When I was a teenager, I watched a few UCLA basketball games, awed by the splendor of one skinny tall guy who could float. His name was Lew Alcindor – as Kareem Abdul Jabbar he is still my idea of what basketball should be. But that’s about as close as I ever got to caring about basketball. Mostly.

There was a time though that I GOT it, I got what a team sport was for, and that was in a few magical years when the Boston Celtics ruled. They ruled on and off for a long time but this was a specific period. It wasn’t that I was pro-Boston (ok, I was – Hartford girls whose mothers were born in Brookline tend to be pro-Boston) and it wasn’t even that I was living there, though yeah, I did live there. I never saw a game live – are you kidding? When the Cetlics were on top, you couldn’t beg borrow or steal a ticket; I had a chance once at a ticket where the view was “restricted” and said no. the old garden – oy the garden – had Big Mother Freaking Poles in it. Restricted? As I understand it, you’d be smarter staying home, even if all you could see was on a portable tv.

I detest pro-men’s basketball now. I detest what it’s become – megastars and Michael Jordan and the salaries and the bullshit and the sorry excuses for grown-men who play the damn game. I’m not saying it was “better” or “simpler” in that period of the 80s when I was a huge fan, but it felt “better” to me and maybe it was. Fewer arrests, fewer players collapsing from drug use, fewer players putting their humongous size 18 sneakers in their mouths. Fewer Big Huge megastars. I’ve no interest in my city’s team and only care about the threat to move the Sonics because it might mean the Storm will go too.

Basketball is a gorgeous exercise to watch when it goes well. I mean the Harlem Globetrotters know this – they use the relatively small size of a basketball court – small compared to say a baseball diamond with all that outfield, or a football gridiron to show the game’s coordination and flash and possibilities. It’s like close-up magic vs. making an elephant disappear; both amazing, both skillful.

I admit to being wowed by “behind the back passes” when players just KNOW where their teammates are, and toss the ball without looking and damned if it isn’t caught and passed. Wow. And the game is about the hoary old thing – teamwork, when if your teammate has a better chance to get the shot, you PASS him the damn ball, cuz it isn’t all about YOU and you ASSIST other players. God, I’m SO sure this is boring. I’m sorry. I just….well hell. I watch the women play now, and love it, STILL love it. I never knew what that vibe, that unity, that cohesion felt like except for those few months in college when I rowed – wow, what a trip. Watching skilled people do what they do well can be cool.

When the Celtics were so great, it was beautiful to watch. It was a ballet, choreography beyond compare. It was telepathy and grace and a bunch of guys working to make each OTHER look good. And I liked the team well enough that I can still tell you the names of the players who made it look easy and gorgeous and a united all-for-one. They were coached by K C Jones. They were Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish, Danny Ainge, and for one amazing season, Bill Walton. And Dennis Johnson. DJ who died today at the ridiculously young age of 52.

Dennis Johnson. Son of a BITCH he was a fine athlete. And a selfless player and a team player. The guy that Bird went to, that McHale, the guy with the wingspan of the world’s biggest damn raptor, passed to. He made it all work, he was an honorable man, a great teammate and a good person. It’s ridiculous to have him gone. Not DJ.