DALLAS — Boston sports fans will be glued to what’s taking place deep in the heart of Texas on Wednesday night when the Celtics play the Dallas Mavericks in Game 3 of the NBA Finals. But a big bash will also be going on deep in the heart of Foxboro, Mass., as Tom Brady gets inducted into the New England Patriots Hall of Fame during what promises to be a glitzy, star-studded event at Gillette Stadium.
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Alas, that’s one of the hazards of long-range planning. The Patriots planned a lovely June wedding for Brady and their Hall of Fame, but then the Celtics made it to the finals and started raining shots on the overwhelmed Mavericks.
The Patriots might have considered scheduling their Brady bash earlier or later in the year. After all, with Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens acquiring Kristaps Porziņģis and Jrue Holiday during the offseason and joining them with artists-in-residence Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, Boston emerged as a good bet to be playing in the finals this spring. And here it is.
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Tom Brady to be inducted into Patriots Hall of Fame: What to know about Wednesday's event
But rather than looking at the NBA Finals and the Patriots Hall of Fame induction ceremony as conflicting events, the savvy Boston sports fan has the luxury of viewing them as two championship boats passing in the night. One of them commemorates a glorious past; the other represents a hoped-for bright future.
Boston’s big four professional sports franchises have combined to win 12 championships this century. Six of those championships have been delivered by the Patriots, in large part because of Brady’s brilliant quarterbacking and Bill Belichick’s masterful coaching. The Red Sox have papered the championship house with four World Series titles. The 2007-08 Celtics, led by a newly built big three of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, downed the Los Angeles Lakers in the finals. In 2011, the otherworldly goaltending of Tim Thomas powered the Bruins to their first Stanley Cup victory since 1972, back when Bobby Orr and the Big, Bad Bruins owned Boston.
Imagine: Four teams combining for 12 championships over two decades. Every year or two, Boston’s ubiquitous duck boats would be appropriated for the latest “rolling rally” through the Back Bay. Boston’s sports stars would appear at one another’s big games. Brady at Fenway. David Ortiz at the Garden. Patrice Bergeron at Gillette. They were frequent fliers on the late-night talk sets as well, trading quips with Jay Leno, Jimmy Fallon and the rest.
And it looked like plans were in place to continue the winning into a third decade. During a stretch from October 2018 to June 2019, the Red Sox won another World Series, the Patriots won another Super Bowl and the Bruins made it to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final before losing to the St. Louis Blues.
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But age and flaws were hiding in plain sight. The Sox, Patriots and Bruins were losing their touch, even if few cared to acknowledge it. The Red Sox made a disastrous decision to trade star outfielder Mookie Betts to the Los Angeles Dodgers during spring training in 2020 and have made just one postseason appearance since. The Bruins haven’t made it out of the second round since 2019. The Patriots? Their 13-3 victory over the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LIII on Feb. 3, 2019, was their last championship — indeed, the last playoff victory — of the Brady era. He moved on to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and won another Super Bowl; the Brady-less Patriots have largely moved in the other direction.
To look at all four teams, and to borrow from vaudeville, the act was getting old. It needed new faces. Enter the rebuilt Celtics. They’ve long had Tatum and Brown as names-atop-the-marquee co-stars, but too many promising postseasons fizzled because the Celtics didn’t have a team. Stevens understood this, which is why Porziņģis and Holiday are now teammates with Tatum and Brown.
The Celtics own a 2-0 lead over the Mavericks in the finals. A Game 3 victory Wednesday night would put them on the cusp of winning a championship. There’s that, and there’s the Tom Brady Patriots Hall of Fame ceremony.
The Brady event will be fun, especially with Massachusetts-raised comedian and lifelong Patriots fan Bill Burr among the headliners. It’s reasonable to assume retired NFL quarterback and longtime Patriots opponent Peyton Manning will provide bonus comedy, not unlike when Magic Johnson appeared at Larry Bird Night in 1993 at the old Boston Garden and opened up his Lakers warmup jacket to reveal a Celtics T-shirt.
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The Brady event will be nostalgic, with more than 100 former Patriots expected to attend. And it’ll be emotional, with Belichick making his first Gillette Stadium appearance since being fired as the head coach and then getting crushed in the Apple TV Plus miniseries “The Dynasty.” (Or, as I like to call it, “Kill Bill.”)
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Yes, the Brady event will be up against Game 3 of the NBA Finals. Again: Not a bad thing. And it’s not close to being the worst long-range planning inconvenience in Boston sports history. Consider the plight of poor Warren Spahn, the pitching star of the long-gone Boston Braves. Spahn set up a restaurant across the street from Braves Field that was expected to have a grand opening on the same day as the Braves’ 1953 home opener, the only problem being that the team relocated to Milwaukee during spring training.
Boston lost its National League baseball team, and the Warren Spahn Diner was turned into a Hayes-Bickford Cafeteria. A muffler shop later emerged on the site.
That was bad. Wednesday night is going to be fine. Brady will be at Gillette Stadium to remind Boston sports fans of the good times, and Tatum, Brown, Porziņģis, Holiday and company will be at American Airlines Center in Dallas to remind them that the good times aren’t over yet.
(Photo of Jayson Tatum: Adam Glanzman / Getty Images)