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In my freshman year of high school, the Boston Celtics—my team—were the reigning champions of the NBA, led by future Hall of Famers Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish and my favorite basketball player to this day, the absolutely clutch guard Dennis Johnson (DJ). They defended their title in a rematch of the previous year’s finals against the scary-good L.A. Lakers. Although the men in green started off with a boom, routing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson and crew by 34 points in Game 1’s “Memorial Day Massacre” (backup forward Scott Wedman shot 11 of 11 from the floor), they soon lost steam and fell to the Lakers in six games.
In my sophomore year of high school, the Celtics returned to action with a group that’s on pretty much everyone’s short list of all-time greatest NBA teams. Besides the starting five of Bird, McHale, Parish, Johnson and guard Danny Ainge, there was Wedman, backup guard Jerry Sichting, and the veteran center Bill Walton, already a basketball legend for his stellar play at UCLA and with the 1977 champion Portland Trail Blazers. These Celtics were, if you’ll excuse the cliché, poetry in motion. Logic-defying no-look passes, brilliant give-and-go plays, outrageous shots—every time they set foot on the court was a clinic. They played 51 games at home that season (including the playoffs) and lost only one; their final record was 82-18, and they regained the title of champion after defeating the Houston Rockets, four games to two.
In my junior year of high school, the famously injury-prone Walton got hurt again and missed most of the season. When he did return, he wasn’t at full strength. Wedman was out almost the whole year as well with multiple injuries. McHale broke one of his feet but kept right on playing. The Celtics struggled yet still managed to compile a 59-23 record in the regular season and get back into the finals again, against L.A. again. This time, though, they were clearly outmatched, and despite heroic effort—especially from DJ, who painted a 42-minute, 26-point masterpiece in Game 3—the Lakers beat them in six, again. Ominous clouds loomed on the horizon as well, as the Celtics’ first pick (and the second pick overall) in the ’86 NBA draft, Maryland star Len Bias, had died of a cocaine overdose just two days after the team signed him. But still there was no reason to believe that the Celtics wouldn’t return to the finals next year, as they’d done for the entirety of my time at Cambridge Rindge and Latin.
By this time, my dad and I had established a routine regarding Celtics games. If the team was on the road, we’d watch the local TV broadcast on Channel 56, with Gil Santos handling the call and Celtics icon Bob Cousy offering color commentary. Frequent fun was poked at Cousy’s speech impediment and the way it made him pronounce terms like “dribble penetration.” We weren’t intending to be mean, but looking back, this wasn’t our finest behavioral quirk. If the team was at home, we’d listen to Glenn Ordway and sandpaper-throated Johnny Most—who sounded as if he might very well expire at any moment of the contest—on WRKO 680 AM. We didn’t have cable, so we missed the SportsChannel telecasts from the Garden with Mike Gorman and another Celtics great, Tommy Heinsohn, but if a home game was nationally televised (and many were), Heinsohn would sometimes show up as the color man.
The morning after a game, Dad and I would leave the house early and head toward Harvard Square. We’d stop on the corner of Church and Brattle Streets, where Dad would buy a copy of The Boston Globe at the bookstore/newsstand Reading International. (Although Dad had been one of the chief editors at the competing Boston Herald for years in the ’60s and ’70s, he rarely read it in the ’80s.) From there we’d walk another block to a greasy spoon called Cardell’s, where we’d grab a table, order breakfast and pore over the coverage of the previous evening’s game. We’d scan the box score in detail. We’d delight in the metaphors and similes, the wordplay and the descriptive language of Bob Ryan, Leigh Montville, Dan Shaughnessy and Jackie MacMullan. Ritual reading and breakfast concluded, I’d pick up my backpack and walk the rest of the way to school.
Then, in my senior year, the climate changed. My Celtics were in the playoffs again as I figured they would be, but for the first time in four years they missed the finals. As I was preparing to graduate, they were preparing to pass the title of Eastern Conference champion to the Detroit Pistons. I’ll never forget the day it happened. June 3, 1988. Final score: Pistons 95, Celtics 90, in overtime. Four games to two. I was riding with my dad through southeastern Massachusetts in a rental car, listening to Most and Ordway tell the tale. And although it was late spring, it felt like autumn.
The winter that followed was long. Everyone went off to college, except me. My mom decided to leave her job at Harvard and go back to grad school at the University of Connecticut. Our family’s life in Cambridge ended, and the next few years would be full of confusion and discomfort.
Wedman had already been traded to Seattle. Ainge got traded to Sacramento. Walton never really came back. He and DJ both officially retired in 1990. McHale hung up his jersey in ’94. Bird had back surgery later in 1988; he did return to the team, but his playing was diminished for the remainder of his career until he retired, still in obvious pain, in ’92. Reggie Lewis, the phenomenal young guard who seemed ready to lead the next generation of Green Teamers, died of a heart attack in 1993 at the age of 27. The Boston Celtics wouldn’t return to the NBA Finals for more than two decades.
Today, as I look with a misty eye at Erin Clark’s wonderful photo of Jayson Tatum embracing his six-year-old son in the confetti-strewn aftermath of another hard-won Celtics championship, I can’t help but think of the stars of my youth. Walton gone. DJ gone. Most gone. Santos gone. Heinsohn gone. All of the living retired—except for Shaughnessy, God bless him. And, of course, Mom and Dad gone. This is my first championship without either of them to read the box score with, laugh at the announcers with, celebrate with.
But you know what? All that loss and sorrow makes it even more meaningful when we win. And we have won.
2024 NBA Champion Boston Celtics, I salute you.
Though I have no love for the Celtics, and you can imagine why, I do love when you write about you and your dad.