Brendan Sullivan looks back at what could have been for the Boston Celtics if they had won the rights to draft Tim Duncan, in the 1997 NBA Draft. And it's not so much what would have happened to the franchise, but to the fans themselves.
Since the media Lebron-athon has reached a point of hysteria leading up to tonight's Game 1 of the NBA Finals, it's easy to miss the fact that Tim Duncan, who has never lost in the NBA Finals, is a step away from bumping his unbeaten championship streak to four Finals series. At this point, the San Antonio Spurs are likened to a sort of NBA Finals barfly - a team that is always hanging around, considered more repetitive and annoying than anything. David Stern gives them a slight nod because of their sellable international roster, but otherwise most people ignore them. That's not to say they are not heavily favored, but the general consensus sees that as a negative. I was talking to some guys about the Finals the other day, and one of them admitted he was from Central Texas, and naturally, a Spurs fan. The other guy threw him a dirty look saying, "You must be so bored."
Man do I wish I had been born a Spurs fan.
I would LOVE to be a fan of a team that was so good that people wrote off their NBA Finals opponents as automatic losers. I would love to be a lifelong fan of the team at the top, who every semi-intelligent columnist picked to win it all before the season even started. I would love to be a team that was so good at winning that it seemed boring. In other words, I would love to be a Spurs fan if I could. But I can't.
Instead, the stork took a wrong turn in Texas, and delivered me to a hoops-loving family in Boston. I was born just early enough to claim that I was alive for two Celtics Championships, but just late enough not to remember any of it happening. For my generation of Celtics fans, we feel left out. While others can reminisce about the glory day and/or remember when Bird rode into town and turned the abysmal Celtics around, we get to reminisce about just missing it. Sure our fathers tell us all about it. Sure we can see those classic games on DVD. But, we can't see those games live at the Garden. The biggest thing to happen at the Garden in my memory is a toss up between Bird's retirement and the wrecking ball ripping the place down.
For our generation, the FleetCenter/TD Banknorth generation, Tim Duncan was supposed to be our savior. He just ended up on the wrong team.
