I made my first visit of the season to the newly renamed TD Banknorth Garden last night (or the Gahden in the local dialect). A former co-worker of mine who has moved to a different division of the company got some club seats and invited me and another guy from the department to go. It was good to see him again, and the seats were great.

The game itself was kind of a stinker. The Celtics won 100-93, but if they had been playing a decent team they would have lost. Providing the opposition for the evening were the Toronto Raptors, who are now 0-9 for the season. The Celtics played barely well enough to win, but this is a team they could have blown out by 20 points.

One of the nice things about sitting in the club seats is that the Sports Museum of New England is located in the concourse surrounding the club seats and luxury boxes at the Garden. Before the game started, I wandered around a bit. There was a great exhibit of photographs from McCoy Stadium on the upper level. This level was nearly deserted, and as I was making my way around the exhibits none other than Celtics legend Bob Cousy walked by, accompanied by a member of the Celtics staff. I said "Hi, Cooz." as he walked by and he said "How ya doin'?" Very cool.

One thing I never thought I'd see at a Celtics game while Red Auerback was still alive was cheerleaders. But there they were, a group of young men and women known as the Green Team flipping around and exhorting the crowd to cheer during timeouts. In fact, the whole game presentation with the loud music and flashing lights during player introductions, constant contests and requests from the scoreboard to "make some noise" and such is a little much for me. It almost seems like the game is a afterthought sometimes. Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but back in the '70s and '80's guys like Havlicek, Cowens, Bird, Parrish and McHale were enough to keep me entertained.