As much as the 2004 Boston Red Sox season will forever stand out in my mind, the 2005 campaign lingers, as well. And for an entirely different reason.
The Red Sox were clearly dealing with a season-long World Series hangover in 2005, and I was therefore afflicted by the same disease. It was difficult not to be. Most of the games were lifeless, and the fans at Fenway seemed to be drunk enough on one World Series that it didn't matter that the team was supposed to be competing for another. As a fan, this was particularly disturbing - coming off the most intense six months of fandom in my lifetime, when every day literally revolved around the Red Sox and my mood changed sometimes with each pitch, I expected to be twice as ravenous. But I couldn't find the hunger. It was nothing tangible; the season just felt different. In a bad way.
Part of that is inevitable, I suppose. As a lifelong New Englander, the summer of 2004 was unlike anything I'd ever been through. For me, in particular, it was extra intense. I went to Spring Training for the first time in my life that March, and in September - a mere month before the playoff miracle - I moved out of one Boston apartment and into a loft in the building directly across the street from Fenway Park. I was truly immersed. You could even see the centerfield scoreboard in Fenway if you leaned toward one of my windows at the proper angle. I remember watching Games 4 and 5 in my apartment and then running out onto Brookline Avenue to dance with thousands of strangers.
That all made the next season harder to swallow. It felt empty, for lack of a better word. I remember when the Sox clinched a playoff spot, I couldn't muster much excitement. The series with the White Sox began, and I couldn't recapture that playoff atmosphere in my brain. The whole season was a void, and it took well into the 2006 season for me to find my rabid fan persona again.
So why bring this up now? Because the 2007-08 Boston Celtics were the basketball version of the 2004 Red Sox. I've been a Celtics fan as long as I've been a Red Sox fan, and when I lived in Boston I was one of a few hundred people still interested enough to occasionally buy tickets and watch the Celtics live. I fell in love with Ryan Gomes and Al Jefferson and the spunky young players that made up the core of the team, and watched on a nightly basis, knowing full well I was watching the players develop at the expense of having a competitive team.
And then came the Ray Allen trade. And the KG trade. And the best basketball winter of my life. Which was quickly followed by a two-month playoff tour that absorbed my every thought. It was 2004 again, and I was hooked - and when the Celtics wrapped things up, I was manic - high because they had just won the title and low because I knew I couldn't watch that team anymore. That's the true magic of sports - the moments are so fleeting, and you know when you've seen a special team. Even while watching the Patriots go undefeated last year, I never had that feeling. But I felt it every step of the way through the basketball campaign.
Therefore, inevitably, I was worried about this season. Would there be another unavoidable letdown? Would the fans be able to muster the same excitement? Would I, in turn, feel the life I hoped to feel in watching the team?
Well, the first game of the regular season is still three weeks away, and I think I already have my answer.
The first three pre-season games have been as intense as most regular season contests are in other basketball towns. There's been behind-the-back passes, clutch shots, pushing and shoving, renewed hatred for Ron Artest, and even a little dust-up with Tracy McGrady. By any measure, this team shows no indication of losing its hunger.
I suppose it's inevitable, with Garnett in the locker room, and that's perhaps the one element the Red Sox were missing in '05. They were still loveable, fun dudes, but there wasn't anybody there to crack the whip in the clubhouse. They were a relaxed bunch by nature, and that laid-back approach filtered through the lineup and into the seats in the stadium.
But Kevin Garnett won't let that happen. When rookie Bill Walker threw down a monster dunk in Theo Ratliff's face - a welcome to the NBA moment if ever there was one - Garnett was shoving random people around on the bench with the kind of natural excitement that simply can't be mimicked. Through the first three games, he's taken the floor with the same stay-the-heck-out-of-my-way glare that is his trademark. Like nobody else I can think of, he brings the same attitude to the court no matter the day, time or season.
And no matter the outcome last year. One of the big three - I think it was Pierce - has already said that, in Boston, one basketball title is not enough to cement one's legacy. Bill Russell has more rings than he has fingers for, and the Bird-McHale-Parish triumvirate brought home three banners. So this team isn't about to settle for one.
And it's already obvious. I even found myself splitting time with the remote between the Celtics game and the Red Sox game on Saturday night, even though the former was a "meaningless" pre-season contest and the latter was Game 2 of the American League Championship Series. I'm already screaming at the television and getting anxious with excitement. And the explanation is simple - I can't wait for more.
And it's because of the still-hungry atmosphere created by the players. The team will take on a new personality, no doubt, but it will be based on the same principles of heart and hustle, and I get the sense they will be just as captivating to watch.
This thrill ride, it seems, is still very much at its beginning.
