The Most Likable (and Hateable) Team in Basketball 

The most likable team in basketball

That's probably not, truly, an apt description of the 2012 Boston Celtics, but that's how I feel about them. As an NBA fan, a Celtics season ticket holder for five years now (and already renewed for the sixth), I've been lucky enough to see the Celtics at their most recent peak. As a long time Celtics fan (going back to the '84 team, when my favorite player was DJ), I had the great fortune of being spoiled in my formative years, watching the Big Three (original flavor) and the great Lakers/Celtics battles.

I then had the misfortune of watching the Celtics muddle through the 90s and a good part of the early 2000s, right as I was getting my own disposable income. Now I could buy my own seat to watch Vitaly Potapenko or Alaa Abdelnaby, and a bunch of really, really bad Celtics teams. And not even likably bad, when a team tries hard and has a bunch of young players. Just bad. No ball movement, isolation, do-your-own-thing-bad.

I think that's why I gravitated so much to the Walker/Pierce Celtics of 2002. It's why I have an Antoine Walker jersey. The post-Pitino teams coached by Jim O'Brien worked hard, did the little things, and willed their way to an Eastern Conference Finals. They were a likable team because, even though they didn't play great basketball, they did all the little things that makes you like a team: hustle, help teammates up, take charges, etc.

They were likable.

But now I sit here, at 1 am on a Monday morning, knowing I have to work in 7 hours, writing about a team that has a ridiculously special place in my heart. A space the same size as the 2004 Red Sox have. This Celtics team (from 2007 until now) is loathed, outright loathed, by many NBA fans. And that's why, to us, they're so likable.

They're loathed not in a LeBron James/Miami Heat way, but in a "man, I hate that guy, but I wish he was on my team" way.

And, again, that's why they're likable. Lovable, even.

The last few weeks have been an example of that. They are an old team—whenever they do the starting lineup intros, I'm always amazed that the last three guys, Allen-Garnett-Pierce, have played 15-16-14 years in the league. They're hurt—KG's never been quite the same since he blew up his knee; Ray is on a bum ankle; Pierce is playing with a sprained knee. They push and they shove and they dive and they take charges. They talk trash. They take bad shots on one possession, and then run the most beautiful plays on the next possession. They're run by a point guard who is so mercurial and so talented that even when he's turning in a triple double, the home fans wonder if he's even really trying.

This team should have been dead and buried a number of times. But they keep coming. They find new ways to win. They find new ways to piss off opposing teams and opposing fans. They legitimately feel like they have a connection to the fans. I know KG might end up somewhere else next year, but he's really made me, made us, feel like if he does, we'll still be his real peeps.

I don't know how else to describe it. I don't think I've even done a good job describing it. It is just a feeling you have when you start to feel like maybe you really are the 6th man on the floor. When you think "maybe if I yell a bit louder, they will try a bit harder", and it seems to work. When the 9th man, 10th man, 15th man on the team comes up with big plays day after day.

They are a team made up of players where opposing fans say "man, I hate that guy, but I wish he was on my team." We hated Mickael Pietrus before he came to Boston, and now we (mostly) love him. Tonight's game is a perfect example. I think he may have committed 15 bad fouls and airballed 42 3s, but he got two straight massive offensive rebounds. Because that's what this team does.

I loved the 2007-08 team. But I may love this team more. They shouldn't be in the Eastern Conference Finals. They shouldn't be tied 2 games apiece. I shouldn't be sitting here, still sweaty and wired from being at the Garden, writing about this team.

But I am.

We've got at least two more games with them, and I hope, a bunch more after that. I'm not ready to lose these guys yet. I need to see more KG knuckle pushups, more Marquis Daniels flexing, more of everything about this team that makes them so damn enjoyable to watch.

Unless you root for the other team. Then you hate them.