Fairweather Fans and Back to .500

["dan.p" <dan.p@MCI2000.com>]

>>Not following the NBA closely last year because of the Celts poor attempt
>>at playing basketball, this year watching all Celt and some selected

>The Celtics did suck last year, but I still followed them closely as well
as >the NBA.  The statement you made sounded just a little to much like a
>fairweather fan and I really can't abide by those.  

>Suggestion: Stick with your team through thick and thin.

Get off your pedistal.  Losing interest in a team that's tanking its season
and that only winds up winning 15 games does not make one a fair-weather
fan.  

That said, the Celtics beat the New Jersey Nets last night, a great win
coming off their bitter loss to the same team Wednesday night.  I went to
the game and wanted to share some stuff that didn't make the TV coverage.

The marketers have gone into full swing and brought in many of the same
condescending distractions that other teams have employed for a while now. 
During time-outs, guys dressed in green use a big slingshot to launch items
into the crowd.  It's very depressing to see fans go bezerk when the
slingshot is pointed in their direction.  Have some pride, people.  (Let me
save someone the trouble:  Yeah, maybe I should get off my pedistal too.)

They had a "noise meter" flashing on the jumbo-tron which might have been
interesting if it actually reflected the decibel level in the building, but
it just goes up and up regardless of how loud the crowd is.  The top
ranking on the thing is "Garden level".  We never quite made it to Garden
level, from which I can only infer that the FleetCenter is inferior to the
Garden.

The halftime show was actually pretty interesting.  It was a guy called
"Stickman" (he had a real name too, but I forgot it) and he would get a
ball spinning on his finger, transfer it to a little stick the size of a
pencil, then to a huge stick that must have been 25 or 30 feet long.  He
would then pick up the huge stick with the ball still spinning on the end. 
He stood out by the three point line and slowly lowered the stick until the
ball was right in front of the basket and then he tipped it in.  Then he
did the same thing all over but this time he stood under the basket and
with the stick pointed straight up he just pulled it away and the ball fell
25+ feet and shot right through the hoop.  The crowd erupted.  It was
pretty clever.  He spent part of the second half of the game wandering
around the stands and people yelled out, "Stickman!" whenever he went by.

I taped the game and watched the broadcast, and some people may have
noticed Tommy mention Gatling and Cassell getting into a little arguement. 
The cameras missed all of the action so I just wanted to mention he wasn't
going senile.  There was some mis-communication and the Nets got a
24-second violation.  Cassell and Gatling stared jawing at each other and
it looked like it was turning nasty.  Cassell marched right up to Gatling
glaring at him and bumped right into his chest, but it seemed to difuse
after that.  I sat there wondering what people would do if two teammates
started getting into a fight.

Looking forward to the game summaries...

Dan