Sunday, March 12, 2006
"Of course, the Celtics fans are buzzing about this metamorphosis, mainly because it's so out of kilter with everything else that seems to happen to this team. The last two decades have been painful, almost a cruel shift of karma from the Russell/Cowens/Bird eras, between Lenny Bias, Reggie Lewis, Dave Gavitt, ML Carr, Dee Brown's knee, Kevin McHale's ankle, Larry Bird's back, the charmless FleetCenter, the Duncan Lottery, the Pitino Disaster, the Antoine Roller-Coaster Ride, the Potapenko trade, the Pierce stabbing, the Johnson-Brown-Forte draft debacle, the indefensible Vin Baker trade, the Mark Blount contract and, finally, Pierce's self-destruction last spring. Since Bird's retirement in 1992, only the overachieving 2002 and 2003 teams advanced past the first round of the playoffs, and that was because of good fortune (and an inferior conference) more than anything. Those teams were like Ellen Barkin in the late-'80s; maybe they got the job done, but you always had trouble watching them."
-Bill Simmons On The Celtics Curse
