Talk about transitions. It must have been some sort of blasphemy that Shaq would sit in the purest basketball gym ever constructed, the St. Patrick’s Cathedral of ball, on the night of the Celtics’ last game there, and talk about playoff basketball in terms ofTV commercials.

It’s almost as if the old Boston Garden simply gave way under the weight of all the sneaker and soda commercials, the sky boxes and corporate contests during timeouts. It’s like the old place couldn’t switch, wouldn’t join and just died from being out of date after 68 years.

Friday night, like every other night inside the old barn atop the train station on Causeway Street, they rolled out a rack of balls, the players warmed up, they played. No pre-recorded music, no mascot, no videos, no tumblers at halftime, no fans shooting 3-pointers. No silly stuff, just ball.

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How in the world did we get to indoor fireworks and the lights turned out during the intros? Is this what marketing has given us:free sandwiches if the home team scores 120 points, babies crawling from baseline to baseline during timeouts, and people dressed like gorillas and bumblebees dunking from trampolines?

You know what happens during timeouts at the Garden? Organ music. That’s it. For years and years it’s been the only place where during a timeout you can think about the game. You could look up at the roof, at the 35 Bruins banners and the 20 Celtics banners and perhaps think about what Bob Cousy or Bill