"How … SICK … are the Celtics this year?"
"How much do you think I'd have to pay KG for him to let me have his child?"
"ROOONNNNDOOOOO!"
It's going to be a long winter.
I am not a Celtics fan. I'm not a Nets, Spurs, or Lakers fan, either. I have no beef with KG, Ray Allen, or The Truth, and I actually quite like Rajon Rondo and - gasp - Brian Scalabrine.
But I'm not a Celtics fan. I'm not allowed to be.
You see, I consider myself a die-hard Red Sox fan, a breathe-and-bleed-maroon-and-gold Boston College fan, a dynasty-worshipping Patriots fan. But I had to earn it with all those teams, and it wasn't easy.
If there is one thing in the world I hate more than Alex Rodriguez, it is a bandwagon fan. I hate them. They want all of the glory with none of the guts; they mooch off the teams' successes and couldn't care less about the failures.
And I refuse to be one of them. Therefore, I will spend the next three to five years pretending I hate the Celtics, until they have a losing season. Once the spell of success is broken - and I spend an entire season loving a team that can't win a game - then I'll be able to enjoy it the next time Danny Ainge puts together a team like this one. Then I'll truly be a fan.
Being a fan is far more complicated than it seems. There are rules - at least there are for those of us who know how to do it right.
Does your fanhood need questioning? Let's see.
People who became "The Biggest Red Sox Fan Ever" after Boston won the World Series in 2004 - or last month - make me sick. They did nothing to earn their status. Sure, they loved it when Josh Beckett owned the Angels, Indians, and Rockies this postseason, but they were nowhere to be found when he blew it against Roger Clemens at the beginning of August with the division lead slipping away. They weren't there last year, when he allowed so many home runs that I had to strap myself into a straitjacket to save my television from imminent death. They weren't there in '05, when Matt Clement and David Wells (shudder) were at the top of our playoff pitching rotation.
Yet, somehow, those people were the ones taking up all the room at the victory parade a couple of weeks ago.
Hmm.
Then there are the screamin' Eagle fans, the Matty Heisman campaign leaders who bleed for B-Rob and Richie Guns but, shockingly, couldn't tell you what their real names are. But they're still hard-core fans because they know that Jamie Silva, like, picks trash out of dumpsters.
They rode the wave of craziness when BC started this season 8-0, but over the past few weeks, they've been mysteriously MIA. They woke up without rain clouds above their heads for the past two Sunday mornings, while the real fans struggled to find a reason to live.
Why? Because they never really cared in the first place. They didn't know how.
The point is that you need to earn your stripes. You need to experience agony and heartbreak and pain because that is what bonds you with a team, not World Series wins and BCS championships. When you make it through the darkest days and you can still look in the mirror and honestly say, "I live for this team," then you're a real fan.
So I'm putting Rajon and Ray and KG and Paul on hold. It would be disingenuous of me to call myself a Celtics fan this year because I missed the boat; I haven't suffered yet.
You can't be on the team unless you go through rookie hazing first.
Just for the record, someone at work told me there's a 15 to 17 percent chance I'm the Antichrist because of this theory.
But there's an 83 to 85 percent chance I'm not.
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