[Wall Street Journal] Even When Boston Loses, It Wins

really fun article, I am coming to appreciate the WSJ's sports reporting more and more.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-when-it-loses-boston-wins-1495119589

Even When Boston Loses, It Wins
A lopsided trade and a little luck give the Celtics a No. 1 pick—and another contender for a town gorged on championships

By
Jason Gay
Updated May 18, 2017 11:50 a.m. ET
19 COMMENTS
Boston

The Celtics lost badly on Wednesday night, but you know who’s not freaking out? Boston.

They’ll probably go down fast to the Cavaliers in the coming week, but there’s a sports confidence here that’s undeniable, almost freaky. On Tuesday evening, I was at an event in my hometown for MassBike, a statewide cycling advocacy group, when someone paused the ceremony to make an excited announcement:

The Celtics got the number one pick in the draft lottery!

I wish I could say the room erupted in applause, and bike-loving strangers began hugging and kissing and riding in jubilant circles on tandems. That did not happen. The reaction was more of an appreciative shoulder shrug, the way you do when someone lets you cut in line at Trader Joe’s.

The Celtics got the No. 1 pick. Well, that’s nice!

And it’s expected. Bostonians are used to winning, and they’re winning all the time now. I say this with love: It’s getting absurd.

The Celtics No. 1 lottery pick is especially ridiculous because Boston is still in the NBA playoffs. When you win the No. 1 pick in the draft, you’re supposed to be a rusty squid boat on the bottom of basketball’s ocean floor—not four victories away from the Finals.

But thanks to some brilliant dealing by Celtics boss Danny Ainge, and some wondrous ineptitude from the Brooklyn Nets—who gifted their future to Boston in exchange for the shuffleboard vapors of Celtics geezers Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett (and throw-in Jason Terry)—the Celtics have gotten fat on a stash of picks that shouldn’t be theirs. That No. 1 slot Tuesday was earned by the Nets, who were indeed a rusty squid boat at the bottom of the NBA this season, but instead dopily bequeathed first-round picks or “pick swaps” to Boston in 2014, 2016, 17 and 18.

I should probably mention that both Pierce and Garnett are now retired from basketball.

It is shaping up to be the worst trade in NBA history, which is saying a lot, considering the Los Angeles Clippers spent 33 years under Donald Sterling. Pierce, who had post-Nets pit stops with both Washington and the Clips before hanging them up, actually cheered the Celtics lottery luck like a guy who’d hidden a case of beer in the office ceiling on his last day of work.

“Look what I leave behind for the Celts on my way out...#1 pick,” Pierce tweeted.

I know: it’s gross. And Boston is loving every second of it.

On Wednesday, I was at Boston’s Game 1 opener with Cleveland, and though no one expects them to win this series, there’s a giddiness, as if the Celtics are playing with the house’s money. Boston is not a team larded with pricey fading stars, but a fit and hungry roster assembled by Ainge, well-coached by the 40-but-still-getting-carded Brad Stevens, and arriving far ahead of schedule.

They’re not supposed to be this good, this soon.

And so while the Celtics have done impressive things this season (win 53 games, secure the top record in the East, prevail in competitive playoff rounds with Chicago and Washington, ride an emotional high provided by the sensational play of leader Isaiah Thomas, still grieving the recent death of his sister), they have far exceeded expectations. They probably can’t hang with the Cavaliers—a lopsided defeat in Game 1 pretty much proved that—but there is not even the faintest of civic alarm.

(One matter that is cause for alarm: The NBA is on a spectacular run of blowouts this post-season—close games have been too few and far between —and it’s getting to the point where want the network to break in and show “Heidi.”)

(Can you even make a “Heidi Game” reference in 2017? Does that make me sound 200 years old? Do the millennials even know what the “Heidi Game” is, as they eat their avocado toast?)

Before Game 1, Stevens talked briefly about getting the top pick, praising the groundwork laid by Ainge “to help put us in position to be as competitive.”

“Hopefully sustainably competitive,” Stevens said. “Which is a hard thing to do.”

It could get weird—the Celtics are in a position to draft a young point guard sensation like Washington’s Markelle Fultz or UCLA’s Lonzo Ball, which would set up an interesting and potentially conflicted dynamic with Thomas, who is basically a Boston folk hero now.

Maybe they will do that, maybe they won’t. Maybe they’ll move the pick. The Celtics will figure it out. That’s the assumption here. There’s an undercurrent of belief that what’s being built with the Celtics is not so much a team but a system, a culture with that sustainability Ainge and Stevens covet.

There’s a model for it just thirty miles south in Foxborough, where Bill Belichick and the Patriots play.

It’s weird to talk about the Celtics emulating the Patriots—the Celtics, after all, have 17 titles to the Patriots’ five Super Bowls. But they’re the standard on the overindulged island that is Boston sports, where a 15-year-old has now witnessed ten championship parades (five Patriots, three Red Sox, one Celtics, one Bruins), and now expects a couple more from the Celtics before he or she turns 21.

Yeah: It’s a little gross. But they’ve earned the right to be confident. Cleveland has LeBron James, and all the answers in the conference finals, but it sure looks like Boston can’t lose.

Write to Jason Gay at [email protected]​