The Celtics are making me cry????

My first-ever emergency newsletter

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Alright folks, I’ve never done this before, but I’m sending out an emergency newsletter because my beloved Boston Celtics, the reigning NBA champions, have once again blown a 20-point lead at home in the second round of the Playoffs to the New York Goddamn Knicks!!!!!

And I feel I must come clean. Yesterday, on The Sports Gossip Show, I told

Madeline Hill

that I didn’t care that much if the Celtics lost. That I’m actually pretty soft as a fan. I explained that I sometimes felt the need to put on the face of a tough fan for the decade that I’ve been working in sports media. The kind of fan who, no matter how much her teams win, always wants more. Sports media loves this idea of the neoliberal sports fan, the capitalist sports fan, the robber baron sports fan who can’t get enough and has no reason to stop winning.

I’m a Boston fan — you hate me because my teams have won a lot. I’ve written about this before. The Celtics hoisted the Larry O’Brien trophy last year. Sometimes I feel glutinous to be so rich in championships, which is the most condescending thing I could admit to someone whose teams lose all the time. What a problem to have!

My husband is a Knicks fan, and he has suffered for as long as he’s been on this earth. If New York won, I said, at least I would be happy for him. And, since I live in New York City now, I would be excited to see what happens to this place if the Knicks finally make it past the second round of the playoffs.

If the Celtics lost I would be sad, of course. But I wouldn’t be distraught.

****Spoiler alert****: I WAS WRONG!! The Knicks somehow managed to beat the Celtics again, the exact same way they beat Boston on Monday, by overcoming a 20-point deficit and then stealing the ball at the very end to win by a hair.

And you know what I did? I yelled “fuck” at my television and burst into tears!!! I wasn’t chill about it at all! I wasn’t happier for my husband than I was sad for me!! And then I started laughing, because it was absurd that I, a 36-year-old woman, was crying because her sports team lost two games in a best-of-seven series.

So there I was, laughing and crying on my couch, while my husband fist pumped his way around the room, and then he saw that I was crying and laughing, and he started laughing, and then I started laughing harder, and then I teared up again, and now I’m sitting at my computer writing all of this down.

I was shocked at my emotions, and I’ve came to a depressing realization. Saying I wouldn’t care if the Celtics lost came from a place of such massive sports privilege — a place of such total confidence — that I couldn’t actually imagine a world in which it happened. I had the luxury of imagining a loss without believing it was a real possibility.

You’re all really going to hate me for this one, but I went so far as to worry that I would feel guilty when the Celtics beat the Knicks! That I would feel spoiled in the riches of sports victory compared to my ever-hopeful husband (I saw someone online recently say that the only men truly capable of unconditional love are Knicks fans, which checks out).

The HUBRIS!

I was so wrong. The Celtics’ vibes have been totally off. They look disjointed and mentally out of it. As soon as the fourth quarter started, I had a feeling that recent history would repeat itself.

“The Knicks are going to go up in the last two minutes of the game and the Celtics are going to blow it,” I said to my husband.

And that is exactly what happened.

And now, here we are. I’m experiencing the same sinking feeling I had for seven years while I watched Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown play basketball together before the Celtics eventually won it all last season. Year after year they would blow huge leads, get completely frazzled, and then totally fall apart. Tatum would take stupid jumpers instead of driving to the basket to get the easy points. I feel like I’m watching the sequel to a horror movie that scared the shit out of me. Awful thoughts creep into my head, like, “What if the Celtics only won last year because so many of the teams they played were injured? What if the haters have been right?”

This is probably the last hurrah for seeing my favorite players together — Brown, Tatum, Jrue Holiday, Kristaps Porzingis, Derek White, hell, even sixth-man-of-the-year Payton Pritchard. Ownership has to break up this team somehow, because apparently they can’t keep paying everybody a bajillion dollars.

Which is stupid, because if you’re rich enough to own a sports team, you should be rich enough to pay players whatever they want. I’m told that’s not how “economics” really “work,” but I don’t care, because eggs cost thirty-thousand dollars these days and billionaires are going to space.

Look, I will always have last year’s victory. I got to be in the building when the Celtics won a championship. I still have the green and white confetti that I picked up off the floor. And I will be intrigued to see New York City implode on itself if the Knicks advance to the Eastern Conference Finals. And I will be happy for my husband.

Perhaps, somewhere deep in my psyche, I had a feeling this might happen. Maybe I was subconsciously trying to steel myself for a Celtics come-apart. Whatever it was, I flew too close to the sun. I was fooling myself. I’m as greedy as anyone.

Sports are beautiful, sports are cruel. And no amount of mind tricks can save your dumbass sports-fan heart from itself.

Edit: I know they haven’t lost the series yet but I’m really going through it.