First Celtics Game!

If there's one thing people from Massachusetts collectively love it's sports. In fact, if I were to personify the Bay State as a person in a bar, they would be bragging about their  prestigious teams. On Friday January 15th, I went to my first ever Celtics Game and I couldn't have asked for a better time! 

Basketball was actually invented in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1891 by Dr. James Naismith, but the NBA wasn't founded until 1946. The Celtics have the most NBA titles with seventeen championships; they won in 1957, 1959,1960,1961,1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1968,1969, 1974, 1976, 1981, 1984, 1986, and 2008. The Celtics banners are proudly displayed up by the rafters and they always have one pristine banner blank to motivate the team. 

The home of the Celtics is the TD Garden. It opened in 1995 and it puts on about two hundred events per year, including games and concerts. It was second time at the Garden this past Friday having seen Katy Perry there in 2014. 

The Celtics were facing the Phoenix Suns that day. I purchased the tickets as a Christmas present for my boyfriend, a massive fanboy of both the sport and the team. There wasn't any particular reason why I had us go to this match other than I thought it would be fun for us to see a game before heading back to college. After my boyfriend gave me a historical background on the team, I was happy with my choice. The Celtics and Suns faced each other in the 1976 NBA Championship and many basketball enthusiasts consider Game 5 to be the greatest game ever because there ended up being three overtimes! Additionally, fan-fave Isaiah Thomas played for the Suns just last year.

The Celtics won 117 to 103! They acted fast and never allowed the Suns to get ahead. Guard Marcu Smarts made his first triple double of his career at this game, which was the first Celtics triple double to come from a non starter since January 16, 1971! A triple double is when a player makes a double digit number in three of the five statistical categories- points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocked shots. Smarts earned ten points, eleven rebounds, and ten assists as well as making two steals and two blocks.

Whenever the Celtics win by a landslide, the TD Garden plays a clip from Dick Clark's American Bandstand where a group of people are dancing to the Bee Gees' "You Should Be Dancing." Fans go nuts when when this dancer clad in a Gino Vannelli t-shirt comes on. This tradition is known as "Gino Time" and it is not uncommon to find people wearing the shirt at games. 

My goals that night were to appear on the jumbotron and win a t-shirt  thrown into the crowds by one of the cheerleaders and they both happened! 

I'd say this January's theme has been that of love and  basketball. Not only have I started watching the Celtics for the first time in my life, my boyfriend and I have started playing together. 

Another reason that made that the game special was seeing mentoring programs being recognized as my boyfriend is a mentor himself for a behavioral service. There was a mentoring program doing a 50-50 raffle and a women was honored for her work with high risk teenagers. 

Attending the game, I discovered a person can learn a lot about happiness and perseverance by taking a page from a Celtics fan's book. They have literally seen basketball giants come and go and consecutive championships followed by decades with no titles, yet their passionate for the team is unwavering. 

Have you ever been to a Celtics game? What was it like? 

TD Garden 
100 Legends Ways 
Boston, MA 02114 
#617-624-1050 

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