Boston, the Bruins and Me

Falling Hard

The beauty of sports is that they encourage polygamy. A marriage to one club in no way precludes a fan from a full and total commitment to anther club that bears the same city on its uniform. Seasons bleed into one another so that when one organization breaks your heart, another one is there to begin the mending process.

Over the past decade, the frenzied successes by New England sports teams have not just been an exercise in speed dating, but speed marriages, speed child births, speed anniversaries, and yes, hyper-accelerated heartbreaks. In the past 10 years, Boston teams have played in 13 conference finals, the play-in games that come before championship bouts, winning 9 of them, and have brought home 6 titles overall thus far. It's remarkable, unprecedented, and, frankly, still not enough.

Because nowadays, to be a Boston fan is to want them all. People can classify this as a positive, as the fan base is informed and passionate, or negative, in that some sense of entitlement might have fostered through the embarrassment of riches, but that sort of judgment sort of misses the point.

Boston fans have honed an eye for what it takes to win titles in sports, so when a team comes up short, we have a good idea why it happened, and when they pull through with trophies and rings, we make sure to appreciate it in its fullest.

The Patriots broke the modern championship seal, and went on to set the standard in excellence.

The Red Sox romantically broke curses amidst high drama that spanned generations.

The Celtics restored a revered brand to its grand pedigree almost overnight, reminding fans that, truly, anything was possible.

The Revolution, well, they existed.

But what to make of the Boston Bruins? What is the modern legacy for the team that faces a do-or-die Game 7 at home with a trip to the Stanley Cup playoffs on the line?

They're the only heartbreak left in town, with their last Cup win coming in 1972, and their last appearance in the series over twenty years ago. They were once the class of the town. Number Four Bobby Orr is as beloved as any sports hero. Their status as part of the NHL's Original Six gives them cache and authenticity in a league where franchises are sometimes perceived as disconnected from the sport and the foreigners that are paid to play it. After years of mismanagement and disappointment, their fans are as embittered and fatalistic as they come. They have all the makings of the highest drama sports have to offer.

The Journey

But sports don't take place in a vacuum. Every fan finds their own unique relationships with teams, sports, and seasons. Sports forge communal bonds, help us demarcate time in our lives, and do it dealing out equal parts ecstasy and agony. So when the Bruins play tonight, whether it makes sense or not, lives will be changed. And not just those of the players and coaches.

When the Patriots won their first Super Bowl, I was (nominally) a high school football player. I was actually, as mascot coincidence would have it, a Patriot. I watched the professional team alongside the same young men whom I watched play Friday nights from the sidelines. I would say I had about the same impact on the outcomes of both.

When the Red Sox made their run, which began when a 2003 team that seemed destined to break curses lost in as devastating a fashion as the city had ever seen, only to carry over its successes and baggage to the next year, ending with 2004's greatest-comeback-ever-seen to the same opponents, I was a student among a massive state university fraternity that first mourned, then celebrated as one. I literally fell in love during that first run to the World Series, and perhaps fittingly that love ran its course almost to the day that the Red Sox won their second championship of the 21st century.

When the Celtics decimated the Lakers for their title, I was a returned citizen to the city's urbane streets. I had been living in another city since graduation, but came home just like the NBA's Larry O'Brien trophy. Boston was no longer somewhere to be visited on weekends or for occasions, its city streets and squares were home.

Retrospectively, those titles have given my life structure. They feed into my own personal narrative, as I am sure they feed into others', (mine maybe more-so; I am somewhat obsessed). But I am still in no way sure what to make of these Bruins.

We've casually dated before, these Bruins and me. We went on low-pressure coffee dates in 2004, as I watched Joe Thornton and Sergei Samsanov's squad underachieve. They were given the same opportunity for a stake in my heart as every other team, but when the rubber hit the road, I, like all other Bruins fans, die-hard or budding potential ones, was left feeling like a burnt skidmark.

Iron cast doubt

Everybody loses in sports. But no matter what any cliché says, how you lose really does matter. When the Red Sox lost, it felt fated, as if it were part of the franchise's core identity. When the Patriots lost, after building a huge reservoir of successes to draw from, there was nearly always a clear explanation to their losses, because it was evident that all things being equal they were always the better team to take the field. With the Celtics, their storied history was so far back in the rear view that it was almost accepted that they would never reach that level again, so instead fans could kick back and watch the athletes' potential grow without expectation.

But what were we to think of the Black and Gold Spokes? What is their modern legacy?

That 2004 team was upset in 7 games by their most bitter rivals, the Montreal Canadiens. When they next qualified for the playoffs, in 2008, they were once again matched up against the hated Habs, and while this time the B's played the role of the underdog, they still fell in that seventh game. The next year they opened once again against Montreal, only this time they swept their way to victory in 4 games. This was thoroughly cathartic until they again lost in a game 7, the very next round, and this time on the Garden's home ice to a hockey team from Carolina. Because everyone knows all the best hockey is played south of the Mason Dixon.

This was a young team, it was said, whose stock was on the rise and whose best days were ahead. But while sports narratives are often predictable, they are not always linear.

But with the 2009-2010 team, the Bruins committed one of the greatest atrocities imaginable for a sports team.

For Boston fans, there was only one 3-0 series comeback that mattered. In 2004, the battered Red Sox lost Game 3 of the ALCS by an eery score of 19-8, putting them in an 0-3 hole against the indomitable Yankees. But then, in Game 4, Millar drew a walk, Roberts stole a base, Mueller singled off the most dominant pitcher of modern times, and before anyone knew what happened the Red Sox had won 4 straight games. It was pure, unadulterated sports euphoria. The Comeback for Boston, the Choke for New York.

Well, in 2010, the Bruins sullied 3-0. In the second round, against the Philadelphia Flyers, the Bruins won the first three games of the series. Not only did they have a 3-0 lead, but by the time the Flyers had won three straight of their own and the series was forced to a climactic Game 7, once again to be held at the Garden, the Bruins thrice struck first and took a 3-0 lead in that game.

And they lost.

Now 3-0 was a set of numbers that cut Boston fans both ways. Sure, it wasn't as iconic a loss as the win was for the Red Sox, but it was still there, haunting a team that had fought so hard to earn respect in a town where attention where attention was easily diffused.

There were no shortage of valid reasons the Bruins lost that series the way they did. A young team, a younger netminder, injuries to both bodies and brains, but ultimately, sports are a results-oriented business where final scores dictate final narratives. Yearly sports almanacs don't lie. The Bruins choked. By every definition

Redemption and attention

There are real monetary benefits to be had in Boston's sports market. Perform well, and people will notice. Sports television is a monster industry in this town, across media platforms new and old. Networks use teams and sports to compete with one another. Sports personalities stake out their territory and defend it like wild animals. Sports are about the games, presumably, but even when those are done there is huge money to be made in talking about the ways and wherefores of each result, because in this town when people say “everyone has an opinion,” it really means everyone.

Beyond that, attending games is a huge premium. Ticket scalping has gone from city streets to web markets, transforming the secondary market to a legitimate enterprise somewhere along the way.

So again, it pays to be good.

Fans are passionate enough to watch, listen, and pay for entry, but that passion can also breed hostility. You have our attention, the logic seems to go, so don't fucking blow it.

Well, the Bruins finally have everyone's attention.

After last year's ugliness, it was going to take some work to get back in this town's favor. Bruins fans felt like a spouse betrayed, they were open to reconciliation, but trust would need to be earned before it was given freely.

After an up-and-down regular season, the Bruins were once again pitted against the Canadiens to open these Stanley Cup playoffs. They hosted the series, and once again, before anyone could catch their breath, they were down 0-2 headed up to Canada. It looked like it would be a short run this year.

But the Bruins battled. They won the two games in Montreal, then took Game 5 in Boston, and after dropping their first chance to close out on away ice, and after surrendering a tying goal in the final moments of the latest Game 7 at the Garden, they took the game and the series on an electric overtime goal. Finally, after the last three seasons had ended in Game 7 losses, with the last two coming at the Garden, the B's had broken through.

With one albatross off the team's back, they packed up and headed to Philadelphia. Even when the Bruins won their first three games against the Flyers, ambient anxiety remained. They'd choked away control of a series to these guys before. Throughout the regular season management had cited that the team had made the second round of the playoffs for the past three years as evidence of its successes, but fans could only lament the inability to advance deeper, and if this year didn't end with demonstrable progress, heads would roll.

But the Bruins did sweep, which, again, in the tidy world of sports' narratives, perfectly forgave the sins of the previous year. Mission Accomplished. Sort of.

And this is where Boston's string of successes returns to the fore. The Bruins are playing deeper into the playoffs than they have in almost 20 years. They are playing later into the calendar year than they ever have before. The Celtics' season ended earlier and more abruptly than anyone would have expected, the Red Sox have underachieved, and the Patriots are mired in the NFL's obtuse lockout. That the Bruins have even booked another night of drama at the Garden should be enough. We should be grateful to even be given the opportunity to root for someone, anyone, with stakes this high at this point in the summer.

But being happy to be there is for losers. The Hub won't have it.

There is a team in Vancouver that is waiting to find out who will be its dance partner in this year's Stanley Cup Finals.

There is a 37-year-old goalie who has spent a lifetime trying to earn his respect. He has made the save of a lifetime, but unless he makes a few more, it will fall to the annals of history as another great moment that was not quite iconic.

There's a Norris Award winner who has been deemed an underachiever for most of his professional life almost exclusively because of the impossible expectations set by his 6' 9” frame.

There is an alternate captain that has been forced to fight concussions throughout his career.

There's a coach looking for a trump card to play against those who doubt his acumen and ability.

There's a forty-something looking for the icing on the cake of his Hall of Fame career.

There's a 19 year old top pick desperate to prove he is more than a flash in the pan.

There's a power play that is dangerously close to writing the wrong side of history.

There are these and a million more stories, all at stake, all on the line tonight. There are old men who care only for hockey who want that last return to the Finals. There are kids who will learn how to be a fan. There are blowhards that are eager to say “I told you so,” no matter the outcome. There are the selfish masses that want the final gem to be added to Boston's crown of champions. There are people that will fall in love, people that will find faith, people that break dishes, people that gamble, people who riot, and people who will do nothing more than read tomorrow's newspaper with a little more interest.

All of this hinges on a win or a loss. A break of the puck. A lapse, an opportunity capitalized or squandered, a hit made or missed.

I'm not sure what a win or a loss will mean to me. It will depend, I suppose, on how it goes. But I know it will mean something to me.

I look back on the teams I have committed myself to for the last decade, and I regret nothing. I got as much as I gave. Even the teams that failed, even the ones that choked, even the ones that left me in tears, I think, in the moment, and as I look back, I loved them all equally.

Maybe you think sports matter too much to Boston. Maybe you look at us and wonder why we put so much energy into things we can't control. But we know better. We know that by watching, we are in control. We know our attentive eyes can, in fact, change the outcome of games.

We've seen it.

Go get 'em, boys.

-Brendan McGuirk, Professional Boston Fan

5-27-2011

A Distillation of Victory

As a sports fan lucky enough to be from Boston, in these modern days, I am acquainted with the luxury and spoils brought by victory. And winning is baller.



A championship, even merely spectated, creates a shared experience that serve as validation of the investments of time and mental energy put forth by the rigors of fandom.

It is also a celebration of unity and community. In land where we spend more time griping about our differences than similarities, there are few opportunities to truly share.

And so when the clock struck 11:00 P.M. last Tuesday, and every major network announced that Barack Obama had been called to serve as the 44th president of these United States, the jubilation that erupted in the streets and on the broadcasts across the country was not personally unprecedented. It reminded me, hey, this is simply what it feels like to win.



Maybe it illicits hugs from total strangers. It may boil down to simple eye contact made with another, silently sharing the moment. Maybe you get lucky. Weeping, cheering, dancing, and drinking are all pretty acceptable options. I personally took a hint from Celtics' patriarch Red Aurbach, and coolly, arrogantly lit a cigar.

But the important thing is the embrace of the moment; the assuring knowledge that this is pretty much as good as it gets. The world is so big, and its issues so unwieldy, it is easy to forget the sensation of the good guys victorious.

It took actually happening for everyone to fully realize how much we needed this. The subtexts of this election were extrapolated upon at length, but more importantly than any particular racial hurdle, the country needed to have something “trancendent” to rally around. We needed to feel good again.






Too often, we only really share the negative. We go through economic crises together. We grow weary of our international responsibilities together. We mourn the tragic loss of brothers and sisters together.

Which is funny, because shared suffering makes up the main thrust of sports' fandom.

For years, Red Sox fans understood their lot in life. Ours was a predetermined destiny. We were the “Wait until next year,” team. This was an identity that reinforced itself more and more every year. Every loss, and every failure only dug us deeper into a state of perpetual disappointment and inferiority.

Then they overcame it. The burden was relieved, and a new era began. A new brand, a new identity, and a new perspective was granted. We made it. And due to the many years of suffering, we knew we'd earned it.




And that was what happened. It wasn't that Barack was the Black president. He was the Right president. This was not an apology by the American people to any specific community, or an exercise in affirmative action, or an optimistic roll of the dice. This was an informed opinion. This election does not change American history, but it does change the course of it. Change came to America. While the President-elect has a steep challenge ahead of him, he is only asked what we ask every Head of State; be our best. Represent our ideals, respect our wishes, make our difficult decisions and we will stand behind you.

We vote to select our leadership, but after that we are pretty much spectators. It doesn't mean what happens doesn't effect us, but we have mostly surrendered our power and are in it for the ride. Over the course of a term, or a season, there are peaks and valleys. There are big losses, and minor victories. But what we need to remember is that we are all on the same team. We all want the same things. We want to end up at the same place.



The winner's circle.

There are very few moments that truly transcend the individual experience for the societal one. What's more, when they do happen, they are too often marred by tragedy. But sometimes, if you're patient, if you're lucky, and if you back the right horse, there is a reward at the finish line. Winning feels good. And it's addictive.

Now that we've all voted, we've surrendered any sort of control. Among us, there will inherently be those who will criticize every move- Monday Morning Quaterbacks, or armchair managers ready and eager to discuss shortcomings at length. There will be others who instead defend and rationalize. We will clash and argue about it because we care about the outcome, because it is our only power.

But as we learned last Tuesday, we can celebrate together. Let's hold on to that.

See you at the Inauguration. I'll be the one with the cigar.

Where the MVP argument happens...

Most Valuable Player arguments always come down to unknowable semantics. The award means all things to all people. This year, the most exciting season in what equates to an NBA lifetime, the MVP argument is a four-horse race.


If the MVP is meant to be given to the player most enjoyable to watch, the answer is undoubtedly LeBron James. King James is the most popular kid in school. He's funny, nice to everyone, and, y'know, can do absolutely anything on a basketball court. He's just cool as hell. He's pretty simply everything that is good and exciting about basketball. At 6'8", with rumors that he was still growing, King James is pretty much basketball's Frankenstein.

But- as good as LeBron has been, with his eye gorging 30/8/7 numbers, his team has underperformed. They are the fourth seed, barely holding on to home court advantage, in the lean Eastern Conference. That isn't terribly impressive.

Kobe Bryant is, without a doubt, this season's top performer. LeBron probably represents the potential that make sport so exciting; that future unknown. Kobe, though, is the cat that already did it. Kobe has three rings, and dropped 81 pts, thats Eighty-One Points, in a game. It's basically exactly like J5 said- A rapper is a kid that's tryin' to be the shit/ An entertainer ain't Tryin' cause he already is. Yeah, its pretty much exactly like that.

But Kobe has never won an MVP award before. And much like it was bullshit that ARod won that last MVP when it was a down year for him, there isn't that much separating Kobe this year from last year, or the year before that. Yes, the team is winning more games, and even caught fire as a Western Conference favorite, but that was all due to the addition of the complementary player Pau Gasol. Without that, Kobe's just being Kobe.

The last serious candidate in the race is New Orleans wunderkind point guard Chris Paul. He's done it all; he rescued a franchise in need of a hero, he successfully made all his teammates better, notably with David West enjoying his first All-Star selection, and Tyson Chandler finally looking like the lottery pick he was. His numbers are consistent and staggering. They win out and take the West's number one seeding, given the lack of expectations of winning entering the season, and the phrase, that I believe is copyright pending, "He saved basketball in New Orleans,"and Chris Paul is probably the 2007-2008 NBA Most Valuable Player.

But y'know what? I'm from Boston, and I never claimed to be objective. KG's been the most important and valuable player in all of basketball since the day he was traded to the most storied franchise in sports, and if you don't know that, you aren't paying attention.

The Boston Celtics, who last year set a franchise record with nineteen, that's 19!, straight losses, have the best record in basketball. And they had the best record in basketball the entirety of the season. They were the best team in the game from day one, and no one can tell you it is for any reason besides The Biggest Ticket there is.

Ask a Celtics fan how she felt on Draft-Day; instead of any sort of franchise-saving top pick, the Celts moved some assets to bring in Ray Allen, a pure shooter getting a bit up there in years. Sure, you felt good that the team had gotten better, but it felt a lot like a band-aid/ bullet wound type of deal. I mean, nineteen is a lot of games to lose in a row; it leaves mental scars.

Then KG came to town. And it was good.

With Garnett on the team, there is a trickle down effect to dictate the roles of each player. The Big Three, or the Boston Three Party, will take care of themselves. All anyone else needed to worry about was their individual match-ups.

Board Banger Kendrick Perkins needed only to learn how to position himself around the basket and look for quick looks and clean-up baskets. Smart play got Perk damn near to setting the Celt's franchise record for field goal percentage.

Young buck Rajon Rondo just needed to learn everyone's favorite spot on the floor, and play good, quick D on opposing point guards. He could let his game come to him, and develop his And1 type game.

Former championship player James Posey just had to be a reliable vet, playing starter minutes off the bench, matching up and shutting down players at the 2, 3, and 4, and clocking killer treys.

Sam Cassell just had to keep his eyes towards the floor from summer to winter, awaiting his inevitable buyout and hoping on the championship bandwagon.

Scott Pollard could just be free to be Scott Pollard. Whatever that may mean. The point is that the roles were so clearly defined that the team was loaded for bear. The young guys could focus on getting better and learning from the vets, while the vets just needed to enjoy the ride.

And then there are the other two legs of the Three. Ray "Jesus Shuttlesworth" Allen had to adjust his game the most, giving up a lot of looks and a lot of time with the rock in his hands. He has shined, though, being a constant threat from anywhere on the floor, playing better D, and help D, than anyone expected, and hitting game-winning shots. Not bad for the third best player on the team.

Pierce simply needed to provide continuity. He needed to stay within his game, show off his previously unheralded defensive prowess, score when there needed to be scoring, and bear the load of Mr. Celtic. He paid enough dues on some bad teams, now instead of focusing on beating five other guys on the floor, he need only worry about one, and beat him. Senseless, if possible.

And that's what it comes down to. When you've got The Big Ticket, you don't need to worry. Beat one guy, trust the guy next to you to beat his, and you're going to win. The team trusted that, and the team won. A lot. More than anyone else. Thanks to one guy. That is what my understanding of an MVP is. But I'm just one guy.

Playoff time. All aboard.

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