Boston Celtics

Known for a city that breaths sports, Boston is one of the most succesful franchises in NBA history, with 17 championships under their belt, the most within the teams from the league. This is not coming as a big surprise, as Massachusetts is the state where basketball was “born”, so to say, in 1891. Since then, a lot of hall of fame players have gone through the Boston Celtics, such as Bill Russell, who won five Most Valuable Player awards and 11 of the Celtics’ 17 championships during his thirteen-year career, from 1956 to 1969 and is widely regarded as one of the greatest basketball players to touch the ball, even if nowadays people are putting into perspective the fact that basketball has changed a lot since back then. Robert Parish was another legend for the Celtics, a player known for his strong defense, he won four championships for them during his fourteen-years spent with the club. John Havlicek is another franchise player for Boston, as he spent his entire career with them, while he won 8 championships, four of them coming in his first four seasons after being drafted; we think it’s safe to say that him and Bill Russell were a deadly combo for all the other teams. The things got interesting when the famous rivarly between Boston and Los Angeles Lakers renewed in the early 80s, when the two of the most famous people in the history of the league came up, Larry “Legend” Bird and Earvin “Magic” Johnson. During their thirteen-year careers, they met 3 times in the Finals, and unfortunately for Boston, Magic came up in front 2-1 after those. In the 1983-84 season, Boston beat LA 4 to 3, while Larry won the Finals MVP award, but after that, they met again right in the next season and this time the Lakers beat them in 6 matches. The Celtics would come to play the Finals yet again in the 1985-86 season, marking their 3^rd straight finals appearance, this time versus the Houston Rockets. Bird managed to win it all, including the MVP again, but this was about to be his last ring, as Boston lost in the Finals against none other than the Lakers, again, 4-2, with Magic Johnson being name MVP for those Finals. After so many years of dominance, when the trio formed of Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish came to an end, the rivalry between those two got less as intense as it was, and the Celtics began to go through a rebuild process, a thing that took a little time, until Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and Rajon Rondo formed a team and managed to win a ring in 2008 against… the Kobe Bryant’s Lakers. That championship was about to be their last one until now, as they lost versus Los Angeles again in the 2010 Finals. Currently, they have a pretty good young team, after they’ve gone through a kind of fast rebuild process when all their 4 starters left the team, and they are a promising franchise for years to come.

Andrei Dilean , info@brainbasketball.net

Boston Celtics