The city of Boston is still relishing in the euphoria of this year’s Celtics championship, and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down any time soon. But what if things had unfolded a little bit differently?
Comedian and writer Jon Rineman took it upon himself to plunge deep into the hypothetical and wrote down his experience in the parquet floor-decorated alternate universe powered by a PlayStation 5, a copy of NBA 2K20, and the curiosity of “What if?” — and naturally, things got a little weird amidst the trip down the rabbit hole.
Within the pages of The Garden’s Always Greener, which found its way into the world during the final days of the Celtics’ title run back in June, the born-and-raised New Englander and lifelong C’s fan found the inadvertent inspiration for his latest project in the early days of lockdown during the pandemic by simulating through seasons on NBA 2K20 while using the vintage downloadable rosters from the 1986-87 Celtics powerhouse squad. Around the same time, ESPN had released The Last Dance, and HBO had announced the details of the Los Angeles Lakers-centered miniseries Winning Time, and the nostalgia bug caught Rineman square, as he began to think about what would’ve come of the career of Len Bias, who tragically passed away just two days after being drafted by the Celtics in 1986.
Using the results of the game’s simulation as the basis of what was to come, and reaching out to Bias’ mother — who kindly requested that her son’s name not be used in the book — Rineman got to work on telling the story of how the NBA was affected by the drafting of “Neil Mantis,” and in turn how a myriad of different pop culture highlights throughout the late ‘80s and ‘90s were affected by the happenings of the NBA. Basically making the NBA as a collective seem like something of a Forrest Gump in this alternate universe, Rineman found great comedic pleasure in following through on storylines that included Dennis Rodman, Rick Pitino, Red Auerbach, Scottie Pippen, Robert Kraft buying the Celtics, and making Michael Jordan something of an ultra-competitive anti-hero.
Also having done research and looking into the NBA guru-level expertise that legendary Boston Globe sportswriter Bob Ryan has bestowed on the city of Boston for decades, Rineman put a lot of work in to base the fictitious happenings in real life events, which turned out to make the story even more interesting and exciting for Rineman than he had initially thought.
“The goal [with the book] was to do a sort of Curb Your Enthusiasm version of the NBA, and that’s basically what it became,” Rineman tells Vanyaland. “You read this book, and you know the characters. You know how they talk, you know their mannerisms, but it just so happens that, in this particular timeline, the guy who stops OJ inadvertently saves Tupac too, and all of these ridiculous things. It’s just sort of an alternate world that’s meant to be fun, and while I do know several women who read it and enjoyed it, it’s really the ultimate guy read.”
As a big fan of Stephen King’s 11/22/63, in which a time traveler attempts to stop the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Rineman’s affinity for that approach, paired with his love for sports and comedy, became the obvious avenue for which to unleash this story. At the very foundation of it, however, he found himself thinking about how men, in particular, aren’t exactly prone to sitting down and enjoying a good book. He was even told by at least one literary agent that not only do they not really market to men, but that men don’t typically read in general, so Rineman persisted on his own.
Well, he also had the support of some big voices in comedy and sports, like longtime friend Gary Gulman and the SiriusXM’s Justin Termine, and the enthusiastic backing made the experience, and the pursuit to publish the quintessential “guy’s read” so fulfilling.
“I loved Gary Gulman’s book, and I’ve read Norm MacDonald’s Based On a True Story, and I laughed so hard while reading them. That got me thinking about how you never really see guys reading books and laughing. They’re always reading the history of the Chicago Bears, or something about lesser known Civil War fights and stuff like that,” says Rineman. “You never see guys reading books that they’re just really hooked on and having a good time like we did when we were kids. We had Douglas Adams, Calvin Schwartz, and all these other great authors that were twisted and funny, so I really wanted to go back to that and write a book that guys could read and really enjoy.”
Between the story of “Mantis” and the legendary tale of the monkey that supposedly escaped from the circus and lived in the Boston Garden rafters for decades, among a cavalcade of other nostalgic pop culture reflections, there’s a lot going on from page to page. By no means were the concurrent storylines a mistake or the result of messy writing, though. With a lot of different inspirations in play throughout the project, Rineman is quick to acknowledge that for the format of the book’s writing, he was inspired to write in the particular style by his father, who passed away after a battle with Alzheimer’s Disease.
“The whole reason I wrote it the way I did was because of my dad,” admits Rineman. “He passed away from Alzheimer’s a couple years back, but one of our favorite things to do was go to Celtics games together, and one of the things they say about Alzheimer’s is that reading can push off Alzheimer’s for a few years. Exercising your brain and being creative is really good for you, and this book is a challenge because of that. It’s like a Curb episode, or a Wes Anderson movie, or at least that’s what I was going for, where it has a bunch of different storylines going on, and that’s why I put it out in June, which is Alzheimer’s awareness month. The book is out there for fun, but there’s also a cause behind it.”
Being such a seasoned veteran of the entertainment industry as Rineman is, he knows firsthand just how difficult it is for writers to have their material seen, especially in the current climate. With that, he knows just how fortunate and lucky he is to have been able to embark on this journey, a true labor of love and sports fanaticism, with the support of his peers. Where it takes him from here, Rineman isn’t too sure, but it’s certainly sparked a few ideas that will keep folks intrigued for quite some time to come.
“There’s a music-based story like this that I’ve been kicking around for years, where it’s a collection of short fictional stories about real bands. If I were to do something else like this, that’s the direction I would go in,” says Rineman. “When I was a monologue writer for Late Night, my favorite jokes were the ones that personified people we didn’t really know, like the jokes about Putin getting his feelings hurt by YouTube comments. I just like taking people that we know in the zeitgeist, and giving them the Family Guy cutaway treatment. I just love the tongue and cheek approach where the people themselves can read it and laugh. Well, maybe not Putin, because I don’t really care about hurting his feelings.”