This should have been opening night for the Celtics. It would have been our first real chance to see the familiar faces and whatever new pieces team president Danny Ainge was able to acquire after what would have been a hectic offseason.

The Celtics would have hosted Cleveland on Wednesday night, a departure from the past when they ushered in the NBA season with marquee matchups against LeBron James-led teams. In many ways they have come full circle since Ainge acquired Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen before the 2007 season.

In all likelihood, this is the beginning of the end of that era and while there’s no question that they can still compete – maybe even contend if everything falls into place -- this would have been the start of the most important transition period since Larry Bird retired. That’s not the kind of thing you’d want to use as a marketing slogan, but the great thing about opening night is that the possibilities are limitless.

• Can Rajon Rondo complete the journey to elite-level point guard by improving his shooting and gaining some much-needed consistency?
• Is this the end of Garnett in a Celtics uniform? His expiring contract is the key piece in their salary cap equation.
• What about Ray Allen? He’s also in the final year of his deal, but his future with the team is an open-ended question.
• Can Jeff Green, assuming he re-signs, develop into the kind of player Ainge envisions him becoming, or has he reached a level of decent, but hardly great production?
• Is Avery Bradley an NBA player?

On and on from whether Paul Pierce can continue his rock-solid second career act to the development of rookie center JaJuan Johnson and all the way to Ainge himself.

No person has more at stake over the next year than the team president. He is sitting on a pile of cap space for the summer of 2012 when the contracts of Garnett, Allen and Jermaine O’Neal all come off the books and he has positioned the team for an opportunity to rebuild quickly if he can make the right moves.

This is the season people have been nervously eyeing ever since Garnett and Allen arrived, but, here we are, locked out on opening night with no particular place to go. Instead of anticipating the matchup between Rondo and rookie point guard Kyrie Irving, we’re talking about whether Billy Hunter set up Derek Fisher, or maybe it’s the other way around, and Heat owner Mickey Arison’s $500,000 emoticon.

From the beginning, the lockout has been a theater of the absurd from unscheduled drop-ins by noted recluses Garnett and Blazers owner Paul Allen to David Stern sick’s day, Hunter’s untimely exit last Friday and a federal mediator who washed his hands of the whole thing. It is 95 percent done by one informed estimate, but there are no meetings scheduled to close the remaining 5 percent.

how u

How us is angry.

Angry at the owners for the ridiculous shell game they keep playing with their BRI offers and their continued insistence to portray this as a noble issue of competitive balance when it’s really just an unseemly cash grab to help finance their debt.

Angry at the players union who apparently saw the whole thing coming and still insisted on playing defense from the beginning. A defense, it should be noted, that has more in common with the Warriors than the Bulls.

One day it’s the owners who are divided, the next day it’s the players. The small markets are driving the conversation, or maybe it’s the agents. How was this lockout ever going to resolve itself if no one had an acceptable end game in mind? 

That’s just the feeling among the diehards -- the people who are invested enough in the league to shell out for tickets and league pass subscriptions. The rest of the population is so angry at the NBA they can’t wait to tell everyone how much they don’t care.

No matter what happens between now and the time professional basketball returns, the league has been damaged. Twice in the last 13 years the NBA will not open on time because of an owners’ lockout. No other sport can match that dubious distinction, although the NHL may not be far behind. (Heck of a model there, guys).

History has told us that the people will come back and money will be made, but this lockout has once and for all put to rest the romantic notion of a grand partnership between teams and players. The owners have made the players the enemy and alienated their fans in the process. That may wind up being a brilliant economic strategy but while the Garden is dark on opening night it’s fair to ask:

Has this really all been worth it?