Celtics 131 Lakers 92

Apologies for a completely off topic post today, but it had to be done.

I am from Massachusetts, about half an hour outside of Boston, and I love watching sports. Above all else, I am a Red Sox fan, but I have a place in my heart for all Boston teams. I reached prime sports-watching age in the mid 1980s, which left its indelible mark on my feelings about sports in general, and about my Boston teams specifically.

I remember exactly where I was, eleven years old and full of hope, when the ball rolled through Buckner's legs. I watched the Bears destroy the Patriots at my friend Andy's house. I learned through hard lessons that being a Boston sports fan is to live a life of heartache and suffering.

The one exception to that during my childhood was the Celtics. My family and I had dinner in the restaurant that K.C. Jones and Bobby Orr used to own together on the night the Celtics won their sixteenth championship. I remember watching in awe as Robert Parish walked through the restaurant to some back-room celebration, ducking under the seven foot door frames. As we finished dinner and walked out to the parking lot, the rest of the team started to trickle in. They were literally larger than life. Who knew then that it would be another fifteen years of suffering before another Boston team won a championship?

The life of a Boston sports fan has changed a lot in the last eight years. From the moment Adam Vinatieri kicked that ball through the uprights to beat the Rams, Boston fans haven't known quite what to think of themselves. Three Superbowl wins (so close to a fourth), two World Series championships (without the world ending or hell freezing over), and now, twenty two years later, the Celtics are back with their seventeenth championship.

It's not the same Boston I grew up with, full of heartbreak and disappointment, but I gotta say, I could really get used to this.

Go Celtics!