New Auerbach Center has everything - including a State-Altering tank - Huh?


My first thought when seeing the photos of the new Auerbach Center was how beautiful - and completely functional it was. My second thought was: What an added draw for any draftee or free agent potentially coming to Boston. It may almost blot out the negative cold, snowy winters.


Seriously! This place is gorgeous. In one of my many previous occupations, I visited many gyms and basketball courts throughout the country and never saw anything to match this. It is the combination of beauty and function that makes it all work. If our Celtics crew needs to spend a lot of time training indoors in very bad weather, this is the place to do it.






Okay, so the video and photos show the beauty - and some of the function. The Center seems to lack nothing. It even has what Marcus Smart calls a flotation tank - which appears to be a sensory deprivation tank, about which a horror film, Altered States. was made. The tank is constructed to relieve stress by floating the occupant in warm water with an extremely high concentration of salts, thereby depriving that person of the senses of sight, smell, hearing and sound. The sense of taste apparently remains, but it is doubtful anyone is allowed to eat a cheeseburger in the chamber. The following excerpt from Wikipedia's Altered States plot:

In later experiments, Edward experiences actual, physical biological devolution. At one stage he emerges from the isolation tank as a feral and curiously small-statured, light-skinned caveman, going on a rampage before returning to his natural form. Despite his colleagues' concern, Edward stubbornly continues.

In the final experiment, Edward experiences a more profound regression, transforming into an amorphous mass of conscious, primordial matter.

My readers know that I write this in fun. I mentally pictured Marcus Smart emerging from the tank as a "small-statured, light-skinned caveman", and maybe the next time as an "amorphous (shapeless - chemistry term) mass of conscious, primordial matter". Seriously, I love this building and what it can do. But I will be paying close attention to the size, shape, color and crystalline (opposite of amorphous) appearance of our Celtics. An amorphous mass would have trouble pissing off James Harden.

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Photos via NBA and Scott Eisen

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