When it comes to the Celtics, it's easy to be green with revulsion, says Bill Livingston
by Bill Livingston/Plain Dealer Columnist
Saturday April 11, 2009, 6:56 PM
CLEVELAND -- The Boston Celtics used to play in a squalid tenement slum atop a train station called Boston Garden. It smelled of stale urine, spilled beer, and Red Auerbach's victory stogies. Nobody called the dump the Miscue by the Choo-Choo, though.
After a generation without the Celtics winning an NBA championship, our long civic nightmare has regrettably resumed. The Celtics are the defending champions. They won two series, 4-3, with all their victories at home, They are the Cavs' closest pursuers in the East and their archest of rivals this season.
Sunday, they are back, in the flesh, at The Q.
The Celtics franchise historically has featured enough chicanery to shame investment bankers today. So, in the spirit of grudge-holders here (and in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Detroit and elsewhere) and as proof that we have no wish to get along with the Gang Green, here are:
The Top 10 Reasons to Hate the Celtics
10. Celtic pride: "It's like they stop by Red's office on the way to the game and pick up their pride. No one else is allowed to have any," said long-time NBA coach Gene Shue.
9. Boston Garden: The visiting locker rooms were either ovens or ice boxes. If the visitors won in an oven, they would be in a meat locker the next time. The pretty parquet floor was made from World War II scraps (hence the differing colors) and was warped and swollen. Only the Celtics knew where the dead spots were. Fans sometimes pelted opponents with eggs thrown from the balconies. A Celtic fan's pre-game checklist: MTA tokens, tickets, hip flask the Irishman in the team logo is lacking, carton of Grade A jumbo double-yolkers.
Elise Amendola/Associated PressUp until his death in 2006, Red Auerbach's penchant for smoky celebration was a habit any opponent of the Celtics learned to detest.
8. Auerbach's victory cigar: My favorite take-off on this rub-it-in gesture was the Philly fan with an enormous cigar who stood in front of Johnny Most, the Celtics' play-by-play man and career homer, blowing smoke rings at him as Most signed off following the Sixers' Game 7 playoff victory at home in 1977. With each puff, he said, "How do you like that, Johnny?"
7. Red to the rescue: After coach Tom Heinsohn was ejected in Game 5 of the conference finals vs. the Cavs in 1976, Auerbach grandly paraded down from his seat in the stands and stationed himself behind the Boston bench, as a aide to assistant coach John Killilea. Nothing in the rules permitted it, but Red never played by them anyway.
6. Paul Pierce spits at the Cavaliers' bench: After jawing with LeBron James, Pierce declared "Phooey (also 'Patooie!') on you" in a 2004 exhibition game.
5. Atlanta's Tree Rollins tries to make a finger sandwich of Danny Ainge's hand in the 1983 playoffs: Look at the tape. Ainge had wrenched his hand free and was trying to gouge Rollins' eyes. Tree's choice: bite or sight.
4. Don Nelson's Flubber shot in Game 7 of the 1969 Finals: Off the back heel, high, high into the air, and through the net to throttle a Lakers comeback. Keith Erickson knocked the ball away from John Havlicek (whose seventh game stats, his reputation aside, aren't all they are cracked up to be), but it went straight to Nelson.
3. NBA ref denies Paul Silas the chance to be first Chris Webber: Late in the first overtime of the triple-overtime Game 5 with Phoenix in 1976, Boston power forward Paul Silas, later the Cavs' coach, signaled for a timeout, which, like Webber with the Fab Five, the Celtics unfortunately lacked. Ref Richie Powers ignored him, saying later the players should decide it. Boston won the game and the series in Game 6. No one remembers that Powers could well have been the first Tim Donaghy.
2. Boston coach Bill Fitch does a Belichick: Ejected during a regular-season game against Philadelphia in 1981, Fitch, watching on television in the locker room, listened to a microphone eavesdropping on the Sixers' huddle before the final play, and sent ball boys out with the info. Boston won the game, eventually won home-court advantage on the third tiebreaker, and won Game 7 of the conference finals at home by a single point.
1. "Larry Bird is not walking through that door, Kevin McHale is not walking through that door and Robert Parish is not walking through that door": Rick Pitino offered this lament when he was Boston's foppish, failed generalissimo. A rogue Ping Pong ball sent Tim Duncan to San Antonio in the lottery, although Boston had the best chance of winning it. Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen later walked through the Celtics' door to join Pierce, however, and set up last year's detestable developments.
LeBron is walking through a different door today. An old booby prize awaits.
