Comparing the Celtics season to Early Lynyrd Skynyrd, a reflection on a season done gone...

If you had told me way back on Nov. 1, the night before the Celtic's season started that they would lose 50 games, I would have been really sad. I still would've watched just as much but I would have been sad. There was indeed a lot of pretty bad basketball, inconsistant play and coaching etc. But at this point, there isn't much you can Bryan Doo. Yes it stinks that another year of Paul Pierce's genius is wasted, but at least he looked like he was having fun and happy leading a team for the first time ever, leaving so much room for optimism. So instead of getting hung up on the bad, I will appease my unworthy jackass nemesis Danny Ainge and focus on the positive:

Even if they did lose a ton, every game was close. Few games in the first 2/3 of the season were won or lost by more than 4 or 5 points. That means the Celtics were competing in every game, and just haven't found their way to close it out yet.

It would be the easy way out here to make a baseball pitching analogy here about finding the right closer, but i won't because baseball is overanylized. Instead I'll compare this year's Celtics to Lynyrd Skynyrd before they wrote "Free Bird".

Why the 2005-2006 Celtics are a lot like pre-Free Bird Lynyrd Skynyrd



In those early days Skynyrd was a bunch of young, vivacious, high-school grads who made their living traveling town to town trying to win fans and fame. While they had a bunch of talent with their rapid fire three guitar frontline and raunchy rhythm section, their repitoire was inconsistant, and fans would lose interest when they blew all their steam in the first half of their concert. What they hadn't figured out yet, was how to close the set and leave the fans riveted. Fans wanted Free Bird, it just hadn't been written yet...

So after a long tour that took them all over the country, they regathered and regrouped, and said hey, we need a nasty encore song to finish off each show that would leave their opponents stunned. Since Styx's "Lady" was already written and Skid Row's "18 and Life" was musically inconcievable at the time, they sat down that summer, and they wrote one of the great closers of all time, "Free Bird". Rumor has it the first time singer Ronnie Van Zant crooned the lyrics of Free Bird in practice sessions the Dalai Lama cried for a month and Steven Segal let down his pony tail and swayed. The first time the three guitar players worked out that pulvarizing guitar solo three "Guitar Centers" spontaneously caught on fire burning all the Squier Strats and Guitar Center guys to the ground before they could even ask "D'Ya wanna plug in?

All was good in the world, and Lynyrd Skynyrd never closed another set without tears being cried, breasts being bared, and the entire crowd convinced they were the best band to ever come out of Jacksonville, FLA (contenders to their throne include Limp Bizkit and Jam Pony Express).

Now you may be asking, "what does the definitive 70s southern rock band have to do with the Celtics?" Well my friend, everything. You see, the Celtics are one closing push, one "Free Bird" away from a solid seed in the Playoffs. Sure we already got the band: Paul Pierce on vocals, Gomes on bass, G.Green Tony and Delonte on flashy lead guitars, Wally on tamborine, Perk on breaking glass, and Scals on the (Chicken) drum-sticks, but we don't have our Encore Song. The talent is there, they just have to creatively harvest it (wink wink to you Doc and Danny) into the winning power ballad of a game plan.

Once we have that, we are solid gold.