5/11 - G3 @ CLE - Scott Wedman: Hero of Watertown

RSN Diaspora

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Jul 29, 2005
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Memorial Day Weekend, 1985. My dad is driving us to get to his Cousin George's house where most of our family has gathered for a BBQ and game one of the NBA Finals between the Celtics and Lakers. By the time we arrive, we've been listening to Johnny Most explain the epic beatdown the C's are putting on LA since my parents were never good about time. Seemingly half of Watertown is there, eating and jabbering in Armenian and broken English. We walk into the den where everyone is watching the game, and Scott Wedman lands a three. Cousin George (or Georgik, since -ik is a favored diminutive among Armenians) excitedly tells us "Wedman [pronounced 'Veddmun'] hasn't missed yet!" Wedman would finish the game 11 for 11, as the Celtics beat the Lakers 148 - 114 in what would be known the Memorial Day Massacre.

Why tell this story? One, I love it because it encapsulates why the Celtics hold a unique place with me among Boston teams--we only spent my early years in Boston, but those were prime Bird-Parish-McHale years, and my dad's and grandparents' generations were both off the boat Armenian immigrants from Iran. The Celtics were kind of their path to Americanization--they might not be able to speak every word of the English language, but they knew that Parish was The Chief, Larry Bird was a legend, DJ could defend all five opponents (seemingly) at once, and Kurt Rambis deserved that fucking McHale clothesline. My aunt was a fanatic and would take me to the Garden often. My dad took me when he could. I had two Celtics painters caps because...well, it was the 80s. The Celtics weren't just a basketball team, they were part of what made my immigrant family Americans.

The second and more important reason I tell this story is because after getting the ever-loving shit kicked out of them in game one, the Lakers got their act together and won four of the next five to take the series in six games. I'm sure their fans were demoralized, but they clearly weren't. None of us were happy with game two on Thursday. After fits and starts in the first half, we went into the break tied. In the second half, we of course shit the bed for 24 minutes and got blown out. Much like game one in 1985, this will prove to be an aberration. The Celtics will win tonight and, as in the Miami series, not look back at game two.

8:30p EDT tip-off at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. ABC national broadcast. Win.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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Mar 26, 2005
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Memorial Day Weekend, 1985. My dad is driving us to get to his Cousin George's house where most of our family has gathered for a BBQ and game one of the NBA Finals between the Celtics and Lakers. By the time we arrive, we've been listening to Johnny Most explain the epic beatdown the C's are putting on LA since my parents were never good about time. Seemingly half of Watertown is there, eating and jabbering in Armenian and broken English. We walk into the den where everyone is watching the game, and Scott Wedman lands a three. Cousin George (or Georgik, since -ik is a favored diminutive among Armenians) excitedly tells us "Wedman [pronounced 'Veddmun'] hasn't missed yet!" Wedman would finish the game 11 for 11, as the Celtics beat the Lakers 148 - 114 in what would be known the Memorial Day Massacre.

Why tell this story? One, I love it because it encapsulates why the Celtics hold a unique place with me among Boston teams--we only spent my early years in Boston, but those were prime Bird-Parish-McHale years, and my dad's and grandparents' generations were both off the boat Armenian immigrants from Iran. The Celtics were kind of their path to Americanization--they might not be able to speak every word of the English language, but they knew that Parish was The Chief, Larry Bird was a legend, DJ could defend all five opponents (seemingly) at once, and Kurt Rambis deserved that fucking McHale clothesline. My aunt was a fanatic and would take me to the Garden often. My dad took me when he could. I had two Celtics painters caps because...well, it was the 80s. The Celtics weren't just a basketball team, they were part of what made my immigrant family Americans.

The second and more important reason I tell this story is because after getting the ever-loving shit kicked out of them in game one, the Lakers got their act together and won four of the next five to take the series in six games. I'm sure their fans were demoralized, but they clearly weren't. None of us were happy with game two on Thursday. After fits and starts in the first half, we went into the break tied. In the second half, we of course shit the bed for 24 minutes and got blown out. Much like game one in 1985, this will prove to be an aberration. The Celtics will win tonight and, as in the Miami series, not look back at game two.

8:30p EDT tip-off at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. ABC national broadcast. Win.
I remember thst game Magic (IIRC) said something to the effect of when Greg Kite is hitting left-handed jump hooks, you know it's not your night.

I see that Wedman shot 63% from 3P for the series. But he only took 11 of them. I can't wait until they invent time machines so I can go back in time and explain he should be taking 11 per game.
 

DeadlySplitter

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I'm fine giving this team one, and exactly one, mulligan a series.

Back to curbstomping tonight, please.
 

Eric Fernsten's Disco Mustache

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Memorial Day Weekend, 1985...
Great story

So, I'm going to go from basketball to a bit of family history. Everyone who's here just for the hoop talk can skip the next bit.

My great-grandfather on my mother's side, let's call him E, comes from folks who have been in the area a while. Like, there are streets named after the family in Waltham and Newton and Watertown. E decides he doesn't want to stick around in the boring place he grew up where you can't go anywhere without bumping into family. So he cuts a deal where in effect he gets college and medical school paid for if he agrees to go abroad and work for the Red Cross (or Red Crescent) overseas. In medical school he meets an adventurous girl with similar ideas, C, they get married, and end up in Diyarbakir, in what is now eastern Turkey. Years later WW1 breaks out and they effectively end up unable to leave the Ottoman Empire for a long time. E was a surgeon, and they lived and ran what we'd now call small medical clinics all over what is now eastern Turkey, northern Iraq, and Lebanon.

During those years my great-grandmother, C, had a habit of sitting down every Sunday and writing 1-2 page letters to lots of friends and family. These letters are famous (in my family) for always beginning "Dear beloved," and then spending the first paragraph describing something she was looking at out the window or across the room. Anyway, at one point she started adding a P.S. to the letters that asked if the recipient would please save the stamp because someday when they made it back to the United States she would like to have a stamp collection.

So the person who got the letter would put on a kettle of water until it started to steam, and hold the stamp in the steam, until the glue loosened and the stamp came off, which it has been explained to me is just what you did in those days. And they would then find, under the stamp, in my great-grandmother's small, neat handwriting the words "They are killing all the Armenians"

Because this was the only way she could think to get it past the Ottoman censors, who read all their incoming and outgoing mail.

She sent these letters to everyone she knew and could think of in Eastern Massachusetts. Later the Ottoman Empire conscripted both of them into the Army medical corps and they ended up in Egypt and at Gallipoli, caring for Ottoman soldiers just behind the lines.

Many years later they finally made it back to the US for a spell, before returning to Beirut, where C and E helped start a medical school. (I have a photo of their graves in an old cemetery in Beirut). On one of their first visits back to see family E and C were surprised to discover all sorts of people they knew, now living in Watertown. It was one of my mother's lines about her grandfather that on visits back to the United States he could never go to Watertown Square and pay for his own meal.

I have no memories of my own of the guy. He bowed out before I showed up. But that's how the story has come down in the family.

Edit/update: E had some joke he liked to tell that I remember my mother paraphrasing as 'I moved to the far side of the world to get away from this family, but then the people there decided they liked my family better than me so they moved here'
 
Last edited:

JCizzle

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Dec 11, 2006
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Great story

So, I'm going to go from basketball to a bit of family history. Everyone who's here just for the hoop talk can skip the next bit.

My great-grandfather on my mother's side, let's call him E, comes from folks who have been in the area a while. Like, there are streets named after the family in Waltham and Newton and Watertown. E decides he doesn't want to stick around in the boring place he grew up where you can't go anywhere without bumping into family. So he cuts a deal where in effect he gets college and medical school paid for if he agrees to go abroad and work for the Red Cross (or Red Crescent) overseas. In medical school he meets an adventurous girl with similar ideas, C, they get married, and end up in Diyarbakir, in what is now eastern Turkey. Years later WW1 breaks out and they effectively end up unable to leave the Ottoman Empire for a long time. E was a surgeon, and they lived and ran what we'd now call small medical clinics all over what is now eastern Turkey, northern Iraq, and Lebanon.

During those years my great-grandmother, C, had a habit of sitting down every Sunday and writing 1-2 page letters to lots of friends and family. These letters are famous (in my family) for always beginning "Dear beloved," and then spending the first paragraph describing something she was looking at out the window or across the room. Anyway, at one point she started adding a P.S. to the letters that asked if the recipient would please save the stamp because someday when they made it back to the United States she would like to have a stamp collection.

So the person who got the letter would put on a kettle of water until it started to steam, and hold the stamp in the steam, until the glue loosened and the stamp came off, which it has been explained to me is just what you did in those days. And they would then find, under the stamp, in my great-grandmother's small, neat handwriting the words "They are killing all the Armenians"

Because this was the only way she could think to get it past the Ottoman censors, who read all their incoming and outgoing mail.

She sent these letters to everyone she knew and could think of in Eastern Massachusetts. Later the the Ottoman Empire conscripted both of them into the Army medical corps and they ended up in Egypt and at Gallipoli, caring for Ottoman soldiers just behind the lines.

Many years later they finally made it back to the US for a spell, before returning to Beirut, where C and E helped start a medical school. (I have a photo of their graves in an old cemetery in Beirut). On one of their first visits back to see family E and C were surprised to discover all sorts of people they knew, now living in Watertown. It was one of my mother's lines about her grandfather that on visits back to the United States he could never go to Watertown Square and pay for his own meal.

I have no memories of my own of the guy. He bowed out before I showed up. But that's how the story has come down in the family.
This is great stuff. Thanks for sharing.
 

mikeot

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Dec 22, 2006
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ABC prime time slot NBA $$$$

Lots of chatter out there online about how "soft" the Celtics are. Fodder for a beatdown - LFG!
 

TrapperAB

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Key tonight: Be disciplined on D. Help when Mitchell is driving, but make sure someone else is covering the cutter. Waaaaaaaaaaay too many guys open on the baseline in G2.
 

kfoss99

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Jul 15, 2009
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Great story

So, I'm going to go from basketball to a bit of family history. Everyone who's here just for the hoop talk can skip the next bit.

My great-grandfather on my mother's side, let's call him E, comes from folks who have been in the area a while. Like, there are streets named after the family in Waltham and Newton and Watertown. E decides he doesn't want to stick around in the boring place he grew up where you can't go anywhere without bumping into family. So he cuts a deal where in effect he gets college and medical school paid for if he agrees to go abroad and work for the Red Cross (or Red Crescent) overseas. In medical school he meets an adventurous girl with similar ideas, C, they get married, and end up in Diyarbakir, in what is now eastern Turkey. Years later WW1 breaks out and they effectively end up unable to leave the Ottoman Empire for a long time. E was a surgeon, and they lived and ran what we'd now call small medical clinics all over what is now eastern Turkey, northern Iraq, and Lebanon.

During those years my great-grandmother, C, had a habit of sitting down every Sunday and writing 1-2 page letters to lots of friends and family. These letters are famous (in my family) for always beginning "Dear beloved," and then spending the first paragraph describing something she was looking at out the window or across the room. Anyway, at one point she started adding a P.S. to the letters that asked if the recipient would please save the stamp because someday when they made it back to the United States she would like to have a stamp collection.

So the person who got the letter would put on a kettle of water until it started to steam, and hold the stamp in the steam, until the glue loosened and the stamp came off, which it has been explained to me is just what you did in those days. And they would then find, under the stamp, in my great-grandmother's small, neat handwriting the words "They are killing all the Armenians"

Because this was the only way she could think to get it past the Ottoman censors, who read all their incoming and outgoing mail.

She sent these letters to everyone she knew and could think of in Eastern Massachusetts. Later the Ottoman Empire conscripted both of them into the Army medical corps and they ended up in Egypt and at Gallipoli, caring for Ottoman soldiers just behind the lines.

Many years later they finally made it back to the US for a spell, before returning to Beirut, where C and E helped start a medical school. (I have a photo of their graves in an old cemetery in Beirut). On one of their first visits back to see family E and C were surprised to discover all sorts of people they knew, now living in Watertown. It was one of my mother's lines about her grandfather that on visits back to the United States he could never go to Watertown Square and pay for his own meal.

I have no memories of my own of the guy. He bowed out before I showed up. But that's how the story has come down in the family.

Edit/update: C had some joke he liked to tell that I remember my mother paraphrasing as 'I moved to the far side of the world to get away from this family, but then the people there decided they liked my family better so they moved here'
Thank you. That's a great story.

And @RSN Diaspora, thanks for your story.

I'm not Lebanese or Armenian, but live in a town, and went to school, with a number of Lebanese-Americans and Armenian-Americans and love learning the history. Even if those histories are tumultuous.
 

PedroKsBambino

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Come out strong on D and keep it up - that is the biggest missing link in these game 2s.

Offensively, attack Garland and work matchups. The threes will fall, eventually…
 

Bob Montgomerys Helmet Hat

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The only thing that concerned me last game was the horrible interior defense which led to a freaking Cavs layup line. It also allowed Mitchell to be fresh in the second half, a big contrast to his being totally gassed at the end of the third in G1. Tighten that up, move the ball on offense, and they should be fine.
 

Dollar

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So the ESPN countdown clock is saying 8:42 PM tip-off, which probably means closer to 8:50 PM. WTF NBA?
 

Just a bit outside

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When my kids told me they were nervous before a game I always told them that was good, meant they cared. When my daughter, my youngest, was on her way to her first gymnastics meet I asked her how she was feeling? Her answer “nervecited”. I’m “nervecited” right now.
 

OnWisc

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If we don’t shoot substantially better than we did on Thursday, not much else that happens is going to matter.