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Word Association Day: Where Everyone Thinks We're Old

By Jeff Clark
Age before beauty.
Age before beauty.

We continue our SBNation themed posts with word association day. This week we were asked to give one word thoughts on every team in the league. They compiled the results and sent them out to us. Here are the results for the Celtics. For consumption purposes, I've grouped them into categories.

The Good:

  • aura
  • Doc
  • Indefatigable
  • History
  • History
  • Retooled
  • storied
  • Rings
  • Old-School

Well, that does make you swell with Celtic pride doesn't it? There's a lot of respect in that list. I left my answer off the list, but if you are wondering, it was "greatest." I'll take "Old-School" to be a compliment of sorts, but it does lead us to the next part of the list.


The Bad:

  • Old
  • Old
  • old
  • Old
  • old
  • Old
  • Old
  • Aging
  • Half-Full
  • Hated
  • Yuck

Yuck indeed. The consensus seems to be that we're old. Where ever did that notion come from? Oh, I suppose it has something to do with Garnett, Pierce, and now Terry instead of Ray. I get that. I was going to let this slide, but then I looked down the list of words associated with the Spurs and they got exactly 1 "old" comment. One.

That got me riled up. So I had to do the math and here it is.

  • average age of the Celtics current roster 28.3
  • average age of the Spurs roster 27.9
  • average age of the Heat roster 30.5
  • average age of the Mavs roster 28.0

(basically I took each player's birth date, subtracted it from today for the total number of days, and divided by 365 - I'm sure there's some leap year stuff lost in there, but close enough)

Yes, I know that the end of bench rookies shouldn't really count, so I did a quick analysis of the starting 5's.

  • C's starting 5: 29.4
  • Spurs starting 5: 28.7

Even if you toss in the OLD 6th men (Terry and Ginobili) we're talking 30.4 vs. 29.8 - basically a matter of months! But we're old and they are "classic?" We're "history" and they are "Dynasty?" Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

With that off my chest, let's move on to the rest of the list.

Neutral:

  • Elder-statesmen
  • hanging on
  • Green
  • three

Elder-statesmen might just be another way of calling us old, but there's some inherent respect there. Hanging on could go either way too. Green and three are just descriptive.

Not Sure:

  • Heinsohn
  • Simmons
  • past due

Tommy and Bill are pretty polarizing figures. You either love them or hate them. Kind of like the Celtics. So it depends on the perspective of the person who wrote it. (Yes, I'm taking liberties here, since most non-C's fans really don't like Tommy, but I don't care, it is my list)

Finally, I was confused by "past due." Does that mean we're past due to win another title? Or is it more like we're past our expired date. I don't know.

Oh, and since the other bloggers got me riled up, I'm not afraid to reveal my answers for the other teams. Here's my list.

Feel free to play along in the comments.

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