Wednesday 7 February - Boston

Tonight was our second trip to an NBA game. The Celtics had now lost 15 straight and were copping it from all sides. Most of the media are more harsh than ours in that there’s no real support being provided for them – instead of perhaps providing a level-headed critique, everytime they’re brought up on radio and print its about how much they ‘suck’. They have a dedicated TV team who follow them wherever they go and broadcast them on Fox Sports New England, who I reckon provide a really balanced look at every game the Celtics are in, despite the fact that they clearly support the team during the coverage.

Tonight was the against the Miami Heat, last year’s champions (I am not going to call them the ‘world champions’ – they clearly don’t deserve it). Their team includes a few famous names – Shaquille O’Neal, Gary Payton and Alonzo Mourning in particular. The one player I’d never heard over before, but is their gun player, is a bloke name Dwyane Wade (yes, I’ve got that spelling right, it’s ‘Dwyane’). Only in his fourth year, Wade clearly is going to be one of the guns in the league for a long time yet.. Despite being up by 10 at quarter time, the Celtics gave away their lead within the first 2 minutes of the 2nd quarter (which is so typical) and lost by 12, Wade shooting 30.

A couple of odd things about the night:

• Buying tickets off a scalper while walking to the Garden. We think we had a win – although the tickets said $10 on them, we couldn’t find tickets on Ticketmaster during the day for less than $40, so parting with $20 for similarly located tickets wasn’t too bad I think. Dad would be proud. Daryl Kerrigan might be even more proud.
• Pete’s housemate Andrew self-admittedly isn’t a basketball fan. And the game was over quite early. But still not sure that excuses him for falling asleep at the game. Quite early in the game too. And he’s a baseball fan! Baseball is a ‘toilet’ sport – they happen to play only 162 games per home and away season, plus finals – and everyone I’ve spoken to has said they need to drink at the game. If they think cricket is boring, at least we’re happy to sit there without a frothy and watch a full days cricket.