The Blue Workhorse

Although my favorite team emerged victorious, in what once was the focal point of my birthday celebrations as a youth (watching Jordan hoist trophy, after trophy, after trophy…) has become a mere afterthought. I pondered the underlying reasons to my recent apathy towards the David Stern-managed league and came to one conclusion. The NBA is apathetic towards me.

There is no effort to reach out to me as a young to middle-aged professional male with strong lifelong ties to an organization. (Please understand generalizations such as this are not made of malice or ill will. Assessments of a broad section of people are not reflections of all members of a race or class, but a statement of opinion regarding generalizations arrived at through casual observations of my brief 23 years of life.) This demographic has been ignored since the late 1990s.

I bought tickets for Game 3. I predicted the Hawks would make the playoffs before the season began, so I had to support my team regardless of how they had played in Games 1 & 2. I was able to observe a lot that I might have missed during the broadcast, so I started observing things throughout the remainder of the series.

Here are 33 of my observations from the Hawks/Celtics series (some obvious and some that might not have been):

After winning the Eastern Conference Atlantic Division and having the best record, not only in the Eastern Conference but in all of the NBA, during the regular season, the Boston Celtics entered the playoffs with aspirations of hoisting the golden trophy as NBA Champions this season.

However, it could be the lowly eighth-seeded below .500 Atlanta Hawks that ultimately lead to the all-powerful Celtics demise. How is that? How could a 37-45 squad bring down the dominant 66-16 team that beat them in five consecutive contests prior to Game 3 of the first round?