Must Love Dogs

Before Michael Vick happened, I was a young, naive, man-child living in Boston, Massachusetts. In those heady days, the Jazz' starting backcourt consisted of Carlos Arroyo and DeShawn Stevenson and the Celtics were an NBA laughingstock. The world was as it should be.


During the brutally cold Boston December of 2002, the Jazz came to town. Thanks to my vast network of NBA connections, I sat in the players' section. It was like going to an NBA cocktail party. I met Matt Harpring's wife (a handsome woman) and Kenny Natt's uncle (not a big basketball fan). Ben Handlogten (who lives in Boston when he's not dominating NBA centers) had a vocal cheering section of 40 plus; they even had banners.



But the eye-opening encounter of the night was meeting a 50-year old gentleman who was invited by Paul Pierce. The man was not Pierce's relative, not a childhood friend, not even a shady, AAU character: he was Pierce's "dog dealer." We spent most of the third quarter discussing how Pierce purchased dozens of pit bulls every year.


At the time, I thought, "Wow, that Paul Pierce is a real dog lover."