Lessons from #Bernie2016 and the 2012 Celtics

The science is in: we love to root for the underdog. When we accomplish anything that not many people thought we could pull off, it makes us much giddier than if success was expected by most. How else do you explain Rocky V earning $120 a million at the box office and Buster Douglas getting his own video game? People have literally built careers and fortunes from one improbable victory.

New England’s own Bernie Sanders and the Boston Celtics are no strangers to the underdog role. Interestingly, Sanders’ bid for the presidency is peculiarly homologous to the Celtics’ surprising run to the seventh game of the Eastern Conference Finals in the 2012 NBA Playoffs. Now that the Independent Senator from Vermont conceded defeat and suspended his campaign, let’s take a look at some of those similarities.

Both Sanders and the Celtics ran into imposing juggernauts of their respective fields. Hillary Clinton — a former Secretary of State, former Senator from New York, the First Lady during the 1990s economic boom, a millionaire several times over, and one of the most famous people in the world — was being talked about as the presumptive Democratic nominee long before the Sanders campaign was even a concept. A CNN poll taken a month after Bernie announced his candidacy showed just how far behind he was in the beginning: he polled at 10 percent — a far cry from Clinton’s 60 percent, and even Vice President Joe Biden’s 14 percent. As we all know, Biden never even entered the race!

The Celtics’ situation wasn’t much better. Heart conditions cost key bench players Jeff Green and Chris Wilcox their seasons, and former All-Star Jermaine O’Neal and impactful second-year man Avery Bradley also suffered season-ending injuries. As if their decimated roster weren’t enough, they had to get through “The Heatles,” an impossibly stacked “super team” that boasted three of the top five picks of the historically great 2003 NBA Draft: a three-time MVP universally recognized as the best basketball player of his generation (LeBron James), the 2006 Finals MVP and 2009 scoring leader (Dwyane Wade), and a 27 year-old seven-time All-Star (Chris Bosh).

It should come as no surprise that pundits didn’t give the New Englanders much of a chance. The New York Times politely called the Sanders campaign a “long shot,” and some media outlets even went as far as declaring his candidacy “symbolic.” Just as basketball analysts thought the Celtics would be lucky to win a game or two against the Heat, political analyst Noam Chomsky opined that Sanders’ most likely triumphs would be to “press the Dems a little in a progressive direction” and to become “a thorn in the side of the Clinton machine.”

If they were truly that hopeless, why did so many people support them? Perhaps the major differences between them and their opponents made them more relatable to the average person. Hillary and the Heat were respectively derided as “corporate” and “Hollywood,” while Bernie was hailed as a populist who genuinely cared about working people and the Celtics as an unselfish, hard-working team that stayed away from the limelight. The feeling that they might have been operating within the confines of a rigged system determined to see them lose could have also created sympathizers. Remember how the Wyoming, New York, and California primaries provoked the ire of Berners everywhere? How about the alleged favoritism of the officials in the Heat-Celtics series? Not even Rocky had to deal with that kind of adversity.

Despite their comparable uphill battles, the most significant parallels between #Bernie2016 and the 2012 Celtics were their results. A team whose first two scoring options were a 36-year-old with a balky right knee and a fourteen-year veteran with a sprained MCL had no business beating LeBron and D-Wade three times in a row. Similarly, no one could have envisioned a self-identified socialist winning 22 states in a United States presidential primary.

The Celtics inspired aging weekend warriors everywhere to confidently challenge cocky young ballers and Sanders emboldened American youth to participate in the political process like no other candidate before him. Even if you’re not the biggest hoop head or political junkie, only good things can come from following the precedent set forth by Bernie and the Celtics!

Don’t Look Back, Part III

(Continued from Part II)

The answer was: we wouldn’t. We were doomed from the start of the fourth quarter and would never recover. Furthermore, everything I mentioned in the last paragraph of Part II in this series of posts is irrelevant. We didn’t lose that game because our veterans got tired, we didn’t lose that game because Perkins got hurt, and we didn’t lose that game because the Lakers outworked us on the glass. We lost that game because the refs made sure that every possible call in the final period favored the Lakers, plain and simple.

This harkened back to game six of the 2002 Western Conference Finals, in which the Lakers also received the benefit of the doubt from the officials (former NBA commissioner David Stern’s love for the Lakers is well-documented) and avoided elimination at the hands of the Sacramento Kings. That game instantly became one of the most controversial and infamous ones in NBA history. Analysts, athletes, and fans continue to discuss it even to this day, the vast majority of whom agree that the league was determined to propel the Lakers to victory by any means necessary.

Even though I was in my early teens, I still remember that day. The Lakers were awarded 27 free throws in the fourth quarter (40 for the game) while the Kings shot 25 in the entire game. Disparities that wide hardly ever go unnoticed, and as the Celtics-Lakers game came to its inevitable conclusion, I could tell that the same thing was happening all over again. A quick look at the box score right when the game was over confirmed my suspicions: the Lakers shot 21 free throws in the fourth quarter (37 for the game) and the Celtics were only granted 17 total trips to the line. Those numbers are eerily similar to the ones from 2002.

Even Google knows the Celtics were robbed.

If you read that box score carefully, you’ll see that the Celtics outperformed the Lakers in nearly every statistical category. They outshot them, out-passed them, and even managed to block more shots, despite their notable size disadvantage. Lakers coach Phil Jackson asserted that rebounding won them the game, but the fact is that their team outrebounded the Celtics from the start and they still couldn’t get the lead until the refs swooped in to save the day. They had 20 more free throws than us and only won by four points! Doesn’t that say it all?

I have tried to watch that fourth quarter again more than a few times. “You need to get over this”, “let the past be the past”, and even “it’ll give you ammunition that will come in handy when you debate Lakers fans” are some of the things I’ve said to myself to see if I can muster up the strength to go through with it, but I can’t. It is extremely painful to see a group of dedicated people have their dream unfairly snatched away after committing themselves so passionately to a cause. I find some solace in knowing that I’m not the only one who feels this way, but all that does is momentarily numb the pain. Letting go still feels like an impossibility.

To end on a somewhat positive note, I leave you with the song that inspired the titles of my last three posts, “Don’t Look Back” by (who else?) Boston. Enjoy it, for it is one of the best arena rock songs of the ’70s. I only wish that applying its message were as easy as savoring its melody.

Don’t Look Back, Part II

(Continued from Part I)

This series meant a lot to me for many reasons, but two in particular stood out above the rest: my love for Rasheed Wallace and my hatred towards Kobe Bryant. Everything about Kobe screamed insincerity, from his blatant co-opting of Michael Jordan’s moves and body language to the phony “street” cadence he inflected in his speech. “Sheed”, on the other hand, was never afraid to be himself and always spoke without a filter. Even if his attitude occasionally hurt him and his teams, I admired his authenticity. The fact that three of my five favorite players since I started following the NBA closely in 1999 were Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen (Allen Iverson was second only to Rasheed) only added fuel to the fire. I needed to see them beat Kobe again and shatter his dream of winning back-to-back titles as the leader of his team.

After five games, the C’s looked good with a 3-2 lead in a highly competitive series, but everything came crashing down (no pun intended) when Kendrick Perkins suffered a knee injury in the early moments of game six. Clearly distraught by this unfortunate turn of events, his teammates were unable to focus on the task at hand and the Lakers comfortably tied the series. Boston still had one more chance to beat L.A., but it would be considerably more difficult to contain seven-footers Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum without one of their best rebounders and interior defenders.

Kevin Garnett (5) goes up for a jump shot against Pau Gasol, while Kobe Bryant (24) looks on. Photo (cc) by Eric Kilby and published under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

Driven by pride and a sense of urgency, the Celtics came out swinging. The sheer bliss I felt during the first three quarters of this game was similar to the one that every Puerto Rican shared on August 15, 2004. The Celtics were sharing the ball and working hard defensively while Kobe was forcing the issue and missing almost every shot he took. Lakers fans were not only watching their team lose, but their hero was tarnishing his legacy, perhaps irreversibly. There was a palpable silence in the Staples Center, but in San Juan, I was screaming my lungs out.

All of a sudden, everything began to fall apart. We started missing shots. Kobe and Gasol attacked the boards relentlessly. The C’s seemed to run out of gas right as the Lakers got their second wind, and the crowd went wild. How were we going to get out of this and regain control of the game?

To be continued…

Don’t Look Back, Part I

The very first thing I did when I bought “100 Things Celtics Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die” was check the date on the inside cover. I wanted to see when it was written because that would tell me whether or not it included my saddest moment as a Celtics fan: game seven of the 2010 NBA Finals.

As you can see, I haven’t stopped thinking about that game even four years later. I try not to – it hurts too much – but I can’t help it. It’s intrinsically human; even after all the wonderful moments in our lives, we always think about what could have been and tend to dwell on missed opportunities.

For those who might not know what happened in 2010, here’s a brief summary: after Kevin Garnett missed the 2009 playoffs due to an injury on his right knee, the Celtics met their biggest rival, the Los Angeles Lakers, in rematch of the 2008 NBA Finals which the Celtics won in 6 games). They were up by as many as 13 points in the third quarter of the deciding seventh game, but were unable to close the deal and the Lakers won the championship on their home court.

The Celtics’ roster that season was extremely deep. Six of their players were current or former NBA All-Stars. Rajon Rondo emerged as a dominant force after having played a complementary role in the 2008 championship. Rasheed Wallace was a dependable veteran with championship experience. Nate Robinson, Glen Davis, and Tony Allen provided youth and energy off the bench. Despite a rocky regular season that ended with the team posting a 50-32 record (after winning 23 out of their first 28 games), they began the playoffs on the right track when they eliminated Dwyane Wade’s Miami Heat in five games.

After beating the Heat, the challenge that lay ahead was seen as an insurmountable one by many observers. Every single basketball analyst at ESPN predicted the Celtics would fall to the Cleveland Cavaliers, who boasted the league’s best record and its Most Valuable Player, LeBron James. Against all odds – and without the luxury of home court advantage – Boston beat Cleveland in six games and moved on to the Eastern Conference Finals, where they defeated the Orlando Magic to set up the rematch with the Lakers.

Basketball fans around the world rejoiced. We had been waiting for this for two years, and now that Garnett was back, it was on. The teams were evenly matched, and their historic rivalry only added to the drama. Would Kobe Bryant get his revenge, or would the Celtics embarrass him again? We couldn’t wait to find out.

To be continued…