Yep, it’s time to sell the big guy on our town. The Celtics are toast in this first-round playoff series. We all know that. We knew it before the Game 1 opening tap. The Fried Green Tomato Cans dropped the first two games in Cleveland, by margins of 13 and 8 points, and there’s no way they are coming back to beat Love and the rest of that ragtag Cavaliers cast he’s lugged up and down the court each night all season.

That’s right, Boston, it’s your turn, your civic duty, your time to convince Kevin Love to join the Celtics this summer.

OK, Boston, this is your time, your chance to stand up and be counted. If you are a Celtics fan, if you bleed green faster than the federal government bleeds greenbacks, then you have these next two playoff games to hoot and holler and do everything it takes to bring home a winner.

Poor guy deserves better, don’t you think? He deserves Boston, where 17 championship banners hang in the Garden rafters, where there’s always room for another retired Celtics number or name. Love could be up there one day, stitched neatly in place next to “Loscy.’’ Why not? Let him know.


Which brings us to Thursday night (Game 3) and Sunday afternoon (Game 4), a minimum of 96 playing minutes for everyone in the Hub of the Basketball Universe to show the former UCLA star the way to go home (like, say, a left onto Charles, then a backdoor play up the hill to Louisburg Square).

Boston is really the place he wants to be. We all know it. I bet he knows it, which just might be why, according to one insider, he spent a couple of off days here when the Cavaliers’ schedule allowed for some R&R at the end of the regular season.


Love is the big the Celtics so desperately need, the 82-inch-long franchise forward who can shoot the ball from all distances, do the heavy board work at both ends, and form a playmaking bond with Isaiah Thomas that would be the perfect union to return the Celtics to the thick of the Eastern Conference hunt each year.

We’re not talking 7-8 seeds here. We’re talking back to the glory days, when the regular season was just bookkeeping for the home-court playoff advantage and the annual long postseason run that was de rigueur in Green days of yore.

So here’s the deal: Whenever Love touches the ball these next two games, cheer his every move. Celebrate his every point, his every block, his every steal. Treat him like he’s already one of your own.

Promise him you’ll shovel out his parking space when the snow flies here again, that you’ll sit out there on the kitchen chair to save his spot until he comes home at night. He’s big, but he’s like the rest of us; it’s the little things that count. Get #AllInForLove, Boston.

Roll out the love for Love the way the Duck Boats roll out for those championship parades. Make the big guy dream there’s one with his name on it, The Love Boat, just waiting to roll down Boylston Street with him aboard each June. Maybe Jake Peavy would donate his old boat to the cause?

Granted, cheering for the other team’s guy may sound a bit untoward, especially with the Garden being the Celtics’ home court and all. But who cares about proper protocol or even basic fan dignity or pride at this point? You watched the 2013-14 Celtics win, what, a total 25 games. Dignity? What d’ya mean, dignity? If you lived through 25 wins, you should have no trouble pumping Love’s tires, or floating his boat, even at your favorite team’s expense.


Truth is, no one knows what Love will do upon reaching free agency at season’s end. He could stay with Cleveland. Or he might join the Lakers. No telling.

We do know he was very visible here last summer, touring the town in the midst of the Timberwolves orchestrating their trade scenarios. Celtics boss Danny Ainge figured he might land Love for his top two picks in the 2014 draft (Nos. 6, 17), but the Cavs proved the shrewder, more aggressive horse traders, selecting Andrew Wiggins No. 1 in the draft last June and then flipping him to Minnesota two months later in a three-way deal for Love.

All we were left with here were pictures of Love around Boston, him reaching for a beer during a Red Sox game at Fenway, then visiting The Greatest Bar, not far from the Garden. In the end, Cleveland won, Boston was left in a state of Love lost.

And now here we are again, the score trending the same.

Kevin Love took in a Red Sox game during his much-publicized visit to Boston last summer. Jim Davis/Globe Staff

With all due respect to Cleveland and its many fine people, there isn’t much to compare between the two cities. Cleveland is on the comeback, but it’s not the thriving, vital metropolis that Boston has become. The Hub has reaped the rewards of a nearly half-century-long build-back. Boston is so much more a city now than it was in the Celtics’ true glory years when they won 11 NBA titles, 1957-69.


Really, what’s not to love, Love?

In Cleveland, all the aforementioned kidding aside, Love is actually the third wheel of the Cavs’ Big Three, overshadowed in the game plan by the game’s iconic brand, LeBron James, and the magical ballhandling and shooting of guard Kyrie Irving.

If nothing else, the first two games of this series should have negated anyone’s doubts over whether Irving is the real deal. His skills are sublime, mesmerizing. And James is James, which is to say there isn’t much to say other than what Celtics coach Brad Stevens keeps repeating: “best player in the game.’’

Their talents have forced Love to morph into a sort of hybrid power forward, often pulling him out from the rim area for midrange jumpers and bombs. Here in the Hub, he could be used more as the monster down low, a force, the marquee front man, rather than one more glittering bauble on the Cavs’ dazzling bracelet.

So it’s up to you, Celtics fans. You were born for this, you were meant to be here, this moment is yours. Channel your inner Red Auerbach. Move in ahead of the crowd on this guy the way Red did with Larry Bird. Have the cigar ready.


“My dad likes to say when other kids were watching Big Bird, I was watching Larry Bird,’’ Love once told Sports Illustrated. “And he was totally right.’’

What more do you need to know, Boston? It’s on you now. Two games to show Kevin Love what it would be like to be adored in a town that continues to lavish its praise on the likes of Bird, Russell and Cousy, Heinsohn and Havlicek, the Jones Boys, Satch and, yeah, Loscy, too.

Tell Kevin Love he’s going to love the way he looks here, and that you’ll guarantee it.

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Follow Kevin Paul Dupont on Twitter at @GlobeKPD