Goin' Bohlen: Court-ship Classic

"The Celtics are in town tonight," I casually offered.

"The Celtics?! Ehh. Maybe the MFA is open tonight," my girlfriend replied.

We bounced around a number of other ideas for a Friday night out only to find ourselves no better off than when we had started.

"I don't care," she finally said, exasperated at our lack of progress. "Let's go see the Celtics. It's what you really want to do."

Realizing she was not content with the choice, I knew that something special had to happen to ensure that we would again go to a basketball game.

Little did I know, it would.

After arriving at the FleetCenter a little late, we passed several scalpers looking to slyly unload their tickets for the night's match-up against the Miami Heat.

Thinking I did not want to risk arrest, I decided to check and see what they had available at the ticket window before turning to the street.

When we got to the window, the man inside said, "The only seats together are for $85. A piece."

"$85?!" I cried. "Are you sure there are no other seats?"

"$85 is all we have."

There was no way we were paying $170 for tickets to see the hapless Celtics.

Time to go try out the scalper scene.

As we turned away from the window, a man in a gray suit with tags around his neck motioned me over with one finger. He held two tickets in his other hand.

Seeing that he was standing next to a cop, I didn't think he was going to scalp the tickets.

And he didn't even try.

The angel in disguise handed the tickets to me and said, "Enjoy the game."

I mumbled an amazed "thank you" and turned to my girlfriend.

"What just happened?" she asked.

"That guy just gave us tickets to the game!"

"What? Why? How?"

"I don't know. The tickets say 'Public Relations' on them."

"Oh, he probably saw us two poor college kids trying to see a game and thought he would do something nice for us."

"Wow. This is unbelievable."

With that, we hurried up the escalator to find our seats. Turned out they were probably better than the $85 seats we could have bought.

We ended up sitting at a press table about 13 rows behind the basket.

Beginning to warm up to the idea of spending the evening sitting close enough to see Alonzo Mourning's sweat, she said, "We're so close!"

For the first three quarters, the Celtics were down by an average of about 12 points--not close enough to make a move, but close enough not to let the Heat get too complacent with the lead.

During this time, I fielded questions about the game of basketball from my less-than-knowledgeable companion who was attending an NBA game for the first time.

"Why don't they just play for 10 minutes instead of 40?"

After Tim Hardaway was fouled while shooting a three-pointer: "Why doesn't he shoot his free throws from the three-point line?"

It was good news to me that she was interested enough in basketball to ask questions about the game.

Of course, the hoopla around the game kept her intrigued enough to enjoy it without even paying attention to the action on the court.

From trying to catch the Jumbotron camera's attention by dancing in the aisle to watching a one-person Village People impersonator at halftime, her beaming face clearly showed that she was having a good time.

And the game hadn't even gotten good yet.

Down 64-53 at the beginning of fourth quarter, the Celtics closed in on the Heat lead, whittling down an 11-point lead in 4 minutes. The score was even at 77 with 2:06 left to play.

The Boston faithful were going nuts. All of the fans, including my girlfriend and I, were on their feet cheering at "Garden Level," according to the Jumbotron.

With 4.2 seconds left, the Celtics were down by two with the ball out of bounds at half court.

Paul Pierce in-bounded the ball to Antoine Walker.

Walker, who has faced criticism for poor play this year, reversed that fortune in a brief moment.

He dribbled the ball to 25 feet from the basket and launched a three-pointer.

The shot, or "throw," as my girlfriend would say, bounced off the backboard and swished through the net.

The bank was open at 10 p.m. Friday night.

The crowd, the Celtics and the two of us went nuts.

I love this game.

After the euphoria had subsided, my girlfriend wanted to linger a little after the final buzzer to absorb the atmosphere.

That was a long way to come for someone who had no initial interest in seeing the Celtics play.

I think it was a miracle.

Someone had meant for us to see the game that night.