Celtic Pride (1996) Made Me Feel Better That My Basketball Teams Stink

Today’s issue of Dust On The VCR is a subscriber request! This infamous flop was requested by my longtime friend Michael Heitz—well, sort of. You see, Mike and I have a special bond because he’s a die-hard Kentucky basketball fan (legitimately, I promise), whereas I am a Louisville fan myself. Which means we’re big ol’ trash-talking rivals whenever hoops season rolls around. Wouldn’t you know it, this spring has given us a rare confluence of events that resulted in both of our storied programs searching for a new head coach—and coming up a bit short of a splashy hire. Given that we’ve both been in our feelings about it, he was eager to see some basketball cinema covered in the newsletter, and this was the film we landed on. (I’m sure my musings will have him, and all of you, dying to watch it.) Anyway. Want to request a film for a future issue? Subscribe to the paid version!

A funny thing has been happening over the past year or two: All of my favorite sports teams stink. I’m sure this has never happened to you.

The Tennessee Titans are quite poor, and not even poor enough for a premium draft pick. My graduate alma mater’s football team, the Louisville Cardinals, and my ancestral football team, the Auburn Tigers, had very different kinds of disappointing seasons. And the Tampa Bay Rays actually had a very good year…until they laid an egg in the playoffs. (They are currently last in their division a month into the new season. Can’t say I’m surprised.)

But nothing gets me down more than a lost season of basketball. Louisville recently fired their head coach after winning a mere 12 games in two seasons (which, if you don’t follow college basketball, is very hard to do). Auburn actually had a very good season…until they suffered the second-most-embarrassing early upset of the NCAA Tournament.* And the Memphis Grizzlies, very recently dubbed a “team of the future” because of a slew of young talent, suffered so many injury woes that you’d think the owner ran over a witch.

Then, in the midst of all this second-hand failure, I watched Celtic Pride, a film that I probably loved when I was 10 years old.** And, despite the film’s best efforts to not provide a message of any kind, it served as a reminder: Maybe it’s a good thing that my teams are perpetual disappointments.

If you haven’t seen Celtic Pride since the 20th century, and I’m betting you haven’t, you probably recall the central conceit: On the brink of a Celtics championship, two obsessed fans attempt to get the opponents’ star player so drunk that he can’t play in the next game, but they wind up kidnapping him.

It’s a silly premise, but this isn’t a film that’s steeped in reality. The would-be protagonists, Mike O’Hara (played by Daniel Stern) and Jimmy Flaherty (played by Dan Aykryod), can somehow afford extremely good Celtics season tickets despite being a gym teacher and a plumber. Utah Jazz star and NBA darling Lewis Scott (played by Damon Wayans) somehow doesn’t have a single security guard with him when he goes out to a local nightclub. And Mike somehow married an attractive woman (Gail O’Grady) that he somehow keeps convincing to not divorce him despite giving her zero indications that he’s changed.***

But there is a central idea to the film that rings true: Obsessed sports fans are ridiculous—if not reckless—people.

I’m sure that screenwriter Judd Apatow intended to make these deplorable characters humorous, or at least compelling in their villainy.**** But instead they’re just a couple of pathetic lowlifes who don’t learn any lessons. One could argue—and I would, in fact—that they’re less likable at the end of the film than they are at the beginning.

I’ll hand it to Apatow (and Colin Quinn, who shares a story credit) for one thing, though: He sure picked the right city for unhinged sports fans. I can only assume that the Celtics were chosen as the titular team because they had the most NBA Championships at the time. But this is where the film has accidentally aged well in one respect. Mike and Jimmy are portrayed as fans of all Boston professional teams, not just the Celtics. And while the Celtics have only added one more ring to the jewelry case since this film, the Bruins have added one, the Red Sox have added four, and the Patriots—who had zero championships at the time, making the film’s final scene both asinine and logical—have added six.*****

If you’re keeping score at home, that’s almost a 50% increase in championship hardware since 1996. Which means if Mike and Jimmy were real people, they would’ve only gotten worse. And we all know that there are plenty of Mikes and Jimmys out there.

And I’m glad I’m not one of them. Sure, it would be nice if one of the teams I spend too many hours watching and too much emotional energy caring about would go all the way for once. But after a few ugly, disappointing, and downright awful seasons, I can feel myself becoming a more mellow sports fan. Being a “fairweather fan” is a sin in some circles, but I find it rather freeing. A loss no longer ruins my day. A bad season is just a gift of extra time.

That said, I reserve the right to become insufferable if the Grizzlies win three rings in five years.

*Thank you, Kentucky Wildcats, for being even more embarrassing.

**Daniel Stern was, to the best of my recollection, my very first favorite actor. As a kid, I of course loved Home Alone and its sequel, and I remember seeing both Bushwhacked and Celtic Pride in theaters as well. What can I say? I had sharp comedic sensibilities as a child.

***Speaking of Gail O’Grady and divorce, I glanced at her Wikipedia page. She has married and divorced six different men! I don’t need to know the circumstances, I blame those men.

****That’s right. You might recall that Apatow’s first screenwriting credit is Heavyweights, but he wrote Celtic Pride around the same time. I’m sure the trauma from this experience motivated his pivot to television.

*****I fear that today’s newsletter may jinx the Celtics into another title this year, which would tie them with the Los Angeles Lakers for the most total. But listen, it’s not my fault they’re good again.

Celtic Pride is now streaming on Hoopla, and it is available to rent elsewhere.