What if? Ex-'Tonight Show' writer Jon Rineman reimagines Celtics history in new book
NORTH HAMPTON — Jon Rineman can’t help but wonder what could have been if the late Len Bias had played with the Boston Celtics.
Rineman, a North Hampton native and veteran late-night television writer of the “Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon,” was 3 years old and playing outside when his father came out of the house and said the 1986 draft pick had died after using cocaine. He remembers Bias being a start player who could have prevented the Celtics’ dismal 1990s era when Rineman was a student at North Hampton School.
Now Rineman has published a new book, “The Garden is Always Greener,” that playfully looks at what could have been if the Celtics had seen their top draft pick play his career. Rineman, who wrote for Jimmy Fallon for nine years, creates an alternate universe where the Celtics find glory and the NBA’s most celebrated player of the 1990s, Michael Jordan, cannot get a break.
“Michael Jordan just can't win,” Rineman said. “It becomes more and more about Michael Jordan having this Clark Griswold, like descent into madness.”
Rineman said he approached the comedy with reverence for Bias. He changed Bias’ name and kept his character mostly in the background as the reader focuses mostly on how his presence in the league affects the people around him.
Rineman also sought the approval of Bias’s mother, Lonise Bias, and said she gave her blessing via email correspondence as long as he changed the name.
The book, self-published, is available online and dedicated to Rineman’s father, also Jon Rineman, who died from Alzheimer’s disease in 2022. Proceeds from sales this summer will go to benefit the Alzheimer’s Association.
Rineman said his father raised him on the Celtics and was supportive of his comedy career. He said his dad would get a kick out of the book, not only for the basketball jokes, but those about what happens in the rest of this alternate history.
“There’s a part where Bob Kraft buys the Celtics, and he would love that. There’s a part where the Beatles get back together, and he would love that part, too,” Rineman said. “I think he’d be proud.”
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Rineman said he was trying to keep himself busy during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 when he started working on his alternate NBA timeline. He said he picked up a PlayStation 5, one of the last in the stores as retailers ran out of stock, and began playing the NBA 2K video game.
Rineman found the game’s customizable features intriguing as he downloaded historic rosters like the 1986 championship Celtics team. When he learned he could download historic draft classes and play them out over entire seasons, he was eager to see what Bias and the Celtics could do in the video game.
“Being a millennial that suffered through all those terrible years in the 1990s, where we just couldn't catch a break,” Rineman said, “I said, oh my gosh, Len Bias. What if I went back to ‘86 and just saw what would happen if he had played for the Celtics?”
As Rineman simulated games with his custom settings, he sought to make the most realistic outcomes by following strict rules about what the Celtics would have really done.
“Like video games do, it went haywire, a couple of times,” Rineman said.
Rineman said he was amused by how the timeline played out, including that Jordan, who won six titles in real life, never won a championship in the simulation. It left Rineman thinking there could be some comedic value in the chaos he created in his video game.
“I kept a record of it all and I just kind of said, ‘Someday I want to do something with this,’” Rineman said.
Rineman first considered writing an article on the video game experience, but he decided that was boring. Then, he sought to write something serious about how the world is dramatically reshaped by the presence of Bias in the league.
“I wanted to write, like, a drama, like Stephen King, ‘11.22.63,’” Rineman said. “And then as I did it, and all the ideas were coming up with was like, ‘Wait, that’s right. I’m an idiot. I’m not a novelist.’”
Rineman shifted his focus to what he knew best and worked on ideas for his book as a comedy. With a fictitious draft pick named Neil Mantis, rather than Len Bias, Rineman wrote a world in which the NBA goes in a totally different direction than real life. Scottie Pippen becomes a fast-food tycoon because the Chicago Bulls can’t win. Dennis Rodman goes to Charlotte and parties with wrestling star Rick Flair.
Rineman pokes fun at the world around the NBA in his alternate timeline as well, from Geraldo Rivera to OJ Simpson. The spotlight is on Jordan, though, who played against Bias in college and who Rineman contends could have been a career-long rival.
“He goes crazy,” Rineman said. “It’s imagining a world where he’s Susan Lucci. He just can’t win, every year.”
Rineman said he likes the way the book came out and is proud it got the approval of Boston comic Gary Gulman, who Rineman called “one of the top comedians in the world.” He said he sent the book to Gulman for his review and was prepared to scrap the book if he said it wasn’t funny. Gulman gave a glowing review that Rineman included on the book’s back cover.
“This book brings together three of my favorite pastimes: playing ‘what if?’ the NBA and Jon Rineman’s comedy,” Gulman wrote of the book.
“That’s when I knew I had something here,” Rineman said. “So, I feel proud of it.”
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Book dedicated to Rineman’s father
Rineman credits his father with supporting much of his success in his life. He said his father read every single joke that Rineman wrote for the monologues Fallon told during his years on late night. Some he didn’t understand, like those about the WWE, but he was always eager to see what his son wrote.
Rineman said his father was originally from Pennsylvania and adopted the Celtics as his favorite sports team to follow. He remembers in second grade when his father said he “talked to Santa” about getting some new Celtics figurines for Christmas gifts. That whole season, Rineman and his father watched every game together.
As Rineman grew older, the two became locked in conversation about whether the team could turn it around when the original Celtics Big Three of Larry Bird, Robert Parish and Kevin McHale retired.
“We’d have a lot of Celtic arguments together, just where I was trying to the bitter end to defend Antoine Walker,” Rineman said. “He was like, ‘I’m telling you, Larry Bird’s gone. They’re never gonna win again.’”
Rineman said his father enjoyed the 2008 championship Celtics, and the sport remained a glue for them up until Alzheimer’s began to take its effect. Rineman recalled realizing around 2017 that the end would be difficult.
“You don’t get to say goodbye,” Rineman said. “It’s a whole lot of pretending you’re not sad for the benefit of the patient, and trying to make them comfortable when internally you’re just miserable.”
Rineman will donate proceeds of every sale of the book this summer to the Alzheimer’s Association until Sept. 21. He said he wanted his book to be more than making fun of people, which he said he did for years in late-night television and “felt kind of empty.”
“I said, 'Well, what’s the way to kind of justify this?'” Rineman said. “What if we did something good with it?”
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This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Ex-'Tonight Show' writer Jon Rineman pens alternate Celtics universe
