Our journey begins on the night of October 17th, 2017. It was just like any other opening night. I’m sitting in my living room, wearing my Boston Celtics hat, slippers, socks, underwear, and adult onesie, just as every other fan would. We’re playing the Cleveland Cavaliers, in what should be a good matchup for multiple reasons. This is the first game that LeBron has without Kyrie Irving after the trade a few months earlier for Isaiah Thomas, this is Jayson Tatum’s rookie debut, and this is also the debut of Gordon Hayward playing for his former Butler coach, Brad Stevens. Pregame warmups have me APMED. I think to myself “this might actually be the year we get past LeBron in the East.” Hearing Marv Albert on the mic with Reggie Miller kept me in high spirits all the way through the pregame and into the first quarter. Then, IT happened…
Myself, like many millennials do not have cable, we just use someone else’s login to watch prime time games. For three years up to this point, when out of market Celtics games were on, I was a bad boy and streamed it off of some sketchy website that probably gave my computer loads of viruses. On October 16th, 2017, I thought to myself that I should really move away from the sketchy streaming website, just for my computer’s health, so I caved and bought NBA League Pass, and I mean, what’s not to love? Depending on your plan, coverage to all of your team’s, or the entire league’s out of market games every day, and if you want to spend a little bit more money, you can get all of the NBATV games too. All in all, solid deal. So I do it. I break out my credit card, and I pay the league I love my hard earned money to watch all the NBA games I want. Little did I know that less than 24 hours later, I would regret my purchase.
Five minutes into his Boston Celtics career, Gordon Hayward goes down with a gruesome ankle injury that would keep him out of action for the remainder of the season, and it would impact Hayward for years to come. I’m devastated. An All-Star caliber player finally comes to Boston, only to be taken out less than one quarter into the first game. I’m worried for Hayward, I obviously want him to be okay, I want the injury to recover quickly. The rest of the game is hard to watch; I tune in and out, I’m overall just sick to my stomach. After the game I have a thought pop into my head: Am I the reason Gordon Hayward got hurt?
I know, I know. It sounds really silly, right? Someone who doesn’t even know Gordon Hayward, who doesn’t live in the same state, let alone the same city as Gordon Hayward somehow being the cause of the injury he sustained? Preposterous. Then again, the only thing that I did differently this year was…. PURCHASE NBA LEAGUE PASS. I end up struggling with the new found guilt for the entire season, even after a month of canceling my purchase, and returning to the sketchy streaming website. I can’t help but feel like this is all my fault. The next season comes, no career altering injuries while watching the games on the streaming website. Great start. From 2018 to the start of this season, I continued to use this streaming website for all of my NBA addiction. On December 27th, 2020, my heart sank into my stomach once more, but this time not for something that did happen, but for something that might happen.
The link to the streaming website was broken. Just like the Avatar, just when I needed it most, it vanished. What do I do? Do I break the going on SIX YEAR stretch of me not missing a Celtics game? Or do I become a casual fan and only watch the “important games.” If you know me, or have read the previous blogs of mine, you know that missing a random Tuesday game in Charlotte is not an option for me. I bleed green, so superstition be damned, I am buying League Pass again, and there is NOTHING the universe can do to stop me. Until it did.
Last night, I turn on the Grizzlies/Nets game. I watch for about five minutes, and then a friend of mine asked me to get a group together to play Among Us. I think about saying no, because I want to watch Ja Morant end someone’s career with a vicious dunk. After some convincing, I turn off the game and try to get the group together. No less than ten minutes after I turn the game off, it happens. Ja Morant goes down with an ankle injury. It looks pretty bad, he hops off the floor and lays down, but has to be taken off the floor with a wheelchair. I get the alert on my phone, and I am heartbroken again, just like I was three years ago. Once more, I am the cause of a star getting injured, all because I want to watch a basketball game.
There is some good news, however. Per reports, there is no fracture after the x-ray. Thank goodness. Ja tweeted to show his support of all his fans, and has continued to seem in high spirits post-injury. At the time of writing this, there is no timetable for return. If you’re interested in learning more about the injury, I’m going to link a video here where Brian Sutterer, MD goes into detail of exactly what the injury is, and a possible outcome for return to play. We’re all hoping for the best possible outcome for Ja. I’m hoping he takes it easy, and when he comes back he’s still the explosive, exciting, enchanting player he has been up to this point.
I’m thankful that this injury, on the surface, doesn’t seem as awful as the one Gordon Hayward suffered, but I still have my suspicions. My hope and my plan now, is that if I don’t cancel my subscription to NBA League Pass, and continue to pay from here on out, that there will be no more significant injuries that I have caused. I’m hoping that the action of buying NBA League Pass is the cause of all this madness. Only time will tell.
Round The Game 
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