Creating beef out of thin air: how to get worked up for Celtics-Cavaliers

One of the core tenets of writing is to not create an adversarial relationship with your reader. But I’m just going to level with you: if you’re a Cleveland Cavaliers fan, this might not be your cup of tea…

…because we threw it in the ocean because this is BOSTON baby! Wooo! (throws single box of Twinings Earl Grey into the harbor from the rooftop lounge of the Marriott). Paul Revere! Dunkin’ and Sam Adams, the beer AND the guy! Robert Frost and Sylvia Plath—well, maybe we don’t really want her energy around the team. The movie The Town! Ben Affleck…hmm, I guess he’s from Cambridge. Then… uh (frantically checks notes)— Mark Wahlberg! Yeah, he’s from Dorchester, hell yeah!

Welcome to the official Boston Celtics second round hype session, in which we unscrupulously figure out ways to emotionally overinvest in this series and stir up healthy amounts of metropolitan area pride. However, it is perfectly normal not to instantly know how to properly detest one’s opponent before the series starts, which is why I’ve come to help with that.

The opponent for this year’s bout is the Cleveland Cavaliers, a team who—I’m going to be totally honest here—I am tempted to underestimate. This squad was such a mess that they make my desk look clean, routinely oscillating between rotations while trying to manage wild inconsistency from their nominally talented but underperforming roster.

Just like with the Heat, I’m not afraid, but we’re not going to dwell too much on the Celtics’ fairly overwhelming advantages in this series, since no plan survives first contact with the enemy. Instead, we’re going to do some mindset training, and see if we can work ourselves up to the proper level of wired to propel the Celtics to a dominating series win.

Here are three things to get you properly amped for this series, and hopefully by the end we’ll all have dartboards with the Cavs logo ominously pinned to the center. It’s time to hit some bullseyes.

1. They took Larry Bird from us

Listen, you probably don’t understand the title, but just hear me out on this one.

Cleveland is not a city that has much direct beef with Boston. New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles are perpetual locks for that, and Miami managed to work their way up there despite not much actual history to speak of. Cleveland hasn’t been particularly relevant since LeBron James left town in 2018, so there’s not a lot of recency to build on either.

That’s not to say there’s nothing at all. Between 2014 and 2018, the Cavaliers eliminated the Celtics three out of four years, with Boston winning four total games and pushing the final series to seven. That was the Terry Rozier masterclass run, but also saw the real advent of Jayson Tatum, seeing as he dunked on LeBron in the fourth quarter of Game 7. The Celtics totally had a chance to win that game, but would have been eviscerated by the Golden State Warriors anyway, so I’m not super mad about it.

If you are capable of using the LeBron run as a reason to dislike the Cavaliers, more power to you. My personal problem was that it never felt like the Celtics were losing to Cleveland, it was just James himself. Nor did those Celtics teams feel ready to truly compete for the NBA Championship with Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward’s injuries and how young Tatum and Jaylen Brown were.

But I have a better idea. Through the powers of made-up storylines and stretching historical continuity to its absolute limits, I have developed the perfect revenge narrative for this series. Feast your eyes:

Boston took LeBron James from Cleveland, but Cleveland took Larry Bird from Boston.

Set Number: X42889

Back in 2010, James was unequivocally the most coveted asset in the league. His universe-destroying basketball abilities were unable to overcome the mediocrity of his supporting cast, and everyone wondered if he would resign with Cleveland or take his talents elsewhere after the season. But there was still a playoff run to be had, and a chance to salvage the whole thing.

But Paul Pierce and the Celtics said no, eliminating the Cavs for the second time in three years. In fact, James’ last game in Cleveland—until he came back—was against the Celtics in Game 6 of the 2010 Eastern Conference second round. If we really wanted to (and we do), we could say that Boston was the straw that broke the camel’s back that led to James’ departure to Miami.

And in one of the great back-injury related segways of all time, guess who eliminated Larry Bird from the playoffs for the last time? Yep, it was Brad Daugherty and the 1992 Cavaliers, with Bird’s final game ever coming on 6-9 shooting with 12 points on 33 minutes in Game 7. It had been over for a while because of his persistent back problems, but that was truly the end.

So I implore everyone to summon every ounce of historical liberty-taking power they have and believe that Cleveland ended the Bird era. It’s all their fault! How DARE they!

2. “We want Boston” chants

At the end of Game 7 against the Orlando Magic, Cavaliers fans began chanting “We want Boston!” as the clock wound down. (cracks knuckles)

Oh, do you? Would you also like a side of fries and sweet and sour sauce with that? What do they think this is, a McDonald’s drive-thru? They don’t have a choice, nor do they even have a right to make polite requests since they were the ones who took forever to get out of the first round.

Saying “we want Boston” when you’re fighting tooth and nail specifically to get to Boston is like saying “I want to go to Italy” while you’re running through the airport to try to catch your flight to Venice. It’s not like you could somehow end up in Spain or Germany here. It’s a question of if you’re going to Italy or not, and whether you can run like the wind with your 40-liter duffel bag slung over your shoulder like a fireman racing someone out of a burning building.

Had they beat the Magic in five and the Celtics took seven get past the Heat, chanting “we want Boston!” during Game 7 at the bar with your friends would have made a bit more sense, but it also would have been monumentally stupid considering how much better Boston is than Miami.

Photo by Barry Chin/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Also, they do not want Boston. Nobody wants Boston. The Cavaliers probably wanted the Hornets or Pistons or some sort of legal exemption that just placed them in the conference finals, not to play the 64-win Celtics who are about to spend at least 16 quarters looking at Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland like they are turnstiles ready to be bulldozed through whenever Tatum or Brown gets them in a switch.

Imagine if it was socially acceptable to say you “always wanted” something when you get stuck with by far the worst outcome? (waiter brings chocolate milk instead of Pinot Noir) “Oh yeah, I wanted Nesquik Choco Swirl.”

I understand why they did it, as sometimes the best course of action in the face of positively terrible odds is to charge in headlong and empty-headed. In that way, I respect their self-confidence, even if it’s grammatically incorrect.

But they’re going to get Boston, and I promise they aren’t going to like it.

Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images

3. Don’t rehabilitate dying teams

This is part of a broader NBA theory I have about fluky playoff series convincing teams they’re better off than they are. And from a humanitarian perspective, we can’t let the Cavs think they’re actually good.

Winning washes everything away. Playoff series wins, and even just individual playoff games, can rehabilitate a team that looked dead in the water and make them think “huh, maybe things aren’t so bad?” A prime example of this is the Atlanta Hawks from last year. Trae Young was all over the NBA Trade Machine and it looked like the Hawks should probably just blow this thing up once the Celtics finished sweeping them.

Except, they didn’t get swept. They fought valiantly and pushed the series to six games, with Young in particularly looking like a franchise cornerstone for several of them. It made the Hawks think they didn’t have to rebuild, and could maybe just relax over the summer, adding a piece here and there and hoping that the Trae Young-Dejounte Murray duo could find their footing.

But that was ridiculous. The Hawks were cooked, and deluded themselves into thinking they weren’t because the Celtics graciously handed them two games of charity. I’m worried—just for the Cavaliers’ sake—that they might do that again.

This season, Cleveland was one of the first teams I’ve ever seen that was actually better when two of their top three players were out with injury. Darius Garland and Evan Mobley just do not mesh with the extreme ball dominance of Mitchell, and when those two missed extended time, the Cavaliers suddenly looked like a legitimate contender. They even came within a few games of the Celtics for the one seed.

But this team is not at all where it needs to be, but if the Cavaliers somehow make this a competitive series, they might actually think they are. NBA media is oversaturated with Mitchell trade rumors, and I’m not sure what an Evan Mobley-Jarrett Allen backcourt actually does for you in the modern NBA. This summer needs to be full of changes, and they can’t just stand pat.

But they might if this series goes six or seven. And if they actually (whispers) win the series, then maybe they actually are something and I will have to print one giant retraction.

And there you go. One historical, one emotional, and one benevolent reason to care about this series. If you have other ideas, let me know! I’m always open for new angles to direct the endless flow of Bostonian pride that accompanies every new series.

Oh, and Matt Damon! Oh wait, he’s also from Cambridge. Darn.