CALL ME SNAKE

My two-year old fell asleep at 4:30 p.m., which may seem irrelevant in a report on tonight's Celtics game, but unfortunately it is all too germane. That nap meant she stayed up way past her normal bedtime, as her daddy invented story after story about the continuing adventures (endlessly so) of Cindy the rabbit and Giselle the donkey. When he/I finally got her into bed and checked the TV listings, it was too late. Doc Rivers was already delivering his grim press conference, during which I learned very little, except that the team's offense was horrible and defense even worse. From those two facts, plus Doc's unmistakably negative affect, I was forced to conclude that the team dropped its fourth straight game--losing this time to an opponent whose identity was not revealed during the portion of the press conference I witnessed.

Still, I fear the heady days of the great winning streak, which coincided with my personal "wrong streak," are now over. That euphoric, Walker-induced burst has been supplanted with a colder, harsher reality. Maybe I'm still wrong (we can only hope!), but I fear that I'm right. If so, all those doubts I've tried to suppress during these past few giddy weeks are now rising up like a giant wave--a tsunami is the word that comes to mind, though it may be too charged to use here--ready to crush our hopes like so much flotsam and jetsam. (I'm not sure if that simile works, but I think you still get the drift.) There's no dancing around it: My record-breaking wrong streak is finished. I was right after all. As a result, the pawns of this cat-and-mouse game (another mixed metaphor?), the Boston Celtics, are now in a tailspin, with no end in sight.