I’m sure that Celtics fans have been deliberately avoiding all media relating to Ante Zizic. They know their team messed up bad by getting rid of him, and the less they know about his high-scoring exploits, the better, they figure. No reason to open old wounds by seeing a tweet of him doing some community outreach in Cleveland or watching a highlight video of him scoring in the mid-teens.
But they could not avoid seeing him last night. Not as he entered the sacred halls of The Garden, not as he stepped on the parquet floor, and not as he had a REVENGE GAME for the ages. Zizic knew that he was supposed to be doing this kind of stuff wearing Boston’s green-and-white, he knew that he was supposed to be eventually placed in the pantheon of Celtics greats, and the fans knew this too. Every time he touched the ball, a nervous energy shot through the crowd like lightning. They knew he was going to score.
Ziziz ended up with only 19, but I blame that on coaching more than anything. We can assume. If Zizic had gotten his way, I feel like 40 points would’ve been an inevitability.