The Celtics and hope with Emily Dickinson

“Because I could not stop for Death” is a really depressing Emily Dickinson poem about being caught between Eternity and Immortality.

And I think she may have been writing about the Celtics.

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Because I could not stop for Death—

He kindly stopped for me—

The Carriage held but just Ourselves—

And Immortality.

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Now, I have no idea what any of this means, but it seems like we’re hanging out in a carriage when Death comes and asks if we want to give up yet, to which we reply we do not. Death then kindly takes a chill pill, and for the time being we’re still headed toward Immortality.

“Immortality” in the NBA comes from winning an NBA championship. It’s the only goal teams share every season, and with the relatively short lifespan of most NBA careers, a championship is the only thing nobody can ever take away from you.

The Celtics are on Year 3 of championship-or-bust expectations. Since making the 2022 Finals, the Celtics have retooled and reloaded to the tune of possibly the best roster in the league. This season is playing out exactly as you’d hope such a roster to perform, but therein lies the poetic terror: has anything gone better than expected?

Photo by Barry Chin/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

The best record in the NBA is great, as is a dominant 14-0 home record. The Celtics have beat the 76ers twice and the Bucks once, with solid bench production and great contribution from the new guys. But none of that was pleasantly surprising. It was merely the expected result, and anything less would be taken as at least a minor failure.

For plenty of teams, achieving Immortality would be a welcome result, but most would be happy to put together a deep playoff run for once. The Celtics, on the other hand, do not care about such things. Making the Eastern Conference Finals would be a failure to make progress on last season, and losing in the Finals would start the conversation about if the 2020s Celtics are one of the best teams to never win a title.

The Celtics aren’t messing around with “success” being anything less than a title, so I don’t know any fans who would describe this season as an absolute win thus far. The only thing left to achieve is Immortality, so what do we call everything else?

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Since then—’tis Centuries—and yet

Feels shorter than the Day

I first surmised the Horses’ Heads

Were toward Eternity—

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Thanks Emily. We’re still in the same carriage, but now we’ve realized that the horses are heading not toward Immortality but something less attractive: “Eternity.” The endless march of existence, dispassionate and unfeeling, destined to preserve the same monotony forever. I told you this was a really depressing poem.

Presuming our friend Emily didn’t know about the Heat Death of the Universe, I’d imagine she was talking about the Celtics continuing to knock on the door of a championship for… forever, but never breaking the final padlock on the gateway to Immortality.

It’s a nightmare. The Celtics could continue almost-winning for my entire twenties, but one day I’m going to wake up—32 years old, with a dog named Greg and a mortgage—without a Celtics championship in my living memory. This is my life now, my own personal Eternity.

Pushing away that morbid thought leads to a much more productive discussion of the Celtics and hope. Watching Celtics playoff games is the only annual life experience I would empirically define as torture, and I simply cannot describe in a reasonable number of words the range of emotions I feel while watching them each year.

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But are any of them hope? It certainly doesn’t feel like it, and I’m starting to wonder if my fear of failure is supplanting my hope for success. The unshakable feeling that the Celtics may be stuck in a twisted Eternity forevermore makes the desire for Immortality more like a survival instinct.

Unless the Celtics win a championship, things can only really go wrong. It’s a terribly depressing way to live your life, and anyone familiar with Emily Dickinson’s life story will know that we’re going to try to avoid ending up like her.

If you were waiting for this article to become uplifting, complete with a motivational speech about how to take hope back from the clutches of fear, I’m afraid I’m not there yet. I may not understand poetry all that well, but I do know that we are not principally in control of our emotions.

Fear of failure is frankly the main thing I feel about this Celtics season, but I’m going to try to figure out a way to enjoy the process and hope for a good result. I’ll keep you posted about my progress. For now, Emily will provide us with the send-off that I cannot.

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“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -