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Remember that survey that ranked the Celtics last in local area fans' favorite teams? Well Brian Robb did some nice digging through the results and came up with some more interesting notes. For one thing, people generally rank the Celtics high for their rebuilding process.
One telling question asked survey participants if each local pro team was "changing for better" during the past year. Thirty eight percent of respondents said they believed the Celtics in fact were doing this, despite what was a relatively uneventful year that lacked "fireworks" on the trade or free agency front. Thirty six percent said the Celtics had remained the same, while 26 percent said the team was changing for the worse. The New England Patriots topped the category at 45 percent, so, at the very least, many New England fans are approving of what Danny Ainge is trying to do in patiently piecing together another contending core.
Robb notes that Brad Stevens also got high marks from fans.
This makes sense. While it was really, really, really hard to see Paul Pierce leave town, having all those extra draft picks is (in theory) is a really good thing for the team's long term plans.
We are only one year into the rebuild, so the lack of fireworks shouldn't come as too big of a surprise. With that said, every year that the team struggles to produce wins makes it harder and harder for the team to attract the casual fans that really only flock to the team when Banners are in play.
Diehards will always be here, refreshing CelticsBlog and other similar sites 30 times on a random Thursday in September hoping for any morsel of news. It is a little harder to capture the attention of the general Boston sports fan who has 3 other teams competing for his or her attention.
Still, as the survey shows, most approve of the way the Celtics are going about their business. So that's at least saying something.