Imagining the Good Old Days

In December of 1986, the Celtics were on their way to their fourth strait NBA Finals and their fifth in seven years. Celtic Pride was at an all time high and the Bird, Parish, McHale dynasty were dragging teams into the old Garden, beating them down mercilessly, and then booting to them out to the cold Boston streets.

At least that’s what I’ve been told.

In December of 1986, I was born. I was just a young sprout with no idea who Larry Bird was, a Boston sports baby with no indifference towards the Lakers and no idea of what the Celtic legacy was.
My generation and I completely missed the glory days of the Celtics. We never got to experience the packed Garden shaking with the hearts of the fans. We never got to see Parish’s long legs exaggerated by his short shorts. We never got to see Bird average 25 pts a games while dishing out over five assists, doing it all sporting a clear blonde mustache. We’ve seen it in highlight reels, we’ve seen it on ESPN Classic, but the fact is we missed out. By the time we began watching basketball and going to games, the Celtics played in the Fleet Center where the loudest noise made was when all the fans got up simultaneously to leave disappointed - and all the new plastic folding seats closed at once.

The shorts were longer, the team was losing, and nobody had a mustache.

This year looks different, though. People are watching, the team is new and looks dominate, and talks of playoffs and even (shhh…Finals??) are in the air. I know as well as anybody that five games into the season are not enough to gauge anything. Who knows what could happen in the next 77 games – but it sure is fun to watch.
This team could be nothing like the team of the mid-eighties, but I would never know. I wish I could compare them. I wish that I could sit and watch the Celtics beat the tar out of teams with a smile on my face thinking to myself, “Ahh…just like the good old days”. But I can’t. All I can do is enjoy them for who they are now and hope that one day, in 20 years, I can sit back and reminisce about how good the ’07-’08 Celtics were. I hope I can tell my kid stories of KG and Ray Ray and how they transformed our team into a offensive powerhouse, while simultaneously getting Paul Pierce to play defense. Oh, how wonderful that would be. But I'm not banking on the Celtics to provide me with Boston sports memories. Not because I dont have confidence, because I do. And not because this team isn't playing amazing, because they are. But simply because I've seen the Red Sox win two World Series and the Patriots win three Super Bowls, in six years. I've watched Big Papi go from nothing to everything. I saw Tom Brady come off the bench and within a few years become one of the best quarterbacks of all time. I've accumulated enough dramatic and grande bed-time stories to tell my future kid every night for at least five years.

But hey, I wouldn't hate a couple more.