Windows
Friday May 16, 2025
Man, what a rollercoaster of a week.
In sports, we talk about “title windows,” the time when a team is good enough to compete for a championship. After drafting Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum in subsequent years, the Celtics flirted with opening theirs for half a decade, through several iterations of the team, only to finally break through in 2022, thanks to Tatum and Jaylen Brown taking the reins of the franchise after a run of star acquisitions proved to be nothing more than disappointing mercenaries. They made the Finals for the first time since 2010 that year, and despite losing to a better Warriors team, it felt like the window was truly open.
And it was. In 2024, the Celtics won a championship, and Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown looked like a duo that could launch a new Celtics dynasty.
And then they lost the first two games of their current second-round playoff series by blowing 20-point leads while going through an almost supernatural shooting slump. (Literally the worst shooting performance in back-to-back games in franchise playoff history.) In Game 4, the Knicks finally beat them rather than the Celtics beating themselves, and it genuinely didn’t matter because Jayson Tatum collapsed to the floor in the 4th quarter with a torn Achilles’ tendon. Anyone who knows me well likely suspects I’ve gone to some pretty dark places since Monday night, but I’m oddly at peace.
Although I was at TD Garden on Wednesday to see the Tatum-less Celtics put up an inspired effort and blow out the Knicks in Game 5, it’s still hard not to think this title window snapped with Tatum’s Achilles’ tendon. I will believe the Celtics can fight through this and win it all until they don’t, but my logical brain says it’s going to be a rough time for the Celtics for a bit. And I’m okay, because this series was a bit of a wake-up call.
For most of my life, I’ve been so overwhelmingly consumed by my sports fandom, particularly with the Celtics. I’ve let a bunch of random strangers playing games have an inordinate sway over my emotions, as I think they do over a lot of adult men. I was moody and angry after the Celtics blew the series' first two games. Mother’s Day dinner with my family would have been dour if the Celtics had lost.
Monday night, as the Celtics blew yet another lead, I was sinking deeply into a depressive episode, to the point that I wanted to disappear. But when Tatum collapsed in a screaming heap, something in me snapped, too.
There’s so much to say about Jayson Tatum, the consummate role model and foil for a toxic, narrative-driven society that gravitates to the “aura” of infantile stars who openly reject adult responsibility. He’s the best Celtic of my lifetime, is already a Hall of Famer, and by every objective metric is on track to become one of the 10 or 15 best players of all-time. That’s not hyperbolic, you might just think it is because of the way the world dismisses Boston athletes.
This particular injury is one of the worst in basketball, but I’m not going to eulogize his career like he won’t be back. He will. I have no idea if he’ll be the same player ever again, but he will be back, and the Celtics might reopen their title window if they manage the next few seasons well. But seeing this 27-year-old elite athlete in the prime of his career suddenly have everything arbitrarily thrown up in the air after a ludicrous, random series of events created the perfect set of conditions for the Knicks to go up big in a series they’d probably win just once if you played it ten times just felt like such a cruel twist of fate. I finally began to process that I have no control over this sports thing; I only control my reaction to it. Why do I care so much? Just stop. Step away for a while.
I think it’s easy to interpret this as fair-weather fandom given how likely it is that the Celtics will not be very good next year, and I recognize that. I think that’s a fair accusation. But… I just can’t put so much emotional equity into this when I’m a father. I still have to comfort a screaming baby, change a diaper, and tell my son I love him after the Celtics blow a 20-point lead.
Since Lindsay got pregnant, one of the things I’ve looked forward to is sharing my sports fandom with our son because, as obnoxious as it sounds, it’s truly a privilege to be born a Boston sports fan. I’ve been so excited that Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown will be to my son what Paul Pierce and Antoine Walker were to me, only way better. But when he’s 6, they’ll be 33 and 34, respectively, and after this injury, there is no certainty they’ll still be competing for titles like I thought they would. They might not even be Celtics anymore. That potential had really never crossed my mind.
I still look forward to going to games and watching them on TV with my kid, but I’m beginning to realize I need to model something other than emotional obsession. Lindsay has joked for years that I’m in an abusive relationship with the Celtics, and that was very true as they cracked title windows only to have them slammed shut before they could really materialize multiple times between 2016 and 2024. They healed a lot of wounds by winning it all last year, and I think it has helped me find peace with the fact that I’m just never going to invest the same way after this season. I won’t be able to watch every game, I won’t read all the blogs and Twitter posts, I won’t go to a playoff game every year. It’s just going to be different. I’m going to burden my child with a lot, but I don’t want to give him this dependency on winning.
Time will tell if the Celtics can reopen their window after Tatum recovers, but the timing of this kick in the nuts feels serendipitous. The basketball gods are cruel but, in a way, they’ve given me an opportunity to learn some boundaries and emotional governance around this friggin’ team in time to show my son what a healthy relationship with a team looks like. Or at least try to.
After all, we’ll always have this:
