I didn't know they would factor into Hustle, Adam Sandler's new movie, which I watched on Monday night. I knew Sandler played a scout for an NBA team, but I knew it wasn't the Celtics -- I would have heard about that. It turns out it was the Philadelphia 76ers.
But the Celtics do factor into this movie in a non-zero way. The film stars real NBA player Juancho Hernangomez, who, as it turns out, was on the Boston Celtics at the time of filming. I watched most of the Celtics games this year, and even I had forgotten he was on the team, probably because he was a garbage time guy and I had nothing to distinguish him from any of the other bench guys, not knowing he was about to star in an Adam Sandler movie.
But indeed, Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens has a brief appearance and a line of dialogue, and we see a number of my beloved Celtics, including Jayson Tatum (whose t-shirt I have), on the floor with Hernangomez in a closing credits sequence. (And if you think that's a spoiler for Hustle, you are vastly overestimating how unpredictable this movie is.)
As you know from my previous post last weekend, I was concerned about their prospects in the series, so seeing them on screen gave me a little bit of hope and raised my spirits a bit. I'm not superstitious, but I do like to retroactively create narratives about what certain things mean, if certain outcomes occur. (Okay, maybe that's just straight-up superstitiousness after all.)
A single appearance would have been just a one-off, but then the Celtics factored into the episode we watched of Kevin Can F**k Himself on Tuesday night, after they'd lost Game 5 earlier in the day to go down 3-2. (I'm not such a prude that I wouldn't spell out the word, although I did do that recently on this blog. But I think the title actually contains the asterisks, if only because it must be published in polite contexts the vast majority of the times it's published.)
In that episode, the eponymous Kevin (Eric Peterson) -- resident of Worcester, Massachusetts and a diehard Boston sports fan -- has a dream sequence where he imagines himself getting advice from Brian Scalabrine, a bench player throughout his five-year tenure on the Celtics, but elevated to additional prominence in Boston sports lore by currently functioning as the color analyst for local broadcasts of Celtics games. Scalabrine, now 44, appears in uniform, even though he hasn't played in the NBA since 2012 for the Chicago Bulls.
The Celtics did not appear in The Color of Money, which I watched later on that night -- but now that I think about it, the color of money is green, and that's also the color of the Celtics.
All signs point to a Celtics victory in Game 6 and forcing a Game 7 back in Golden State?
Nope.
The dream is over, folks. I know it's not your dream, but it was mine, and on Friday, during the extended lunchtime hours Australian time, I finally had to give it up.
I knew this was coming pretty much since I wrote Sunday's post, when only the first of an eventual three more losses for the Celtics had been recorded, but the writing felt like it was on the wall. They made efforts to wrest control of each of these next two games -- coming all the way back from a big deficit to momentarily take the lead in Game 5, and starting Game 6 on a 14-2 run -- but Golden State just had more poise and more players capable of making circus shots. (You'd think I was talking primarily about Steph Curry, but Jordan Poole made two of the most ridiculous playoff shots of all time in these finals.)
It's alright, I'm moving on, I just needed one more post on my blog to sulk about it.
Even when the universe seems to be telling you "It's alright, Vance, it will all work out in the end," sometimes that's not really true.
Sometimes coincidences are just coincidences, and sometimes the team you love needs one more year of seasoning before they can win it all.
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