It would be sweet to be a Boston Celtic. Since I can’t do that, I did the next best thing. I hung out with them at The Palace of Auburn Hills for Game 5.

Actually, I only hung near them. After finishing an excellent pregame meal of bread and soda in the media dining area, I make my way to my seat. I go through these double doors -- looks like a shortcut. All of a sudden I’m standing almost shoulder to shoulder with Walter McCarty. Not that big of a deal -- except for the fact he’s hunched over in a huddle with the rest of his teammates, swaying back and forth, gettin’ all fired up for battle. Uh, any dogs in the house?

“What we gone do out there?” Antoine Walker asks any ol’ body.

“Kick some ass!” somebody shouts back. The huddle explodes into madness.

“Awright, awright, hold up, hold up,” Tony Delk says. Silence. “Our father, who art in heaven ...” After the prayer, more silence.

And then that one guy again. “Kick some ass!” More madness. They take off, one by one, bursting out into the arena from smallest to biggest. Or Kenny Anderson to Tony Battie. Then, after all the players are out of the tunnel, out walks a mopey Vitaly Potapenko. Dude, if you don’t want your spot, I’ll take it.

The Palace is a madhouse. It’s my first time here and it’s definitely one of the more underrated arenas in terms of seriously damaging decibels. Plus, there are almost as many drunk people there as in Philly.

One guy holds a sign that reads “Walker, You are a Cry Baby and I Hate You”. There are quite a lot of signs actually. The best one? "Walker Is Fat." Every time Walker touches the ball, 22,076 chant his name mockingly.

Thirty seconds before halftime I stake out a spot just inside the tunnel. The fans go all Redd Foxx on the players walking by. There’s one guy wearing an Erick Strickland jersey scaling the wall up the bleachers. Wait a second, that is Erick Strickland. Some fan dumped a cup of beer on his head and he was determined to get him. In about two seconds flat he climbed up and halfway over a railing about 15 feet high and got in the guy’s face. It was actually pretty amazing. Spiderman’s got nothin’ on Strick.

After the game I’m back in the tunnel. Celts coach Jim O’Brien walks through. “You’re nothing but a Pitino wannabe, O’Brien!” shouts a guy.

“And one day I will be,” OB kicks back. Uh, I’ll let him slide seeing as he just notched his biggest coaching victory ever.

In the locker room, Walker carefully squirts ketchup and mustard from little packages onto a hot dog. I ask him what it’s like to have all those fans chanting his name.

“Man, I felt like a star,” he says with a boyish grin. He then takes the hotdog and shoves it in his mouth.

He must have missed the sign.

Chris Palmer covers The NBA Life for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at christopher.palmer@espnmag.com.