Boston Sports Then and Now

January is really a terrible time for the New Year. It’s always cold, often snowy, the days are short and nobody really enjoys champagne that much.

No, July 4th is a much better time to celebrate a new year. There’s grilling, fireworks, some of the longest days of the year, beach weather, beer, summer vacations – it’s just a much happier time.

But whether you choose to celebrate your changing of the calendars in January with the rest of the world or July with those a little more inclined to sanity, you agree on one thing: a new year means two things. The first is a fresh slate, a tabula raza, if you will, in which anything can happen – as Bill Watterson once aptly put it, “It’s a Magical World.”

The second, of course, is a chance to learn from your mistakes in the years prior.

Flashback: Monday, September 14th, 2009. Foxboro, Massachusetts. The Patriots, riding a consecutive-wins streak of 11 over the lowly Buffalo Bills found themselves trailing, 24-13 with 5:32 to go. Tom Brady looked unsure of himself in the pocket, thanks in large part to Bills’ DE Aaron Schobel spending more time in the Pats’ offensive backfield than any of Brady’s teammates.

The Bills were going to beat the Patriots for the first time at Gillette Stadium. On Monday night. On national television. In Week One. Trent Edwards was going to beat Tom Brady – who, by the way, hadn’t lost a regular-season game since December. Not of last year or the year before, but December of 2006. Could it really be?

Brady and Moss will need to be on the same page at all times if the Patriots have any hope of ascending to NFL greatness again.

Naw, of course not. This was Tom Brady’s team.

This was homo-undecuple perfection. They wouldn’t lose at home in Week One. Definitely not to the Bills. Brady wouldn’t let them.

And he didn’t; in the game’s last 2:06, Tom Terrific twice found Ben Watson in the end zone for Pats’ touchdowns, giving the Patriots a hard-earned (but maybe not hard-fought) victory over a once-proud AFC East patsy.

As the season wore on, however, something became painfully evident: these weren’t your now-18 month old cousin’s Patriots.

Perfection was not their forte – petulance, perhaps, or maybe even pitiful was more like it.

And by the time Ray Rice went MAC Truck on their front seven in the first round of the playoffs the next January, something Pats fans had feared since the Week 2 loss to The Sanchize’s New York Jets had become a painful reality: they just weren’t that good.

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While most of Boston was focusing on the Red Sox’ jayvee team trying to mount a comeback against the suddenly devilish Rays, something happened on Wednesday night. Danny Ainge and Ray Allen quietly finished dinner, folded their napkins and walked into the still searing Boston night. Ainge picked up the check for dinner, of course, because the third wheel of his basketball masterpiece had just taken a healthy pay cut to come back for one more run at the Larry O’Brien trophy.

The Sweetest Shot in the game will be wearing green for the next two years.

In a summer jazzed with LeBrons and Wades, not to mention the local nine’s impressive investment in Massachusetts General plaster-of-Paris and any local 7/11’s ice supply, something happened over on Causeway street that can do little more than make fans of the Green easily contented. Paul Pierce – in a moment that nearly caused a cardiac collapse – opted out of the final year of his contract, prompting bigwigs and ballyhoos all over the airwaves of ESPN for about thirty-four minutes before Pierce re-upped for four years at a substantially discounted rate. Four years, $62 million – which, for the record, he could have made more than a third of had he stuck with his option. Allen followed this gracious gesture by taking nearly a 50% pay cut and re-upping for two years at $10 million a year.

The Celtics – assuming Rasheed Wallace retiring is truth and not a stunt – now have roughly $9 million in cap room to play with. And they have needs they’ll use that room to address.

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WEEI.com's Jessica Camerato

It’s not every year that your chronically underachieving legacy franchise weasels its way to a 7^th game in the NBA Finals against its hated rival. Fortunately, the Celtics got there this year. Unfortunately they didn’t make it against the Lakers. But there’s no time to dwell on lost opportunities. The NBA Draft is this Thursday, and the sure-to-be tumultuous free agent season starts just a week later.

I was fortunate enough to get a few minutes of WEEI.com’s esteemed Celtics beat writer Jessica Camerato’s time recently, and we discussed the season that was and what’s ahead, not only this summer, but next fall and into the future as well.

Ryan Durling: To begin, while we can agree that this was a memorable season, it was definitely an unexpected one. In what areas did this team overachieve?

Jessica Camerato (WEEI): What could seem like an overachievement to some came as no surprise to the players themselves. The Celtics went from an inconsistent 50-win team to a streaking club one-win shy of a championship. The C’s said the entire season that they could turn the corner, but there were many people who did not think it would be possible in the playoffs.

RD: Where did they underachieve?

JC: The Celtics underachieved by struggling to put together 48 minutes of basketball throughout the regular season and the playoffs. The problem was magnified when they blew a double-digit lead in the third quarter of Game 7 before falling to the Lakers.

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The epitmoe of the Celtics' 2006-07 season. Tony Allen's show off, after the whistle dunk resulted in a torn ACL.

The low point of the Celtics franchise: 2006-07.

Just as the season kicked off, the matriarch of the organization, Red Auerbach passed away at the age of 89. On the heels of his death, the Celtics had one of their worst seasons in franchise history as they finished with the leagues second worst record at 24-58. This horrific record included a Celtics worst 0-18 stretch.

To add injury to insult, Paul Pierce missed a chunk of the season with a foot injury, and replacement third year guard Tony Allen tore his ACL on an after-the-whistle showoff dunk. The Celtics ran youngsters Rajon Rondo, Al Jefferson, Kendrick Perkins, and Gerald Green out there as they attempted to build toward their future.

Danny Ainge had his hands full, but with the second best chance in the draft lottery, the Celtics were primed for building blocks Greg Oden or Kevin Durant. Both were considered can’t miss prospects, and Celtics fans believed luck was on their side this time after the misfortune of missing out on Tim Duncan nearly a decade earlier.

The ping pong balls did not fall the Celtics way and despite nearly a 40% chance of getting a top two selection, the Celtics fell all the way to fifth selection. Another sign of bad luck for the Celtics, who had aspirations of Greg Oden as a centerpiece of the franchise.

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The best days are way behind these three now.

This was supposed to be a very easy recap to write.

Headlines abounded: “Sheed steps up,” “Kobe loses the Magic, Wilts down the stretch,” “Like Christina sang, Can’t Hold them down.” And then it happened. The Celtics finally did in the playoffs what they’d been doing since October – buckled in the fourth quarter.

You’d forgotten what it felt like. I know you had, because I had, too. They handled Wade, LeBron and Howard, turning 3/5 of the All-NBA team into afterthoughts.

And they were poised to do the same to Kobe, too. They weathered one Kobe storm after another. They shut him down. They shut everyone else down. They went down, 1-0. They went down, 2-1. Then they went up, 3-2. And then they quit.

History will show that the Celtics had a big lead in game 7 and just got too tired to hold it, got a little lost without their defensive stopper, and will surely make quite a few more excuses. But the fact is the Celtics lost this series between the 6-minute mark of the first quarter of game 6 and halftime.

It was at that point that the Lakers did what the Celtics couldn’t. They remained composed – owing in large part to their coach – when the chips were down and when they were nearly out, both going into Game 6 and late into Game 7. When Kobe struggled in game 7, Gasol and…yes, Ron Artest…came to his aid. Bynum gave the most that he could, and Odom filled in admirably. Fisher hit clutch shots when clutch shots were needed and stood up for his team, especially in game 3. With the exception of Game 4, the Lakers bench outplayed the Celtics bench, even though the depth on the Green side was far greater than that of the Purple and Gold.

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Paul Pierce poured in 15 points during the rout of the Bobcats.

Last season, Boston displayed an aura that possessed the kind of arrogant strut that could be compared to the school yard bully. This “swagger”, a season ago, was over discusses and played out.  Injuries, opponents defiance and an early playoff exit– How things can change in a season.

Though the C’s still display the confidence of a champion, through two games of the 2009-10 season, they seem to have elevated their “swagger” from the school yard bully to the big brother brimming with confidence and poise after having walked the mile with the target on their backs.

The lofty expectations still exist as Paul Pierce told the Boston faithful during last night’s pregame speach,

“You see up there?”, pointing to the banners in the Boston Garden rafters, “There’s only 17 of them. I think we need another one”

Pierce didn’t make this declaration with boasting brovado, it was more of a public proclomation of the mission the Celtics players have committed to. Words such as “process”, “work in progress”, “chemistry”, “defense” and “ubunto” , that faded last season have made a furious come-back early in 2009.

Last night, in the team’s home opener against the Bobcats, the Celtics moved one tiny step further in continuing their “work in progress”.

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