Fark.com wins naming rights of Boston FleetCenter

[HamiltonHabs32]

Fark.com owner Drew Curtis won through an eBay auction the naming rights of the fleetcenter.

They've been holding these auctions where you can win the naming rights of the arena for one day. A pretty good idea, Fark.com gets gets their name out a little, and the fleet center gets 2,500 to charity. In good taste the owner of the site decieded to call the it the Boston Gardens, he said he thought it would be a good way donate to charity.

Now according the this article by the Boston Globe, they make Fark.com sound like an evil pornsite.

http://www.boston.com/ae/celebrity/articles/2005/02/19/fleeting_fame_for_a_price_chelsea_makes_the_rounds/

But as they continue to sell single-day naming rights on eBay, where will FleetCenter execs draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable? We'll find out Feb. 28, when a certain website takes over the arena. The site -- a popular compendium of offbeat news stories and photos -- won the naming rights with a bid of $2,500. ''My point was to do something ridiculous and to donate to charity," said the website's founder, Drew Curtis, who lives in Kentucky. (The Globe isn't publishing the name of the site because it contains links to pornography.)

[Lone Pawn]

1. Drew Curtis, not Jeff Curtis.

And I liked the original idea of the Fark.com Duke Sucks Center better.

[HamiltonHabs32]

2. fixed

To many of these :toast: before posting

[punpirate]

3. No change of name, even temporary...

... is going to help the Celtics....

[WilliamPitt]

4. Ouch

but true. :(

[punpirate]

8. Ah, well...

... when the Celtics stop trying to imitate the rest of league (mere collections of individual performers), they may yet regain their former status.

My own feeling is that Larry Bird was a curse as well as a blessing. The press began, with him, an adulation as a single player which ignored his other attributes as a team player--his number of assists, for example--not the usual attribute of a forward. I remember far too many times when he'd pass the ball two or three times and then have to pull out a busted play with a shot. The press remembered the shot, but not the passes.

Or Dave Cowens sliding thirty feet on his face after a loose ball.

Or Cousy, Sanders, Russell, Havlicek and Sam Jones weaving and running for all their worth for two lousy points....

That may seem nostalgic, but I knew that the Celtics (and maybe basketball as a whole) were on a downhill slide when they put their future into one guy, Len Bias.

Basketball really isn't about fancy dunks. It's about running, and running the other team into the ground and playing as a team. The old Celtics had guys who were greyhounds for forty minutes, guys who were greyhounds for twenty minutes, a few who were racehorses for ten. Red Auerbach just knew how to get the most speed out of all of them, and get them all to play as a team.

I had a roommate for a while in college who told me that Sam Jones worked for his father's insurance agency in the off-season (he'd had the pleasure of playing tennis with Sam frequently). Sort of said to me that for Sam Jones, and maybe other Celtics of that time, endorsements and multi-million dollar contracts and such weren't as important as just playing the game, and that when the legs when go (as they always do), there were other things in life.

Maybe the revival of the Celtics is intimately tied up in the revival of the game.

Cheers.

[WilliamPitt]

9. I blame Jordan

Not him personally, so much as his talent. He was SO FUCKING GOOD that the NBA commissioners redesigned the advertising and hype away from team play and towards 'The Next Jordan' players, single personalities, etc.

It'll be the death of the league. this Ron Artest stuff is just the beginning.

[KharmaTrain]

10. Jordan's Ghost Has Faded

Even here in Chicago. It helps the Bulls are suprising everyone by winning more than losing, but even here you rarely hear his name mentioned...and supposedly he's still living in the area (at least when it's golfing and betting season).

I've always blamed expansion for the "blahs" of today's sport and how one player is so idolized as there are so few good players on a lot of bad teams.

When you look back on the Auerbach/Cousy/Havlicek days, those were when the NBA had 10 teams at the most...and you had either very great teams...Celts, 76'ers, Lakers...or real bad ones, like the Bulls in those days or the infamous Cleveland Cadavers...err Cavaliers.

I think the naming concept is a waste of money as having a corporate name on a building or some other ego symbol warns me that someone is paying for this...the customer/consumer.

Here's hoping the $2500 goes to Cam's kids.

[punpirate]

11. Good point...

... because Jordan was that exceptional (well, contrasted with the rest of the Bulls for a good portion of his time with them).

In terms of raw athletic ability, I would guess that Julius Erving was probably as good, or nearly, as Jordan, but because he came out of a failed ABA team, there wasn't nearly the initial attention paid to him as with Michael Jordan.

But, keep in mind, Michael Jordan himself brought much of that endorsement hype into the league. I don't know whether he succumbed to the blandishments of the Bulls' owners and the league, or invited it. Certainly, he didn't resist it. Maybe, one day, he'll tell us. Maybe he has already, and I missed it (I haven't really followed the game or its players since the early `90s).

[WilliamPitt]

12. I'm sure he'll tell us about it

while speaking of himself in the third person.

*shudder*

[HamiltonHabs32]

5. or the Bruins

Zing http://metronewsnet.homelinux.com:81/boards/images/smilies/homericon1.gif

[tinrobot]

6. He's renaming it Boston Garden

...at least that's what he said earlier today on Fark. I guess eliminating corporate naming of public athletic stadiums is obscene.

(I think the brouhaha mentioned in the paper was that some people on Fark were joking about naming it UFIA or something like that.)

[HamiltonHabs32]

7. right

I frequent fark quite often and as far as im concerned the UFIA was a joke...but it would have been hilarious non the less.

Such negativity and hate these days in the media, its pretty obvious in that article.

[SideshowScott]

13. I was just thinking that..wow! Boston Garden would be perfect

even before i scolled down i was thinking " he should rename it Boston Garden " it would be perfect