"Celtics Pride" is nothing more than remembering that we won a lot early on. When we have a good team, people will exalt the phrase, but when we are bad, as we have often been since the 90s, the reality was there to see that we are just another team.
People like to talk mystical about sports but it is just a bunch of guys getting paid to entertain us.
Sort of. I think your way of thinking, which is not wrong, misses a lot of the community surrounding the Celtics fanbase, and a lot of what goes in to making people lifelong sports fans of our team.
"Celtic Pride" is a way to transcend the more base ways of choosing a team to support--an alma mater, say, or a hometown team. We are fans of the winningest team in basketball history. We have more numbers hanging in our rafters than any other team in the league. We are the franchise that birthed the first dynasty, the first player's union (thanks Tommy!), the first all-black starting five, the best white dudes that have ever played baske, ball in their own eras; we revolutionized the fast break; we were the first team that proved to the most media centric quarter of the country at large that basketball was worth following, worth supporting, and wasn't going to crumble at the feet of an athletic masterpiece like Wilt Chamberlain.
The Boston Celtics are important for more reasons than ttheir market or that they're a sports team for a popular sport.
We directly contributed to making the NBA what it is today. And the NBA today is awesome. That separates us from being just another sports team, and it always will.