So on Friday night at the Garden, the Boston Celtics played the Golden State Warriors. The Celtics won 107-103, Monta Ellis put up 41 and Rajon Rondo dished out 16 dimes. Your basic game with a championship-caliber squad playing at home against an inferior, sub-.500 team, right? Wrong. One big difference: I was there.
For those of you expecting a Bill Simmons-style retro diary, sorry to disappoint, but I'm going to have to hold off on that until ESPN comes calling. In the meantime, this will be about the experience of being at a Celtics game and why everyone should take one in during their time at Tufts.
Now, I've been to several games at the Garden, but this time I happened to be attending with a few others who had never witnessed a professional basketball game before, much less knew anything about the players or season-long plotlines. This made for some interesting trends throughout the night that I had not necessarily anticipated — for example, one of them was wearing a Paul Pierce jersey, and she demanded that I point out whenever he was on the floor so she could "cheer for myself." Ah, to be a novice fan again and toss on the jersey of one we temporarily adore for really no good reason.
Pregame introductions complete (are they as exciting for everybody else every single time? AT POWER FORWARD, NUMBER FIVE, KEVIN GAARRRRNNEETTTT!!!!!! Makes me wish I had an air horn to blow), Boston rolled out to a quick 30-20 lead, much to the chagrin of the Golden State fan responsible for my ticket. Yes, he would like to remind everyone that there are Golden State fans out there. But really, go to a basketball game with an opposing fan sometime. They might point out things like the fact that Stephen Curry plays defense about as well as the French.
Soon enough, at the urging of my less basketball-oriented friends, the score fell by the wayside, and we were caught up in activities such as laughing while the 87-year-old man shown on the JumboTron refused to acknowledge the rest of us hollering at him, noticing how many times the cheerleaders changed outfits (four) and deciding whether the fight that broke out a few seats away from us would net any casualties.
Halftime involved cheering/heckling the little kid on a tricycle who somehow managed to knock over every single cone that he was supposed to maneuver around, watching the guy chosen to take foul shots for money air ball two out of four and wondering why the guy in the full-body green suit across the aisle from us refused to take it off.
The second half was more of the same, until we did the non-basketball-fan version of striking gold: We got on the JumboTron. And by got on the JumboTron, I mean there were seven middle-school girls sitting in front of us who refused to stop screaming at the top of their high-pitched lungs until they were shown, with us being the innocent bystanders in the background. Of course, my friends decided this warranted a flurry of texting other non-basketball fans, because obviously this turned the entire night into a rousing success.
The Warriors rallied a little in the closing minutes, making me pay attention for a bit, but I spent most of the game not too worried about all the little things on the court. To be totally honest, I had to look in the box score for everything in that opening paragraph. And you know what? It was a great night. Now it's time to have a similar one at Fenway.
