Day 168.
I started keeping track after waking up inside CelticsBlog writer Grant Burfeind’s body several months ago. I figured a precise timeline would be useful if we ever figured out how to reverse this.
Then I decided against reversing it.
“I think I’m going to stay in this new life for as long as I can,” I wrote back in April.
In retrospect, my Sixers soul probably just hadn’t spent enough time inside Grant to become active. Curses can have an incubation period. Nobody tells you that during a body swap!
When I wrote my last article in Grant’s body, the Celtics had just beaten the Sixers by 32 points in Game 1. Jaylen Brown was still in Boston. LeBron James lived safely across the country. I had escaped Philadelphia sports misery and landed inside a devilishly handsome Celtics writer with only mild lower-back pain.
By Game 4, Boston led 3-1. The swap was looking and feeling great.
Then I covered Game 5 at TD Garden and watched the Sixers stay alive from press row, a very professional place to experience the first symptom of a spiritual emergency. I took notes and tried not to stare too long at the Philadelphia celebration happening below me.
For Game 6, I went to a Boston pub in the Jaylen Brown jersey I had just bought. Philadelphia won again. A man beside me said, “they’ll take care of it at home,” like he was confirming a dinner reservation.
For Game 7, I was back inside the Garden with a credential, watching my former team become the first in NBA history to erase a 3-1 deficit against the Celtics.
Somewhere in Philadelphia, Vinny, my longtime neighbor, was probably dancing on a parked car. My landlord Joey had likely converted the laundry room into a members-only playoff lounge. My cousin Bobby’s favorite call-in show must’ve been fielding proposals to rename Broad Street to Edgecombe Avenue.
Back in Boston, I was supposed to be writing about how the Celtics lost three straight. I had a theory, but I wasn’t sure Jeff would publish it.
What if I was the problem?
Maybe Philadelphia’s misery never belonged to the teams. Maybe decades of anxiety and misplaced trade-machine confidence had attached themselves to my soul and followed me into Grant’s bloodstream. Meanwhile, the real Grant was trapped inside my old body in Philadelphia. What if Celtics luck had traveled with him?
I tried to dismiss it. Teams have come back from 3-1 before. None had ever done it to the Celtics, a detail I buried beneath the Mike’s Pastry boxes piling up in Grant’s kitchen. But one historic collapse could be an accident, right?
The curse gets ambitious
Then, on July 1 around dinner time, a flurry of expletives rose through the floorboards from the apartment below.
I grabbed my phone.
Jaylen Brown had been traded to the Philadelphia 76ers.
The room tilted. Grant’s Jaylen bobblehead nodded from the shelf like he knew this was coming. I turned it toward the wall. It kept nodding, which I understand is how bobbleheads work. I still felt personally attacked.
Philadelphia got Jaylen Brown. Boston got Paul George, draft picks and a group therapy exercise centered around the word “optionality.”
Then the Sixers went on to add LeBron James. Because of course they did.
I leave Philadelphia for six months, and the franchise assembles Maxey, Brown, LeBron and Embiid. Meanwhile, all I got during my time there was a confetti cannon malfunction, burner accounts and the chance to believe Markelle Fultz would rediscover his jumper.
Vinny must be unbearable. Joey has probably added “championship proximity” to the list of fees beneath our lease. Bobby may already be painting the parade route directly onto Broad Street Edgecombe Avenue.
I considered contacting Grant. The swap had involved Twitter, lightning and an argument with a Celtics fan. Recreating two would be easy. The lightning required research. I paused my fifth consecutive viewing of Back to the Future, leaving Doc Brown dangling from the clock tower, to read what Jaylen Brown had said at Sixers training camp.
He explained that he was learning a new defensive vocabulary and needed to “download” his brain into a different algorithm. Tyrese Maxey said he had to reprogram his mind after years of viewing Brown as the enemy.
Then Brown completed the conversion.
“I guess what everybody always says around here,” Brown said. “Trust the process.”
Three months. That is how long it took Philadelphia to get Jaylen Brown to say “trust the process.”
I spent years saying those words, mainly to myself in the mirror through tears and a forced smile. Jaylen had been there for one fiscal quarter and was already quoting from the Book of Hinkie. He spent a decade helping Boston beat the Process into powder. Now he was distributing pamphlets.
Then, in his Sixers preseason debut, Brown scored 22 points in 17 turnover-free minutes. By the time his third three went in, I was Matthew McConaughey behind the bookshelf in Interstellar, desperately trying to send my April self one message through spacetime: AVOID LIGHTNING.
At this point, calling it a curse felt less like superstition and more like basic pattern recognition. I opened seventeen browser tabs devoted to indoor lightning generation and local electrical codes.
Unfortunately, the Celtics might still be good
Over the next few days, however, something strange began happening around me.
Nothing.
Celtics fans were still optimistic. Optimistic! At a time like this!
Nobody enjoyed watching Brown leave, and even the trade’s defenders needed a long inhale before saying “financial flexibility.” But the city had not collapsed. My neighbor had convinced himself George was about to have his healthiest season in years. The kid down the street discussed Chris Cenac Jr.’s ceiling like she had conducted his pre-draft workout. A man on the T asked why I wasn’t higher on Hugo González. I hadn’t said anything about Hugo González. Apparently, that was the problem.
Tatum was back. Derrick White was ready to rebound. Payton Pritchard looked primed for another leap.
Joe Mazzulla, of course, wasn’t ready to join the preseason group hug. As Noa Dalzell reported from Charleston, he offered the kind of disclaimer usually omitted from team-building exercises.
“Every team you lead is the most together team right now,” Mazzulla said. “Because we haven’t traveled. No one’s gotten benched. No one’s been on a losing streak. No one’s gotten blamed in the media. No one’s had to go stand in the corner for 10 minutes and not get the ball.”
That sounded suspiciously reasonable.
The Celtics haven’t proved anything yet. Neither have the Sixers. Beneath all the offseason noise, both teams are 0-0.
For Boston to succeed, George has to stay healthy. Tatum has to look like himself. Boston must replace what Brown provided. Still, the Celtics won 56 games last season while spending most of it without Tatum. White and Pritchard remain, and the younger guys are starting to look like players Mazzulla can wholeheartedly trust.
This was an irritating discovery. I had assumed Celtics fans were confident because nothing truly bad ever happened to them. Now several bad things had happened, and they were walking around like the Celtics had merely chosen a higher difficulty setting.
Boston had given them plenty of reasons to be miserable this summer. They were excited anyway. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d let Philadelphia off that easily.
The 76ers just had the offseason I used to sketch on napkins after my second drink. Part of me is desperate to get home, but another part remembers what being a Sixers fan does to the human brain.
New players only give Philadelphia fresh material. The first time Embiid puts his hands on his knees to catch his breath, someone will announce that he spent the summer doing nothing. A missed Brown rotation will become evidence of a chemistry problem. LeBron will leave an empty seat between himself and a teammate, and by halftime Sixers Twitter will have decided he wants that guy traded for Bronny.
Give us the greatest roster ever assembled and we’ll still wait for the ceiling to cave in. We may even start arguing about which player caused it before anything has actually fallen.
I looked at the weather app still open on my phone. Was I really trying to get struck by lightning so I could go back to worrying about Joel Embiid’s conditioning?
I closed it, along with every tab answering “Can a lightning bolt be manufactured safely indoors?”
Grant, if you are reading this in Philadelphia, cancel the trip to the clock tower. I hope you kept my fish alive. The plants in your place looked doomed before any of this became my responsibility, so that’s on you.
I hope you enjoyed the celebrations after the 3-1 comeback. I remain furious that you got Jaylen Brown and LeBron the moment I left town. If Philadelphia wins a championship while I am trapped inside a CelticsBlog writer, I will pursue every available legal remedy.
But the Celtics might still be good. Worse, I think I want to find out.
I’m not saying I’m never going back. I have learned my lesson about saying things like that.
For now, I’m staying on this side.
