"This thread gets no play if we don't win in 2008. We'd all be moaning about it being 23 years since we last one a championship. Winning in '08 allows us to re-embrace our history of winnnig, instead of our 20 year history of whining."
I cant say I agree with this comment. No one likes losing but this is the team I follow. I am to the point of zealot about it. While I ALWAYS want (and to a certain extent expect) a title every year, I understand that will not always be the case.
As a true fan...I love the team win or Lose. While I am NOT a sox fan....I can appeciate their fevour and the pian that they endured til the Sox finally won a title. I never saw the support waiver. The Celtics will always be number 1 for me..win, lose or draw.
Well said (TP). While there are many who demand winning to earn their loyalty, one thing that has always made Celtics fans stand apart is their loyalty to the team, regardless of the record. I've been a fan for over (ouch!) 40 years, and I was no LESS a fan through the "lean" years when Reggie Lewis and Paul Pierce were basically the only players anchoring this team.
Was it frustrating? Of course! EVERYONE wants to win a Championship ... that's what this is all about, and I'm sure there were times when Paul felt extremely so, to the point of wanting to get the heck out of here. But for many reasons, (mostly money), he stuck around and put this team on his back. But us Celtics fans were no LESS fans in those years ... to me, we ALWAYS had a chance, we were always just short of making it, ( and we
did make it into the playoffs a few times.)
The ones who were "whining" all those years, were still die-hard fans, and whining because they loved their Celtics so and couldn't stand to see them not do what they were
used to seeing them do: be the best. To the rest of us who
didn't spend that time whining, we knew that the time would come when this team got back to doing what it always did best: winning ... and we were maybe just a bit more patient because we had been around during the last heyday, and knew it was just a matter of time.
To me, that's one of the reasons Paul Pierce is my favorite player ... not because he's the greatest on earth, for we know that's not true, but because he carried this team all those years, and epitomised and embodied all the Celtics had been about in the "good" years, and brought us across that bridge to our present renaissance. I was content all those years because I knew this would come somehow, and I think it was Paul that instilled that confidence in me and many others.
He has always been a true Celtic, with the never-say-die attitude, and the Celtic pride and confidence, no matter how discouraging it got. Now he's brought that sense of "GREEN" to the next great period for this team, and to us "die-hards", in the back of our minds and consciousness, we KNEW it would come, and it was destiny and sacrifice and hard work by Paul Pierce that would bring it.
To me, this team was never any less of a source of pride, despite those lean years, because no matter who has ever been on the floor dressed in green, they ALWAYS carried that history and pride
with them, and you could always
feel it, whether we got to the playoffs or not. To me, this has
always been a Championship-ready team, even though it may have been history or pride or a die-hard sense of what the Celtics have always embodied, that made me feel that way.
Whether we were winning or not, those guys in green that went out on that parquet floor each night, carried all that being a Celtic was about on their shoulders ... and the rest of us were swept up in that feeling, regardless. That's what this team has always been about, and always
will be about.
