The Celtics season kicked off tonight, and they had a very successful start to the post-Antoine era. The Celts are up by 28 points over Miami with about three minutes left as I write this. The amazing thing is that they have six players in double figures - something that rarely happened with Walker and Pierce scoring about half the Celtics points last year. Even better news is that the dried-out Vin Baker looks like a player again. He’s got 15 points with a couple of minutes left; one off his season high last year. I know it’s only one game, but his progress is certainly promising.

‘Toine had a great start to his Dallas Mavericks career last night, but Shaq and Kobe stopped fighting with each other long enough to beat the Mavericks. Walker had 19 points including 5 out of 6 from three-point land. I’m sure the Mav’s fans are happy with that performance, but we’ll see how they feel after one of his 2 for 8 nights.

The start of the basketball season always makes me think of my maternal grandmother. Grandma was a huge basketball fan. Her fandom went all the way back to the pre-NBA days of the Original Celtics and the Philadelphia SPHAs (do a Google search if you want to find out more about them).

We used to go down to Philly every summer to visit my grandmother. I still can’t figure out how my mother drove down there alone every year from Rhode Island with two small kids in the back seat, especially without things like Gameboys or built-in DVD players to keep us entertained. Once we got to Grandma’s we used to do lots of fun stuff like going to the 7-11 down the block for Slurpees and riding the trolley. I have some memories of doing the tourist stuff like the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, too.

Grandma moved up to Providence and I remember lots of Sunday afternoons in her apartment watching the NBA on CBS. It was really nice for me as a kid to have that connection with her.

I’d love to know what she would think about today’s NBA with the more physical, lower scoring play you tend to see today. I’m sure she wouldn’t be too crazy about some of the off the court antics that go on, but I’m sure she’d still be watching.