The Mean Green

So last night I strayed from my usual fair (reruns of Law & Order or CSI and flipping to the Red Sox) and actually watched nearly the entire Celtics playoff game. As you can tell by the small list to the right near the bottom of the page, the Celtics are not very high in my pantheon of Boston-area sports. In fact most times I would watch a New England Revolution game before watching the Celtics. As normally the Celtics season has been over before the Revs begin this has not really ever been an issue. But last night I chose to watch the Celts and as with the earlier playoff games it reminded me why I dislike pro basketball.

I remember the vaguely the Larry Bird era. I was not really following sports so much at that age. I would watch with Old Man Pike and get excited but probably more because he was getting excited than because I was. So the 1986 championship was nice but I don't remember a lot of it. Before BC broke through in 2001, I used to joke that the only team I cheered for to win a title in my lifetime would be the Celtics and I didn't even really remember it (who knew what would happen with the Sox and Pats).

As I grew older I came to love the college game much more. BC's magical run to the Elite Eight in 1994 (including a memorable moment when Dick Vitale actually threw a BC scarf around his neck after they beat the Tar Heels when he said they had no chance) solidified March Madness as my favorite basketball event. I dabbled a little in the NBA when the Celts made a couple runs with Pierce & Antoine Walker/Employee Number 8 ("He made baskets"), but I could never get into the lack of flow with the NBA.

My biggest issue is the refereeing. There is no consistency even within a single game. They will go 5 minutes calling nothing and then the next 5 calling every brush of fabric nevermind actual contact. The haphazard fashion by which rules like travelling and carrying and even the amorphous "illegal defense" is staggering. The star players get all the calls and the rookies get screwed on a regular basis. It's insane. To hear announcers actually say - as they did in the Atlanta series - "Well, if Acie Law wasn't a rookie, that would have been a foul on Posey." And they accept this as if it is OK that this is the state of the NBA.

At times, I thought that my bias was because I really only watched Celtic broadcasts (though I may like Tommy Heinson, let's face it, he's not the most unbiased announcer) but I've come to realize that this trend is across the board. Every game I watch plays out the same way. Which is to say that there is no "same way" night in and night out. Actually, come to think of it there is no "same way" quarter in and quarter out. At one point last night, Pierce was fouled so hard he actually had blood drawn and had to leave the game to get it attended to. No foul. In hockey, the first sight of blood and it's automatic 4 minutes. Basketball is supposed to be a sport of limited contact (hence why fouls are called) so to draw blood but no foul is beyond explanation.

I was talking with Old Man Pike as I watched this game and he said to me, "If the Celtics get knocked out I don't think I will watch any other NBA games this season." I feel the same way. Garnett and company have brought some excitement to the Celtics but unfortunately the NBA game itself still hasn't changed.