An evening in TD Garden

I spent the evening today amongst 18000 screaming fans, tons of booze and two teams fighting it out over a basketball match. The Celtics took on the Hawks as me and Biki watched on with our heads pasted against the ceiling of the stadium(literally, cause we were in the last row and there was a low ledged roof there). Needless to say, the gigantic screens kind of helped make the miniscule players more lifelike. It was an eventful game. Doc Rivers, the coach of the Celtics got into a shouting match with the ref and the ref chucked him out of the stadium. Of course, Doc Rivers left to a standing ovation from the entire Celtics crowd screaming at the top its lungs.

The Hawks rallied and won the game 102-96. Johnson of the Hawks outshone everyone else in the game. 36 points with some really sweet throws to the net. The guy was truly on fire tonight. Rondo did a decent jobs for the Celtics. Being relatively shorter than his counterparts, Rondo is quick to the net and makes amazing passes(similar to the way Nash plays). But, today it wasn't enough. I hope they do well for the rest of the season though. Garnett is still out. Lets see how it goes.

I started routing for the Celtics when I was back in the bay area in California. It started with the 2007-2008 finals where the Lakers were playing the Celtics. All my friends were supporting the Lakers and just to yank their chain, I decided to support the Celtics. Eventually, when the Celtics won there were tons of furious people watching me jump in joy. So a year later when the Celtics lost out, I literally had people doing a rain dance around me. As an icing on the cake, the Lakers went on to win the 2008-2009 title. Since then I have been following the Celtics games on and off, though this was my first chance to watch them play live.

TD Garden is a fun place to watch a match. They have continuous music(some good stuff like GNR, U2, Michael Jackson, etc) and keep egging the crowd to cheer on the team. There are cheerleaders(pretty ones at that) who come for 20 sec dance routines. They also had a bunch of kids who did some nice routines as well. There was a rotating camera that kept catching the crowd unawares at different parts of the stadium, by broadcasting their pics on the screen. There was an elderly gentleman who was quietly snoozing with his head rested against the arm of his friend. The camera paused a bit longer on him. Finally in front of the crowd, his friend had to nudge him awake. The guy then went on to show V signs to the crowd and grin from ear to ear. There was another time that the camera caught this kid dancing. The kid obliged by showing off his dancing chops. He was incredibly talented in break dancing and considering, he might have not been more that 8 or 9, he was absolutely brilliant.

The evening ended with a ride in the subway. The subway actually takes one over the Charles river and one gets a very pretty view of Boston(tall buildings, shimmering lights in the night, and a glazed river frozen on the surface). That along with the rhythmic sound of the train chugging along the tracks is amusingly the one part of today that is stuck in my head.