Hey Boston! You're Just Like Us!

Tuesday night was one of the most ironic in the Boston-New York rivalry. Aside from the Yankee-Red Sox matchup, the New York and Boston fans were bickering in sports again; finding themselves in opposing positions on the night of the draft lottery: The Celtics intentionally tanked the season to get Oden, and the Knicks unintentionally tanked the season to keep the Bulls from getting Oden. Ah the drama...

So with the Knicks having pretty much nothing to do with this lottery, I really could care less about the result… except the factoid that the Celtics…of all teams, pretty much tanked the season in an organizational effort to gain the right to emblazon the Oden name onto 1000’s of green jerseys.

As a sports fan it really sickened me. How could you root for your team to lose? You know what, even if its better in the long run, sports is a short term kind of deal! Honestly, it might have been better if the Jets lost that game two years ago, and instead of Thomas Jones we'd have Reggie Bush in our backfield. But I'd cheer them on again if it happened today.

This really showed the hypocritical nature of the Boston sports fan to me. I saw one guy on ESPN’s Conversation beta criticize the Yankee fans; telling them they aren’t entitled to a championship every year. Then this same character had the nerve to explain how the Boston Celtics were long overdue for a break.

Overdue? What exactly are the Celtics entitled to that the Yankees are not? The Celtics made bad organizational moves, compounding bad contracts and high school grads with a lone star in Paul Pierce. Larry Bird is long gone. Len Bias is a distant memory. Tim Duncan didn’t come out to the draft that year. They had Chauncey Billups and gave up on him about a career too early. They essentially traded the best player in the draft (R.O.Y. Roy) so you can get Stephon Marbury’s cousin. (And that’s all Telfair is to me until he proves otherwise) It’s your fault Boston! You had your chances.

But my beef with the Celtics comes from a deeper level. Honestly, I too was once a Birdman of sorts. I cheered against my future coach because there was something so intriguing about a hick with success in such a physical and athletic sport.

Furthermore, I could care less what a Boston fan thinks. I guess its that Yankee attitude, the one where you don’t even care who’s behind you, you’re still in first.

My beef goes beyond any Bill Simmons rant on the karma of the Celtics. You can check out my cartoon to know how I feel about that.

Really my beef comes from a sports journalism class I was in two years ago. Let’s have a Wonder Years-esque flashback, shall we?

Me, with a deeper and totally different voice: My teacher, a Celtic fanatic, and this student, a Patriot fanatic were teaming up on my Knicks, criticizing everything from Eddy Curry’s heart (literally and figuratively) to Stephon Marbury’s tattoos.

I was quickly getting sick of it. I promptly stood up and said, “Well, the Knicks are closer to a championship than the Celtics are!”

I then went on to explain the Isiah Thomas plan and pick out the deficiencies of the Celtic franchise all the way down to their crappy uniform.

Snap back to reality. The draft went on, and the Celtic fans were disappointed with their pick, the fifth pick they wasted all their efforts to get so undeservingly.

“We were screwed!” yelled one Bostonian. “It was fixed,” another cried.

Really?

It’s funny. Because, if anything, David Stern went out of his way NOT to fix this draft. The top three tankers did not get rewarded. The Bulls did not end up with their missing puzzle piece they shouldn’t have had in the first place. The Portland TrailBlazers became relevant.

And mot importantly the Boston fans got a nice Aaron Boone-like slap in the face: You guys are just like us.

Jason Paderon is a co-founder, columnist, and cartoonist for ChewThemOut.com. Additionally, he was a news reporter for the Staten Island Advance. He can be reached at paderon@chewthemout.com.