With the weather reaching spring-like temperatures, winter is finally over. So, too, is the Boston Celtics' season.
It has been a season to forget, but thankfully it's coming to an end tonight. The finale doesn't mean anything for the Celtics, who haven't played meaningful basketball in months. Boston's opponents, the Washington Wizards, are going to the playoffs. The Celtics, for the first time since I was in middle school, aren't.
Strangely, I'm okay with this. I haven't cared less about a Celtics team in my life since, well, middle school. I knew the Celtics were going to be terrible this year, and sure enough, they were. I can count the number of games I watched on one hand. I fell off the bandwagon. I was a fan in name only.
I can't even say I checked out on this season, because the truth is that I never even bothered to check in. I barely kept up with the team. I just didn't think it was worth investing my time in a bunch of stopgaps and fill-ins, few of whom will still be around when Boston becomes a contender again.
Worse, my relationship with the team deteriorated to the point where I was actively rooting for it to fail so it could score a better draft pick. I was pleased when it lost and mildly perturbed when it won. Winning was counterproductive to its strategy - it only hurt the team's lottery odds.
Tanking, I soon realized, turns everything upside down. You root for your team to lose, sure, but it goes deeper than that. You want it to trade away established talent at the deadline, rather than acquire more of it to improve the team. You hope it blows its fourth quarter leads and misses its free throws. You hope its rallies fall just short. When a star or key player goes down, you hope his absence is prolonged. You want him to take his time, wait until he's 100 percent healthy and then wait a little longer just to be sure. You hope the coach gives his scrubs more minutes than they deserve.
That sounds cynical, I know, but when your team is tanking you want it to do whatever it can to avoid winning. The more losses, the better.
But as bad as this year has been, there are still some positive takeaways. Jeff Green had a fine season, and Rajon Rondo returned to form looking no worse for wear after missing most of the first half of the season rehabbing his torn ACL. Avery Bradley improved his shot enough to evolve from a defense-first player to an offensive threat. Twenty-two-year-old power forward Jared Sullinger took a big step forward in his sophomore season and should be a solid big man for years to come. Rookie coach Brad Stevens acquitted himself well, helping his young players grow and mature.
Another highlight was how well Boston played at the start of the season - much better than anyone could have possibly expected. They even led the Atlantic Division for a fleeting moment before the bottom fell out. Since mid-December, the Celtics have gone 13-42. They've won three times in the past four weeks, crashing and burning in a spectacular fashion. If at first they seemed unsure of how to go about tanking, they mastered the art of it pretty quickly.
But the constant losing takes a toll after a while, and, at this point, I'm just ready to turn the page and start thinking about next season. I want to be a fan again.
Tyler is a junior who is majoring in economics. He can be reached at Tyler.Maher@tufts.edu.
