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That's right, get fixated and get your anime fix with Hulu Anime Ham, your anime destination. Sean Grandy joins us. It's been about a week and a half since the Celtics wrapped up game five in the NBA Finals against the Mavericks. It's been just about a week since the ticker tape parade, the duck boats. I don't know whether or not they cleaned up the confetti in Boston, Sean, but is it calm yet?
If by calm you mean hung over, yeah. I mean that's sort of the reason that's what happened in this town. It was that, you know, that kind of celebration. Just an over the top thing. As someone who went through it in 08 and did the duck boat thing on the exact same route, it was just bigger.
It's an indication of where the league is, the build up of all the years, a new generation of fans, all of it. But it felt, you know, 08 felt like you were at the center of the universe when the Celtics won and this was just a much bigger thing. The big difference of course is that you have your son Jack with you now where you didn't in 08. What was it like to ride on a duck boat in a victory parade with Jack? That was the whole thing for me because I had done it.
I did it the first time. You know, I did it as a single guy in 2008, you know, in my 30s and now you just live your whole life as a dad. Whether your son got drafted into the NBA today or had your son on a duck boat, you're living through your son at this point and to know how rare this is in life. And people joke one of the reasons people like Boston is because it had been five and a half full years since there had been a championship here and what we joked about was that, you know, there are kids here who are 10, 11, 12 years old that don't even know what it's like, right, to win a championship because it had been five and a half years but, you know, Jack got to go to game five and he was there with my wife Dana and a lot of people saw the pictures and they went viral of them sort of celebrating when they finally won. But if you think about the little tiny arc for kids that age where this team has been close, right, year after year and when you're 12, as my son is, that's like your whole life. Your whole life is the Celtics getting close and not winning. That's all you can remember.
But it was amazing, obviously, to experience it through him. As you know, now a lot of the stuff Max and I do, Cedric Maxwell, is on video but if you watch the call of the end of the game, you'll see me at some point I'm just looking, I'm looking away from the court and off camera to my left because I want to make eye contact with my son who's sitting, you know, 20, 25, 30 feet away in the stands of that moment when, you know, your kid experiences his first championship. So there was a thing I said, it was about kids, how the kids, sell the kids of the 50s, get one more and sell the kids of the 80s who watch Max and the big three, they have one for their kids. Kids of 08 now have one as adults and the kids of 2024 finally have their own and that was, I did that for my son because it makes you realize when you're in a job like mine.
I was talking to Susan Wallman about this exact thing, about when you're the voice of the team for a long period of time, you're constantly refreshing. You have the memories but everybody's perspective is different because everybody's entry point is different and so you've got to celebrate the championships in real time. Yeah, it's 18 but for a lot of Celtics fans, that was number one. So I saw this study from Sirius XM Media, it indicated that nearly one in four sports fans have cried over the outcome of a game or event they've watched. Not one they've played in but one they've watched and 68% of sports fans in our country, they believe sports bring their families closer together and every time there's a championship, whether it's the Celtics, whether it's the Florida Panthers who never won one and the stories that come out of it, it always feels like that's underscored. We have so much emotion over it but yes, fans and families come together in a different way over championships. It's crazy.
It's how small a world it is. When I was at Boston University as an undergrad broadcasting games on student radio, Keith Kuchuk was on the BU team and a week after watching the Celtics win, I'm watching him celebrate with his son, winning a Stanley Cup, his son who in ninth grade was a classmate of Jason Tatum in St. Louis. Again, it's sort of the beauty of all the bad things about being old, like everything hurts and your knees hurt and all the bad stuff that comes with getting old. Having the perspective of having been through all this and understanding how rare it is that these moments happen for a Florida Panthers or for Kuchuk and Jason Tatum and for a new generation of Celtics, that was the beauty of it, is that I remember talking to David Aldridge before the game about the pressure you are inherently under as a Celtic. When you walk into that building as a Celtic, you're playing under the 17 banners.
You're playing under all the retired numbers and what I think I said at the end was something along the lines of the only way to exercise the ghosts of champions and the legends and the names and the numbers and the banners above you is to join them. It's the only way you can do it and that's what this team did and that's the remarkable thing is that Celtics teams won before but there had never, it's rare, any team in any sport has had the kind of pressure that basically from opening night it was either you have to get to the finals or you have to win the championship but this thing is an epic failure and to do it under those circumstances and to do it as dominant as they did it is a pretty amazing thing. Sean Grandy, that voice play-by-play of the Boston Celtics all the way through their game five against the Mavericks, that celebration inside the Garden and the 18th banner that will be raised at some point before next season.
It's after hours with Amy Lawrence. Okay, this is a question because you've got both perspectives. Brad Stevens, better coach, better architect. Amazing that we've had this discussion, right?
Yes. It really, Brad Stevens, for perspective, three years ago, this isn't 12 years ago, three years ago, Brad Stevens coached the game in the playoffs. People will remember it because it's one of the few games that the Nets had Kyrie Durant and Harden played together.
One of the eight. Right, they had those three guys. Brad Stevens coached a team in a playoff game that had Evan Fournier, Romeo Langford, and Tristan Thompson in the starting lineup. Romeo Langford and Tristan Thompson in the starting lineup on the other side of that Nets team. And the next day, that's the team he took over the next day. And literally three years later, they win the championship walking backwards after going to the finals the first year, and maybe Jason Tatum turned ankle away from going to the finals last year.
So, has anyone had a better three years? I think Brad Stevens' legacy as a coach is actually getting hurt by how absurd these first three years have been. And for a guy that preaches just hit singles, just hit singles, he just drives them into the gap every time, starting with, you know, trading Kemba Walker for Al Horford.
And virtually every single thing he has done has been hit after hit after hit. And look at what he did in three years with salary restrictions, with all the above. And the bottom line is he just won a championship. And basically, his first run here as a general manager, he won a championship. So, by that measure, people are going to be saying it's like Brad. It's like when Adam Silver in his first year takes over for the legendary David Stern. And in the first year, he's got the Donald Sterling stuff and whatever. And pretty soon, it's going to be like, who was that guy that came before Adam Silver? He's almost like, wait, wait, Brad Stevens? I mean, there's going to be little kids going, wait, Brad Stevens was a coach?
I mean, this is the way of it. I hope, boy, this is going to be a crazy statement. I hope one day he coaches again. He still has unfinished business, in my view, as a coach.
And none of these jobs are seemingly long term. He was an NBA coach for eight years. That's a long time. When I sat down with Imea Doka opening night in New York in the fall of 2022, and we started our show, I started it by talking about April of 2004, 17 and a half years earlier, because that was the last time somebody other than Brad Stevens or Doc Rivers was on the other end of the headset with me. That's how, in a world in which coaches change about every two, two and a half years in the NBA, particularly if it's Monty Williams, then you're going to, you don't have these long, it was an absurd, you had nine years of Doc Rivers and eight years of Brad Stevens.
That doesn't happen until a young enough guy to write his own ticket. But obviously, there's some business, you know, I think everyone around here really feels that the Celtics have an opportunity to be around it the next couple of years. Obviously, they're going to start next year without Porzingis, and pretty soon you're going to be dealing with the second apron and all the things that come with winning and the quick turnaround and guys playing in the Olympics in the short preseason and going to Dubai. So are the Celtics going to win 64 games with the fifth best scoring differential in NBA history next year?
Probably not, but again, now, just like Denver, they're the, they've got the title belt till someone can take it. You mentioned KP, so probably going to miss the start of the season, but what other pieces could change on this roster for next year? I don't think a lot. I think the year after is where you're going to, could start to see some changes. I think you're going to have to lean more on younger players who have committed to the organization last couple years. I'm thinking presumably of Jordan Walsh, who had a really good year at Maine.
It's a tough spot. Celtics drafted, everyone seems to feel the Celtics drafted particularly well, particularly taking the kids from Creighton in the first round, Shireman, but it's a tough spot because the Celtics are in a position where you do want to use a first round salary slot on a guy who's not going to play. That's the tough side, right, about winning and having all your guys coming back.
You know, we don't know what's going to happen with O'Shea Brissett yet, because he's going to opt out of his deal. Are the Celtics going to be a little bit vulnerable? Any changes they make, you have to think about up front, because you're going to start the year without Porzingis, and we can keep pretending that, you know, Al Horford is turning into Tom Brady, right? Like how many more years is he still going to be Al Horford? He's going to, he's 38 years old at the start of the season, and presumably right now you're looking at how Horford is starting opening night. Like how many minutes is he going to want him to play early in the year if you're not going to have Porzingis till December? So there's always work to do in the short term, but I think this core group, you certainly expect to be together.
You're hoping the best health-wise for Porzingis, that this isn't become, if this was the 86 Celtics, you don't want Porzingis to become Bill Walton, where you got everything you could get in 86, and then that was basically going to be it, but presuming he comes back and gives you 50 games next year and is healthy in the playoffs, you're certainly looking at this three-year window before you'd have to make any dramatic changes. Sean Grady's with us, tying a bow on the Celtics championship run, and it was just announced that you'll be part of NBC's Olympics coverage. What's that mean to you? If you grew up watching the Olympics, I was probably raised by NBC Sports in so many ways, so to get a chance to do national work for NBC Sports, so really just to say that I got to do an Olympics. I grew up watching Howard Cosell do Olympic boxing, and so now to get to do it, even the way things are going to be done in 2024, it's pretty awesome. I got to say, there's a joke, I got a text from my buddy Kenny Albert the other day, like, well, I'll see you in Stanford.
He's doing the water polo, and I'm doing boxing, and the joke was always like, if there were ever two guys that could cover an entire Olympics, like, we'd be the two, right? Like, okay, you do the equestrian, and you do the ballroom dancing, I'll do the boxing, whatever, because we had this crazy life, but luckily there's going to be like 150 of us, this whole team of broadcasters and analysts, whatever, going after all these sports, so I know it isn't the same, covering the Olympics isn't the same, nothing is the same as it ever was. You got to, you know, we all have to move on, like, there's going to be NFL games on Peacock, and there's going to be major fights on Netflix, and Al Michaels on AI, as long as you're not AI, Sean Grandy. Hey, that's the only, my job is safe for now, so they can figure out how to get AI to call play-by-play in real time, then we're all done, but for the moment, like, cross our fingers that they haven't figured that out. I was a little worried because there's thousands of hours of my shows out there on digital now, and yeah, there's probably a chance that an AI computer or program could put together an entire show of after hours without Amy Lawrence. It's scary.
It's coming, I mean, hopefully we've got enough, we're far enough into our careers and can get enough money in the bank that by the time the machines are truly ready to take over, we can, we can just sit back and retire, look back on it. Remember those times we actually did the shows ourselves? All right. We actually traveled to the games.
You're part of the old school. You can find Sean on Twitter at SeanGrandyPBP. Now, there are videos out there, so he's not just a radio sensation anymore. Long time voice of the Boston Celtics.
The photos though from the duck boat with his son are priceless, so make sure you check those out, and congratulations to you. Another season in the books. You're getting to be old, my friend, but I hope you enjoy your off season. I'm sorry, and I couldn't speak into my good ear.
Don't feed the monster. That was the beauty of it, and I'm so sorry to see Mike Gorman, the legend, leave because for years that was the beauty of it. I was always around Mike Gorman, Tommy Heinsohn, and Cedric Maxwell, so I could always, I had this illusion that I was the young guy because I was always the kid, right, in that group, so you have no real sense of your actual, actual age.
Just surround yourself with all these older people, but yeah, reality sets in every morning when my knees hurt. Oh, thank you, Sean. You got it. After investing billions to light up our network, T-Mobile is America's largest 5G network. Plus, right now, you can switch, keep your phone, and we'll pay it off up to $800. See how you can save on every plan versus Verizon and AT&T at T-Mobile.com across America. Up to four lines via virtual prepaid card. A left 15 days qualifying unlocked device, credit, service, ported, 90 plus days with device, ineligible carrier, and timely redemption required.
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That's right. Get fixated and get your anime fix with Hulu Anime Ham, your anime destination. Baseball season is heating up. Odyssey has you covered with the most entertaining coverage of your team. Stay locked in and in the know with the local voices you trust as they bring you unfiltered takes, recap games, react to the latest team news, and talk to callers. Listen to your favorite shows for free on the Odyssey app, Odyssey.com, your smart speaker, or in the car with Android Auto or Apple CarPlay.
