Don’t even think about it John Henry
So yesterday was by and large a good day for Celtics fans. We resigned D White and JT, with the latter’s monster supermax deal making our team salary cap higher than the GDP of two island nations (suck it Tuvalu and Kiribati).
But there was one piece of slightly disappointing news — Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck, the only Boston owner who isn’t either a cheap asshole or coming off an offseason where he shit talked the most winningest coach in any sport ever, is planning to sell the franchise.
First off, no hard feelings with Wyc. Dude bought a storied organization that was on its ass in 2002 and turned it into a winner 6 years later, (then again a couple weeks ago), solely because he had the money and wanted to see his beloved team bring home titles again.
Now that he’s more than 10X’d (shoutout startup squids and LinkedIn losers) his initial investment, won another title, and resigned his entire championship roster, he’s getting out with a tasty profit and sticking some other poor schlub with the luxury tax bill. Where I come from that’s called the American dream. More power to ya Wyc.
But a sale brings uncertainty for the fanbase. And while I’m sure Wyc will try to sell to a worthy owner who shares his goal of playing winning basketball in Boston, there is one doomsday scenario lurking in the background:
John fucking Henry. Pictured above as the world’s sassiest and least menacing supervillain, you may know Johnny boy from his day job as the no-show owner of the Boston Red Sox, as well as several other sports “assets.”
Why the coy use of quotations? Because of this lovely chestnut from the man himself, in an article written less than one month ago:
“Why on earth would I liquidate this holding? The dividends pour in like clockwork regardless of team performance. Plus, it’s geographically convenient to my office!”
Hey John, little tip bud — even though you are not grammatically incorrect in your usage of the word asset here, maybeeee don’t use it to refer to a team full of human beings that the most passionate sports city in America live and die by. Maybe read the room on that one champ.
My greatest fear is sharks. My second greatest fear is that John Henry and the Fenway Sports Group, aka the Legion of Doom, sense an opportunity to add another “asset” to their portfolio in the form of the Boston Celtics.
That portfolio currently consists of the Red Sox (baseball), the Penguins (hockey), Liverpool for some reason (soccer), and I think just like the entire sport of golf? It only makes sense he would try to diversify, both financially and racially, with an NBA team. And the TD Garden is, after all, geographically convenient to his office.
“But George, the man has won four championships for the city — surely he would be a good steward of the Celtics.”
Maybe the John Henry of old. But the current iteration of this smarmy, aging lesbian of a man doesn’t give a SHIT about winning anymore. Just look at his track record the past several years with the Sox. He traded Mookie Betts, a literal MVP and a player who likely would have ended up as one of the Sox all-time greats, for peanuts (and Connor Wong) because he didn’t want to pay him a well-deserved massive contract that would have kept him in Boston for life.
Then he spends the last two-three years handcuffing his GM and refusing to make even marginal signings to turn decent teams into real playoff contenders. And then after all that, he has the balls to blame the fans. In the one interview he’s done in like 15 years (the aforementioned article) he goes on to say:
Ok, first off stop using financial jargon dickhead. Secondly, no fan asked you to mortgage your future this offseason. In fact, we’d rather keep our young assets on the farm. We literally asked you to spend a modicum of your billions of dollars on signing a pitcher and maybe a power bat to improve your team. That’s not mortgaging the future — you wouldn’t even have to go over the luxury tax. That’s just asking you to give an ounce of a shit about the team and city you claim to represent.
But it’s the ungrateful portrayal of Boston fans as a collective of Veruca Salt’s, for whom nothing is ever good enough, that really pisses me off. Believe it or not, we understand that there's 29 other teams in the league, at least 28 of whom are trying to also win the World Series (not Oakland).
No one expects a championship every year. We know that most years it won’t work out and the team will fall short of the championship goal. And we’ll likely get restless if a title drought continues too long. We’ll nitpick and criticize poor bullpens or signings that don’t pan out. This is Boston after all. But we will never call for your head if you’re putting money into the organization and trying to field a winning team.
We don’t expect winning every year. But we expect a winning effort, from the team and ownership alike. And John Henry refuses to meet us even halfway in that regard. If he took over the Celtics, his first order of business would be to trade Tatum and Brown for Kelly Olynyk, then jack up beer prices to $50/domestic bottle to make up for the rest of the team’s payroll.
So Johnny, you cheap scumbag, don’t even think about it. The Celtics are a championship team, not another stone to add to your infinity gauntlet of mediocrity. You’ve done enough damage as it is.
