North Station Sports

To celebrate the kick off of the 2009-10 season,  NSS  held a contest  giving away a plaque autographed by Larry Bird. To enter the contest, a requirement  was to subscribe to our email subscription. Of course, I checked daily as the email addresses began to pour in. The response only solidified my claim that Larry Bird is still one of the most admired basketball players of all-time.

The regional origins of the email addresses particularly intrigued me. To my surprise, there were many variations of the (curse) word Lakers mentioned in several of the 100’s of email addresses submitted. Lots of Lakers fans secretly like Larry-Legend and I love it! The winner of the contest, Kevin Diec, is actually a California resident!

By the way, Congrats Kevin!

Anyway, their was one email address that jumped out at my over the course of the contest entry period. Ginosjungle@gmail.com. The obvious thought, as a C’s site owner, was that  if this person has Gino in their email address, they must be serious Celtics fans. i decided to google “Gino’s Jungle”  to see what I can find. What I discovered was, what looked to be another new C’s blog. After further examination, I realized that these two guys, B-Paul and GreenBanner 18, were for real.

They both post fresh, well-rounded and palpable content. These guys don’t mess around. There’s no half baked material with points that are never brought to completion– something I despise when investigating some seasoned writer publications. Those that have become familiar with some of my work at NSS, know that I am not a stats guy. I enjoy glancing over the box scores daily but then I flip the page (or, in this case, the button) shortly after staring down the standout (or stand down) performances highlighted in the daily stat sheets.

Gino’s Jungle has a unique way of incorporating stats into their posts while not imposing math equations on their readers. An overview of Ray Allen’s recent struggles  proves my point that stats are sometimes necessary but should never be dominant. GJ’s writing style inspires it’s readers to think about what could be while not requiring them to break out the calculator to do so.. A recent post, Defense Wins Championships, Offense sells Tickets,  looked into the Celtics 6-0 start and depicted defense as the C’s key to success.

Upon initially discovering GJ, what impressed me most, was their adoption of such well thought out concepts and site features at such an early stage in their site’s maturity. Interactive features, such as, GJ Pickems– an area where readers can pick their favorites to win the most anticipated games being played around the NBA that week (I’m currently ranked 5th among nearly 20 contestants from around the C’s blogging world). I also have participated in the fan forums posted at GJ. With topics such as, NCAA Athletes and Best Players at each position, encourages reader interaction. The combination of their quality content and interactive features led me to believe that maybe I had missed this hidden gem in the Celtics World Wide (Tangled) Web.

Truth was, these life long Celtics fans had (admittedly) never witnessed the C’s win a title until 2008. These guy’s parents obviously dressed them in green as kids because what impressed me most was their loyalty to the C’s during the down years. They describe the Celtics like a marriage,

“fans through the good times and the bad.”  

As a fan from (way) back, when Fred Roberts and Greg Kite were warming our bench, it was nice to see some representation for Eric Williams and (Tommy voice) WALTAAAAA in their “who are we”  section, furthering their claim of loving the C’s when we were on the wrong side of the win streaks.

North Station Sports is proud to say that we have joined forces in an effort to centralize a live game chat for Celts games. With seasoned bloggers such as C17, Celtics Town, Celtics Stuff Live and yours truly, all dropping by during the course of the game, the interaction and spirited debate is every bit as entertaining as the game itself. Check into NSS before every game for details on when the chat room opens.

We, at NSS, are excited to watch and assist in the growth and development of Gino’s Jungle– Celtics Nation’s youngest, yet already grown up, blog. Enjoy!