minnesota, even though the series was tied 2-2, there was no doubt in my mind that the Lakers would melt in the extreme June heat of the old Boston Garden.
1985 was tough. The first time the Celtics lost to the Lakers in the Finals – and after a 148-114 Boston blowout win in Game 1, the Memorial Day Massacre.
In 1986, we were huddled around the tiny black-and-white portable TV at our apartment in Minnesota as the Celtics defeated the Houston Rockets for Banner 16.
That Celtics win was the lone triumph in what was a “small-b” banner year for Boston sports, coming in between the Patriots debacle in their first Super Bowl appearance and the Red Sox ignominious defeat in the 1986 World Series.
But that was back at a simpler time, a time when we still celebrated teams whose season ended with a conference championship or American League pennant – with an estimated 750,000 fans showing up for the Red Sox Appreciation Day parade and rally. Back in Boston and teaching that fall, I can’t say that I didn’t wander up the street during my free period to watch that parade pass by – and I never said how many of my students I spotted along the way.
The loss to the Lakers in 1987 felt inevitable, an end of an era, but we were confident that the Celtics would regroup, reload, and be back on top in the 1990s. They always had.
But the 1990s passed as did most of the first decade of the 2000s without another Celtics championship or even a sniff at a Finals appearance.
Nevertheless, my father still pulled out his rocking chair, set up the TV table, and watched virtually every game.
In the spring of 2006, we attended our last Celtics game together at the “new Garden.” His health kept him from joining me at the NCAA Women’s Final Four in Boston in early April, but a couple of weeks later he was able to make it to a game to see that core of new young Celtics whom he really liked. As with the first game we attended together in 1969, our seats were in the balcony.
In 2008, the Celtics traded away that “young” core to assemble a new “Big 3” and claim Banner 17. As mentioned above, I watched those Finals from a hotel while attending the CCSSO assessment conference.
A couple of days later, when I arrived to visit relatives about an hour or so outside of Orlando, my godmother was all decked out in green. She had spent the morning watching the Celtics parade on TV while “throwing together a little lunch” – a multi-course affair that could have held its own with any Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. Of course, I couldn’t leave without leftovers to have at the hotel that night for dinner and a couple of sandwiches for the plane the next day – because one needs an eggplant parm sandwich on that early morning 3-hour flight from Orlando to Boston. You never know.
My father passed away in 2009 – shortly after the Lakers defeated the Magic for their 15th championship.
And we lost my godmother a year later, hours before Game 7 of those 2010 Finals, just a day after she was diagnosed with lung cancer. It goes that way sometimes. I got the call while I was on my way to yet another hotel. I still haven’t watched that game.
So, this week we party!
We buy the t-shirts (a few sizes bigger than the shirt I bought in 1981), read all the articles, revel in the videos, wipe away a tear while looking at that photo, have a nice meal, and raise a glass or two as we wait to follow all the coverage of the parade on Friday.
We don’t know whether Banner 18 is the beginning of the next Celtics dynasty or whether it will be a decade or two until Banner 19. Either way, we don’t know what fate has in store for us, so we cherish these moments and celebrate like the Lakers wanted to do in 1969.
Eat, drink, and be merry today. It’s Banner 18!
Embrace the Absurd 