To be honest, I would have preferred playing the Spurs ...

Hey, I'll admit it, I was hoping that the Spurs would have been able to come back from their 3-1 deficit against Los Angeles (sports.yahoo.com) and advance to the Finals. However, it's not because I believed that San Antonio would have been an easier opponent for the Celtics to handle should they also advance (although that might have played a small role in it) ... Instead, this would have been the final nail in the coffin of the "Tim Duncan Era" that has plagued this franchise since '97.

Sure, there have been other (much more tragic) occurrences that have affected the C's since their last Finals appearance, but this one had its own special "sting" to it ... Duncan was supposed to be the knight in shining (green) armor that was going to swoop in and make Boston relevant in the playoff picture again.

Instead, the ping-pong balls betrayed us, and the Spurs became the beneficiary of his greatness ... Eleven seasons (and four rings) later, Celtics fans could do nothing but watch as their alleged "savior" secured championship after championship for another team.

If that wasn't enough, Duncan seemed to further rub it in our faces by going undefeated against the very club that had pegged him as the catalyst for their return to winning ways ... Of course, that dominance showed signs of breaking down even during last season, when the club shocked the Spurs in San Antonio and put an end to Duncan's personal 18-game winning streak over the Men In Green (sports.espn.go.com).

This season proved to supply the team with even more success against their former "golden boy", as the C's beat the Spurs in Boston for the first time since - you guessed it - 1997 (nba.com) ... As you can see, the psychological edge that Duncan held over the Celtics (and, by extension, their fanbase) was slowly fading away into nothing, and the perfect capper for this turn of events would have been to finally vanquish the big man in the one area where he still held the upper hand over this franchise: the NBA Finals.

Of course, that's not going to happen, and (with the Spurs showing their age and seemingly losing their place amongst the elite Western Conference teams) it may not ever happen ... On a personal level, I started this little Celtics website right before the '97 draft, and it would have been the perfect way to bookend my "online career": at one end, there was the disappointment of seeing Duncan slip out of our collective fingers, while on the other end there would have been the triumph of seeing him slink off the court in San Antonio black-and-white while the C's celebrated Banner No. 17 without him. Oh well.