I Didn't Expect To Be Triggered This Morning But Here I Am...Triggered

Live look at yours truly

Here I was, just wrapped up the Olynyk blog, was minding my own business scrolling Twitter doing anything possibly to avoid the massive amounts of work I have to do today because I basically just blogged all day yesterday and I saw that tweet from NBA TV. Immediately my blood started boiling and I was mad online. So mad online that I did the only thing I knew to do and that’s fire up another blog to vent. Fuck that Draft Day in 1997, it can go straight to hell. Why does this make me so upset? Well because that should have been me, that should have been the Celtics, my life should have been filled with a handfuls of rings and an all time great.

For those of you who have no clue what I’m talking about, allow me to take you back in time.

You see the year was 1997, the Celtics were coming off a stellar 15-67 season and it was clear ML Carr was not the answer as head coach. That’s when they decided to bring in Rick Pitino that dickwad. You see that’s the other part of what triggered me with that video, it made me think back to the Rick Pitino Era, you know just the Era that basically ruined the Celtics for my entire childhood. Anyway, the Celtics entered the Lottery that year with the best overall odds of landing the #1 pick. They stood at 27.51% and were 2nd in the pre lottery positioning. No chance this doesn’t work out right? Fucking wrong. Instead, they drew the 3rd pick, with PHI going 2nd (Keith Van Horn) and the 20-62 Spurs, who had a 21.60% chance, walking away with the #1 pick and Tim Duncan, forever changing their franchise. You see it was bullshit back then because the year before they won 59 games. David Robinson got hurt and that’s basically why they tanked. They weren’t suffering like we were in Boston, where we hadn’t won more than 35 games since 1992-93 (and wouldn’t win more than 36 until 2001-02). WE deserved this basketball savior from Wake Forest, the whole thing was a disaster. On top of that to make my triggering worse, I was reminded that while the Celtics took a great player in Chauncey Billips at #3, that asshole Pitino traded his ass 51 games into his Celtics career for Kenny Anderson/Popeye Jones/Zan Tabak. God dammit.

So how did things play out? Well, the Celts went the next four years without making the playoffs while the Spurs won their first title in Duncan’s second season. They obviously continued to make the playoffs every year of Duncan’s career, win four more titles, and became one of the best NBA franchises of all time. They won 50+ games for the next 20 years. My entire life has always been a “what if” when it came to that 1997 Draft because they were so close. You bet your ass Celtics fans everywhere had that same sort of feeling in 2007 before the Big 3 trade, so you see what may appear to be an innocent video tweeted out during the slow part of the NBA schedule is actually anything but.

Maybe I’m wrong to feel this way after so many years, but this is the pain that shaped me, that molded me into the man I am today and I can say with certainty these turn of events will make my blood boil until my last breath. Stupid David Stern and his rigged Lottery. This should have been us