First and foremost, I'd like to take this opportunity to say: fuck cancer.
No polite language here, apologies, but it's taken too many people who were close to me, and too many close to the rest of us, too. But out of that loss, comes community -- community born of a common struggle against an unseen enemy, by those who refuse to let the disease define them, or open a gulf between themselves and the people and things they love.
Such is the community seen in Marcus Smart's recent gift and words to Ringer NBA writer Kevin O'Connor -- who cut his teeth on the Cs' beat -- after the publication of O'Connor's moving ode to his father and their common love of Boston Celtics basketball.