The Boston Celtics failed and flew

"Anything worth doing is worth doing badly."

The Boston Celtics really screwed things up, huh? After digging themselves into a 0-3 hole in the Eastern Conference Finals, they won three in a row to soar up into the daylight again. And then, when they were finally on equal footing with Miami, the Heat shoved every single Boston player back into the freshly turned earth.

The Heat are going to the Finals, and the Celtics are going home.

“Obviously we didn’t achieve our goal, we didn’t win, which was our goal,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said after the game. “We failed, in that regard, but it’s not because the guys didn’t have a sense of togetherness.

“Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.”

The idea of failure in sports has been debated for as long as sports have existed, but the dialogue really took off this year after the Heat eliminated superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo and his Milwaukee Bucks in the first round of the playoffs. Giannis insisted that a shocking upset — the Bucks were a one seed and the Heat an eight seed — was not a failure, but merely a step to success.

Here’s how he put it:

“There’s no failure in sports. There’s good days, bad days. Some days you are able to be successful, some days you’re not. Some days it’s your turn, some days it’s not your turn. And that’s what sports is about. You don’t always win. Some other people are going to win. And this year, somebody else is going to win. We’re going to come back next year and try to be better.”

I’m sorry that I’m about to go full-on English major on you, but I didn’t spend years of my life reading and writing poetry for nothing. And now that I have my own newsletter, I can write about whatever I want, which is, in this case, a poem by Jack Gilbert.

It’s pretty famous, I think, but I don’t really know what constitutes fame for a poem. It could therefore be basic to say that it’s one of my favorites, but honestly, who gives a shit. I’m sick of caring about whether the things I like are cool or not.

Here it is: