Most impressive aspect of Celtics' KG and Paul Pierce tribute. VIDEO:

Sports and nostalgia go hand-in-hand like peanut butter and jelly. They're meant to work together. And American sports teams and leagues are experts at merging sports and nostalgia. So it wasn't surprising that the Boston Celtics produced emotional tributes for Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett when the Brooklyn Nets finally came to town. Superb senti stuff. American sports teams are really good at this. 

But what struck me from the tribute was reading about the kind of effort the Boston Celtics Event Presentation Team poured into this. Yup. The Celtics, like many NBA teams, have an Event Presentation Team. Their job is to think of every detail and every possible effect it could have on the crowd attending the game.

Here's an excerpt from the Boston Globe article "How do Celtics make their video tributes" by Baxter Holmes: 

Among the initial challenges for making the video, beyond searching through the best highlights to select the very best, is finding the right blend of footage from the player on the court, in the community, and their engagement with the fans.

Those are the three areas the group focuses on because, Gotham says, “It’s about trying to capture the essence of that player’s contribution.”

From there, sequencing is crucial, especially at the start of the video, as the first few clips almost always run in slow motion for dramatic effect, meaning they eat up a lot of time. There is still plenty to add from there, but the key is not to cram everything in, which might affect the pacing, making the video feel rushed. 

This isn't even ESPN or TNT or CBS or Fox. This is the Boston Celtics Event Presentation Team being almost insanely meticulous about selection of footage, choosing a musical score, figuring out the best way to edit for emotion, and making sure the fans feel the magnitude of a special event. In the Grantland piece "Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and an anatomy of a tribute" by Amos Barshad, these sentences in the final paragraphs say it all: 

Goddamn, it was perfect. You could have tried to be cynical. But you’d have been vastly underestimating the potent powers of a soundtrack and a montage. MH