One could say New England is pretty passionate about their hometown teams. Especially with the success their teams have had this decade. The Patriots are winners of 3 Super Bowls and Red Sox winners of 2 World Series. But the Patriots cheated you say, they definitely broke the rules and it may have helped them win more games, however this article isn't about that so bother me about it another day.
The big problem for me is simple, I am a Red Sox fan, a Patriots fan and I guess a Bruins fan (I don't really follow or care about pro hockey especially after their marketing mishaps, what channel are their games on again? OLN or some other channel that no one has?).
However, I am, unlike 95% of all my basketball friends, not a Celtics fan. Uh-Oh! Yes, New Englanders are the ones with the tee-shirts, bumper stickers and who knows what else that state "I support two teams, Boston and whoever beats the Yankees!" You might say New Englanders are pretty intense about their rivalries and you would be wrong because you said they were only "pretty intense". Okay what is my point you're thinking, probably along with, why am I still reading this article?
I am a Lakers fan.
Wait... New England and you are a Lakers fan? That's the equivalent of being a fan of the Yankees.
Why? I can't honestly say why. I grew up without cable TV and my family was not really into sports. I didn't start watching basketball on TV until 6th grade when a friend introduced me (I started playing rec ball in 5th and have never stopped loving being able to play for the pure enjoyment of the game).
Right from the start I was hooked. Maybe because when I was 6th grade the Lakers won the championship and I saw a lot of them. This is when the Western Conference finals games were still on broadcast TV. There was just something about the Lakers that hooked me, kind of like how I had become hooked on playing basketball.
- B/R Ticket Guide
From that point on I was a Lakers fan.
I love basketball and follow the NBA pretty religiously. This summer was a pretty rough one for me on the Lakers front. While the Celtics were concocting brilliant schemes to acquire Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant was on Stephen A. Smith's radio show saying he wants to be traded. Great, I'm going to get to watch the Lakers trade away Shaq (which this June and the next few will hopefully prove was the right decision) and Kobe Bryant in the span of a few years! Right away I began feeling the heat from all of my friends, "We're going to win 70 games!" "Can't wait to watch No. 17 getting raised to the rafters" "Hey Evan, are the Lakers even going to make the playoffs this season?"
Well, Kobe didn’t leave, Mitch Kupchak didn’t lock himself in his office and Andrew Bynum managed to survive Kobe’s criticism, but the Lakers stumbled out of the gate and that definitely did not help matters for me. Then they began to pull things together and were starting to look really good with some impressive wins. Well, life's a rollercoaster and that surely held true this NBA season for Lakers fans. Andrew Bynum went down with a knee injury with a prognosis as vague as a minimum of 8 weeks and no maximum necessary recovery time (he's still recovering, now from surgery). So the coaster was plunging at this moment and then all of a sudden its going vertically upwards as the team traded no one in its top 8 for Pau Gasol and the Lakers just resumed winning all the way to the number one seed and dominated their way to the Finals. That roller coaster is still going up.
After a game 6 victory in Detroit, no one other than the Boston Celtics joined the Lakers in the finals. Well, frankly I was just happy to see the Lakers close out the Spurs in game 5 and wasn't worried about Celtics-Pistons. But, like I said, I follow the NBA pretty religiously, there was no way I was going to not watch the Celtics play, they had a pretty historic season!
I even watched several Celtics postseason games with my friends; I'm the only one in my group with a DVR, thus I even had them over to watch a few game I had recorded for them. I laughed whenever the Celtics were playing poorly or when my friends made fun of players on the other teams for flopping or feigning injury. By the way, when did the NBA take on the practices of European soccer? I actually had to keep the laughing in my head; I do have a quite a few Celtics' fans for friends.
Over and over they talked about how it would be awesome if the Lakers and Celtics played in the finals, we would have to watch every game together at someone's house with everyone taking a turn hosting. I know their anticipation and excitement is for two reasons, the classic rivalry and because they wanted me to be around when their team beat mine so they could rub it in.
My friends asked for it, the commissioner secretly asked for it, ABC prayed nightly for it during the playoffs and I asked for it. Well, it happened, Lakers at Celtics in the NBA Finals. I can't wait, especially because all of the commercials featuring old highlights from Celtics-Lakers of years past will get just keep driving up the anticipation. June 5 is just days away and I want game one right now!
My friends are great people and I will still like them regardless of what happens in the Finals.
But, I just might want to be the host before the Lakers get into position to close out the Celtics, because like I said, I live in New England and have a lot of Celtics fans for friends.
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