Imagine your favorite basketball player is Kyrie Irving. You love absolutely everything about him from the thread-the-needle passes to the fact that his picture proudly graces the top of CelticsLife. You're young and impressionable and Kyrie can't do any wrong. Now imagine, if on your birthday of all days, he suddenly dies. How crushed would you be?
I make this (depressing) analogy mostly for our younger readers, who perhaps don't even recall Reggie's time on the Celtics. Because 25 years ago today, that person was me. Reggie Lewis was my Kyrie Irving. If Len Bias' death took the entire Celtics' franchise down with him, Reggie's death legitimately nailed and shut the Celtics' casket of relevancy.