That Was

an evisceration, an emasculation, an exposition and an exposure, an ego-ectomy.

That was Ray Allen's Game 4-clinching humiliation of Sasha Vujacic rewritten into an entire game. (Correspondent at Truehoop: "Dumping a bucket of pig's blood on a girl at her prom is rude and all, but what Ray Allen did to Sasha Vujacic on that driving layup was humiliation of the highest order...Someone breaks you down like that on the playground or in the Y and that's it. Grab you[r] keys and Gatorade and head home, time to rethink some things.")

It was a validation, for Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett and especially for Paul Pierce, about whom more (again!) in the near future.

I honestly thought that I'd cry - I cried when the Red Sox won in 2004, and I presumed that my infinitely greater love for basketball would more than compensate for the infinitely greater psychic wounds that Sox team (sort of) healed - to see the first Celtics championship of my memory. (I wasn't exactly paying attention in 1986.) If the game had been tense I think I might have, but for the second half the only suspense was whether the Celtics would break the record for biggest margin of victory in a title-winning game (they did) and the record for biggest margin of victory in a Finals game, period (they did not). I laughed and did some squealing and am grinning right now, but no tears. And that's good, too.

Seventeen titles. Keep smiling, Mr. Russell.