In June, it began to rain in Boston, and in the middle of summer, the warm Atlantic breeze brought abundant moisture, and the cold air mass that fell from the Appalachian Mountains began to envelop Boston. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

A year ago, the Boston Celtics made a surprise appearance in the NBA Finals, giving Boston a taste of hosting the Finals for the first time in 16 years. But the taste was just as bitter as it was 16 years ago, when they lost the Finals, losing two of their three games in Boston.

The Champagne of Champions didn't make it smell like it was here, so the whole city was eager to get back to the top of the field and fight for what they had lost for too long.

At a small bar in the South End, a boxing match is underway, and the owner of the pub, Marne Pitt, sits in a high chair behind the bar, looking up at the TV set hanging high above the ceiling, and ESPN is replaying highlights from the Eastern Conference Finals, which the TV station will obviously have to pass the time before the NBA Finals officially begin.

"Ding, ding, ding!" There was a ringing bell in the boxing ring in the center of the bar, and at the end of the round, Pete turned his head to look at the two boxers, sweat and blood running down their cheeks, one of them was beaten to a bruised nose and swollen face, and his right eye could no longer be opened. However, there were few spectators watching this boxing match, and there were few people, talking and laughing with beer, without the slightest feeling of passion.

Pitt has been running the boxing bar for fifteen years, starting in 1989, when the Boston Celtics were in decline, and for young people who are covered in hormones, there's no better pastime to get a drink in the bar and watch a beastly boxing match up close. As a result, his bar has grown bigger and bigger, and many amateur boxers from the South End like to fight here.

As business gets better and better, the city is naturally targeted by the mafia in the Southern District, who begin to manipulate the results of boxing matches and set up underground gambling houses to make ill-gotten gains. Pitt knew he couldn't go against the Irish gang, so he chose to cooperate and acquiesce, and he didn't actually participate in gambling anyway. In this way, it became one of the few important gambling houses in the South End, until that night in the summer of 2000, the boxer and gambler named Fox Leon killed "The Iron Head" Kleiman with a punch in the ring, and then beat three of Flender's men in the toilet with three punches and two kicks, and fled.

Pete knew the details of this Fox Leon, a gambler of Puerto Rican descent who, like his dead daddy, was once one of the best fighters in the bar and ended up being Frank's fake boxing minions.

Pete felt that this guy was going to die, and he would be like his dead daddy, with his teeth broken and thrown on the rocky beach of Port Alder, pecked by seagulls. But what happened after that seemed like a fantasy.

Instead of dying, Leon made a big fuss at another bar and was sentenced to prison. Pete thinks this guy has a smart enough brain, and in prison, the mafia really can't help him. But what really shocked him was that after he got out of jail, this guy was never seen in the South Side again, and Pitt thought he was going to run away until one day he heard from his buddy that he saw Fox Leon in a suit and standing on the sidelines like a coach while watching a game at the North Shore Garden Arena.

That's right, Pete remembers that it was the 2000-2001 preseason game, the Boston Celtics vs. the Milwaukee Bucks, because later in the newspaper he did see a picture of the scene, Fox Leon in the bottom right corner of the large photo, like a coach.

Pete thought it was a coincidence, but in the years that followed, Fox Leon brightened the dark night like a meteor that suddenly appeared in the sky. He became the Celtics' assistant coach, head coach, All-Star head coach, NBA coach of the season, and led the team to the Finals, which Pitt only felt like a dream.

The deepest experience that made him feel that it was not a dream was that the business of the bar was getting worse and worse, especially on match days, when the Celtics were playing at the North Shore Garden Arena, and no one wanted to go here to watch the low-level boxing matches, they would rather go to the stadium to watch the Celtics win game after game.

"Ding, ding, ding!" The bell rang again, pulling Pete back from his memories. The showdown in the ring was over, and the victor raised his arms, but there were no cheers, no cheers, not even a hug.

Pete got up from the high chair, walked out of the bar, beckoned the two guys to walk to the ring together, and said to the fighters on the ring, "Hard work guy, go to the back locker room and rest." Drink some water, there's still a little beer there, it's going to be demolished. ”

The winning boxer is a middle-aged white man in his thirties, who works as a physical education teacher at a public high school on weekdays, and will come here to boxing to earn some extra money in his free time, he has been boxing at Pete's bar for seven or eight years, and when he heard Pete say that he was going to tear it down, he asked a little strangely: "Are you going to get a new ring?" ”

"No, there won't be any more boxing rings here, don't do it, you're welcome to come and drink in the future, but you can't come to boxing." As he spoke, Pete removed the ropes around the ring. The two guys also began to remove the foam and cushions around the ring little by little. It seems that this boxing ring, which has stood in the bar for more than ten years, is about to disappear tonight.

Fifteen minutes later, a vacant space had cleared in the middle of the bar, and Pete and his men had brought in a lot of chairs to fill it, and then a large television set had been removed from the warehouse and placed across from the ring.

"Latest LCD TV! From today, no more boxing matches will be played here, but basketball, baseball, and ice hockey games will be broadcast, and starting tomorrow, the NBA Finals will be broadcast here in the evening! When everything was done, Pete loudly announced that the bar boxing business, which had been in business for more than a decade, was over, and was replaced by live ball games, which were more popular and popular with young people.

……………………

In the rain, Phil Jackson and the Los Angeles Lakers arrived in Boston, a city that would never be friendly to them. In the middle of summer in June, the Lakers players who got off the plane could still feel the cold wind blowing.

"I hate coming to this place, especially in the summer." Jackson muttered to himself as he got off the plane. The last time I was in Boston in the summer was back in 1974. Jackson was still playing for the New York Knicks, who were the defending champions, and they met the Celtics in the Eastern Conference playoffs, where they were beaten by the Green Shirts led by Dave Cowens and Havlicek, and the Celtics won the championship that season.

"But there's nothing more exciting than winning here." Old Winter, who was walking behind Jackson, had apparently heard Jackson's words, and he spoke to Jackson as he cautiously descended the stairs.

"Haha, that's right." Jackson has fond memories of 1973, also in the Eastern Conference playoffs, where they were wildly abused by the Celtics. That year, the Celtics had a staggering 68-14 record in the regular season, and in the playoffs, Reed Auerbach did everything he could to torment the Knicks.

In each of his four away games in Boston, Auerbach assigned the Knicks a different locker room, leaving the keys empty and the towels missing, and keeping the temperature above 37 degrees at all times.

However, this behavior not only did not break the Knicks, but angered the Knicks team, and they fought hard to defeat their opponents in Game 7, ending the myth of the Celtics unbeaten in the playoffs, and successfully reaching the Finals and winning the championship. This became the sweetest memory of Jackson's playing career.

With this memory, Jackson was ready to fight the Celtics to the end, knowing that as long as Reed Auerbach was alive, he would not give the Los Angeles Lakers good fruit to eat in Boston. (To be continued.) )