Tuff juice

We interrupt the Philippines report to mention that Swami and I went to the Celtics game versus the Wizards last night. It was the second game in a home-and-home series, and the Wiz managed to beat the Celtics at home last Saturday, despite the fact that Gilbert’s still out healing his knee. Man, with Garnett on the team this year, it’s been looking damn good for the Celtics so far. I won’t even mention the home opener, where they absolutely crushed the Wizards (and that was with Arenas!). Anyway, it’s tough to watch your team on somebody else’s home court, especially when that court’s in Boston. The fans here aren’t exactly charitable to opposing teams or, frankly, awash in the notion of sportsmanship. And the fact that the Wizards had just beaten the Celtics two nights ago meant that everyone was a little, shall we say, pumped up.

Despite my partisanship it was pretty awesome to see Garnett on his new team, though. And to see him live, which I hadn’t done before. Dude is intense, let’s put it that way. Just look at that picture from the Jan. 12 recap I linked to in the first paragraph. And it looked like the Celtics were going to win without too much trouble, after the Wizards had a disappointing third quarter and were down 14 points in the middle of the fourth.

But then my man Caron Butler took over, scoring some amazing layups and getting fouled and helping the Wiz outscore Boston 25-6 in the last six minutes. It was something else to hear that crowd, who had been screaming so loud all night, end the game in a stunned hush. (Here’s the recap for posterity, with a great pic of Caron.) It was tough to be in an arena where the outcome was considered a shocking loss, but I managed to walk out of there without my huge grin attracting any attention. And listening to the Boston fans loudly bitching about the loss on the T, that was pretty sweet, too.

On an unrelated note, this is my blog’s 100th post. Go me!

(Edited on 2 Feb: Dammit, they took all the cool pics down off the recap pages. Sorry!)