Kudos to the Globe’s Mark J. Spears for his fantastic story this morning on how Celtics pine-rider Brian Scalabrine not only gets embarrassed when fans start sarcastically chanting his name at the end of blow outs, but admits it affects his play. It turns out our very own Great White Hope has feelings too.

I’ve known this for a long time since my buddy Jimmy (a Jerseyite if ever there was one) has been claiming that he “invented” the Scalabrine chant for years. Ordinarily, I’d dismiss this type of claim out of hand, but the facts here are difficult to ignore:

1) Jimmy’s voice could penetrate sheet-rock. He is one of the most obnoxiously loud people I’ve ever met (and also why I consider him a dear friend).

2) Jimmy claims that he and a friend first did the chant at an October 25, 2002 Knicks-Nets preseason game at the Meadowlands, a 106-77 blowout win for the Nets. That was Scal’s second year in the league and with the Nets. As a rookie, he barely played and the fans didn’t quite know him yet, so the timing makes sense.

I asked Jimmy, who was in high school at the time, to recount the story again today in honor of Spears’ story. So I’ll let him take it away:

We were particularly excited because we knew a preseason game (especially as the Nets pulled away early) was the perfect opportunity for our favorite Net, Brian Scalabrine to see some serious playing time. I felt a real connection with Scalabrine, as I too am large and un-athletic with a rather fair complexion. After sitting patiently through the first quarter and a half, my friend and I decided it was time that Brian Scalabrine got some playing time. So we started chanting “Scal-ah-bree-nee” and “put-in-Scal!”. The combination of low attendance for a Nets pre-season game and my obnoxiously loud voice [see, I told you] meant most of the fans in the arena could hear us. When Scalabrine finally did get in for just a few seconds, we went crazy and much of the crowd went wild with us.

In the second half, Jimmy reports, Scal remained on the bench. So they started the chant again, and got the fans sitting around them to join in. The real excitement was after the game, though:

My buddy and I thought it would be a good idea if we hung out by the players’ parking lot in order to get some autographs. We got a few, but then as the flow of players started to die down, we saw an SUV start to approach…and as the vehicle got close we saw that it was our boy, Brian Scalabrine. He stopped his car and started to role down his window. There were a few smaller kids in front of me, so as he started to sign their paraphernalia, I yelled at him, “Yo, Scal! You have to sign my shirt. We’re huge fans of yours. You’re great! We were cheering for you the whole time!” Right at that moment, he stops in the middle of signing a little kid’s shirt, looks up at me and says, “I know. It’s embarrassing. Stop doing that!”

So Scal begrudgingly signed the shirts and drove away while Jimmy and his buddy stood there shocked. Now, fast forward three weeks. Jimmy and seven other friends landed tickets about ten rows behind the Nets bench. Armed this time with Scal signs, they once again commenced chanting his name. At such close proximity, Scal couldn’t help but hear them.

He put a towel over his head and sat forward. Meanwhile, the two players on either side of him on the bench at the moment (Lucious Harris and Richard Jefferson) were loving it. They turned around laughing, pointed at us, and then kept messing with Scal by pushing him and telling him to turn around and look at us. Scal just kept shaking his head “no.”

Still unsatisfied, Jimmy and company returned to another game about two weeks later. Relegated to the upper deck this time, they focused their energy on getting as many people as possible to do the Scalabrine. They got the crowd going pretty good, he says, and apparently it took hold.

Two nights later, Jimmy was watching a Nets game on TV when he heard the Scal chant—his chant—come booming through his set. A legend was born.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 17th, 2008 at 5:50 pm and is filed under Celtics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted by Jason Schwartz on 11/17/08 in Celtics 1 Comment »