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A Letter to Jae Crowder from Boston Celtics Fans

By Dan Pawlowski

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It’s been well over a week since Jae Crowder’s angry tweets. His response to hometown fans who cheered Gordon Hayward before the Boston Celtics played the Utah Jazz were harsh.

The incident struck a nerve with Celtics nation mostly because they knew it was true. Rooting for an opposing player? Some fans might tell you it’s just the way the NBA is now. They’ll say “We just want the good players to know they are welcome here,” as if Danny Ainge hired them for the night and sent out a memo reminding them to keep things cordial.

I say it’s bogus. You root for your guys. End of story. An elite impending free agent will respect you for it.

Anyways, it’s an incident that has quickly been forgotten. It wasn’t even swept under a rug, it was vacuumed with a fully charged dust buster, never to be seen again. But still, just in case number 99 might encounter a few lingering feelings of disrespect, here is a letter to Jae Crowder from Celtics Nation.

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Dear Crowder,

You know we love you right?

I’m sure you know by now that we do. I am also sure that you know we need something to talk about when it comes to the Celtics.

We want to diagnose and cure 99 problems when it comes to our favorite team who is scratching and clawing their way back to championship contention, and when we can only find a legitimate one, we’ll make up the other 98 so we got something to talk about while we’re waiting in line at Dunkin’s.

To count the number of reasons why we respect you would be impossible. Forget 99.

You know we love players who put the team first. We love competitors who dive for every loose ball, make the extra pass, help the helper, and celebrate on the bench when a teammate makes a big play.

But we respect you even more. Because you refuse to back down from guys who think they own the league because they made a couple All-Star games. Because we take your teammates and coaches word for it when they say you show up ready to work everyday, game day or offseason.

And when we encounter a player like that, we even do some research to find other reasons why we love you.

As a born Marquette fan I have to say I have an unfair advantage of knowing you a little better than most of Celtics nation.

I know about Buzz Williams’ boot camp.

About that feeling you get when you drive the ball and know you have to get to the rim because Buzz made you aware of how paint touches win games, even in a three-point crazy NBA.

Watching those Marquette Warriors teams is why I felt like the Mavericks made one of the best trades in their history when they acquired you on draft night 2012, and one of the worst trades in their history when they sent you to Boston.

Celtics nation loves you because you have steadily improved as a player. Just look at that three point shot. And while, for better or worse, we tend to rely on our own eyeball test to determine the value of a player, we also have to acknowledge the stats. Like how you lead the Celtics in plus/minus this season by a long shot at plus 4.1. Sometimes we even dig further and look at a stat called Real Plus/minus that takes into account a million factors that we would never understand and see you rank in the top 25 in the entire league.

All this being said to really say that we know your value. We know there is a reason that we typically see 99 on the court when the Celtics go on a run.

Even during the recent tough loss in Toronto, we saw the Celtics go on a 12-3 run to end the first half. A run that was started by forcing three turnovers in a row, two of which led to easy buckets. And while sure it is important to recognize the other players on the court during that time, (Smart, Green, Johnson, Horford) we know that the defense, the x-factor to making a deep playoff run, is at it’s best when you’re at your best.

Ok, so you get it. Celtics fans are not unified when it comes to determining the best way to handle seeing an impending free agent who they like playing at the Garden. They just want what’s best for the team.

But I hope you know that the majority of Celtics nation doesn’t like cheering for an opposing player, and that we understand that it does nothing to help our team. And I hope you know that we loved the fact that somebody called us out, especially after you outplayed said free agent. Because some of our most beloved players of the past would have done the same thing. Can you imagine what KG would have said?

Anyways, it’s all dirty water under the bridge and all, but I hope you still feel like being a Celtic is a pretty good thing, because we’ve already seen where we’d be without you, and we don’t want to go back there for a long time. Much love, Jam Chowder.

Sincerely,

Celtics Nation

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