The second reason is that losing to the Lakers still stings. Even now, two months later, I'm still bummed that we couldn't hold on to a 13-point third quarter lead. Being so close to our eighteenth and most improbable banner, and not being able to hang on is tough; that it came against the hated Lakers, the favorite team of the city in which I live, makes it even tougher. Celtics fans are not used to their team not coming through in those situations. Perhaps one day I'll be able to exorcise those demons, but for now, I've said what I'm going to say about the Finals.
I'm breaking my silence for a different reason: Dennis Johnson, the man who probably had a bigger influence on my love for basketball than anyone other than my father, was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame this weekend.
I was very young during DJ's career, and so I'll leave it to others to supplement what you may recall of the Celtics' point guard during the 80s. But I was old enough to have a favorite player, and DJ was it. And I was old enough to understand what DJ meant to those teams, the role he played on one of the best collections of basketball players ever assembled. And I was at just the right age for that role to shape my understanding and philosophy of basketball, forever.
DJ was extremely talented, the kind of guy who could have dominated the ball and scored a bunch of points the way he had in Seattle prior to coming over to the Celtics in a trade for Rick Robey. But those Sonics teams didn't have Larry Bird and Kevin McHale and Robert Parish, and the Celtics did, and DJ understood that that meant that his job was to defend, to make sure the ball got to where it needed to get, and to make the other team pay for ignoring him if they chose to do so. DJ taught me that you don't necessarily have to score to contribute, that assisting on a basket or making a steal can be as satisfying as scoring a bucket yourself. (Indeed, I found that there is no feeling on a basketball court more exhilarating than changing the natural momentum and flow of the game by poking the ball away from the opposition as they rushed upcourt.)
Bird always said DJ was the best player he'd ever played with, and that, too, helped shape my basketball philosophy. If you were eight or nine years and a Celtics fan in the 80s, and Bird spoke, you listened, and those comments made me think about basketball and DJ in a way I might not have otherwise. I tried to be like DJ as much as I could. His uniform number, 3, became mine, and it remains my favorite number, my "lucky" number, to this day. I enjoyed a very modest basketball career in high school, and I always did my best to play the role of "system" point guard to perfection: Protect the ball, try to be a game-changer on defense, make just enough shots so that the other team couldn't forget about you.
Bringing it back to these current Celtics, what I want most for Rajon Rondo, certainly my current favorite Celtic and probably second only to DJ all-time, is for him to be a little more like DJ. They have vastly different games: DJ could shoot and Rondo can't, Rondo's flashy where DJ was solid, DJ was burly and strong where Rondo is wispy and quick. Two years ago, Rondo did exactly as DJ would have done, deferring to his veteran teammates in most instances. But now, with age and wear and tear taking its toll on the Big Three, DJ would have been quicker to take what is now the next step for Rondo: Recognize that he is fully capable of carrying his team offensively, and doing so when the situation deems it necessary. Drop an in-his-prime DJ into the third quarter of Game 7 in June, and there's no way Boston wastes possession after possession isolating its obviously exhausted top offensive options. That's when DJ would have gone to work.
As many of you know, DJ was inducted posthumously; many consider it an injustice that the selection committee didn't choose him immediately and a tragedy that he wasn't around to receive the honor himself. Myself, I'll never forget where I was when I found out DJ had died of a heart attack. I was in Las Vegas for work, and my best friend, Joel, called me to break the news, understanding that it was not the kind of thing I'd want to find out from ESPN. I called home to tell my parents about it, and found myself choked up while on the phone with my mother. I remember being surprised, at the time, that a man in his 20s could get that emotional about a basketball player he had never met.
Later, I decided it was a good thing, that I was glad that we never get too old to have heroes.
Dennis Johnson was my hero. And now he's a Hall of Famer.
