Boston Celtics Dynasty
From Hoopedia
By Dan Shaughnessy
If you grew up in a Massachusetts basketball culture in the 1950s and 1960s, a Boston Celtics championship was something of a birthright. Spring arrived, the forsythia bloomed, skinny guys ran 26 miles from Hopkington to Boston, and the Celtics won the NBA title. Imagine making it all the way to the eighth grade before realizing that your team doesn't automatically win the crown. I don't expect any American professional sports fans will ever share this experience.
I was born in Central Massachusetts in 1953 and didn't know there was such a thing as pro basketball until a local pol named John F. Kennedy was running for the White House. Coming of age as a fan at that particular time, I was forever spoiled by the team that wore black sneakers and played on a parquet court. The Celtics won the championship every year of my youth.
It was a different NBA and the Celtics were always one step ahead of the other teams. They had the best coach in Red Auerbach and they had the best player in Bill Russell. Fans elsewhere in NBA America feared Wilt Chamberlain and why not? The guy averaged 50 points a game for a season and seemed to be the strongest man in the world. In Boston, we didn't fear Wilt because Russell was Kryptonite to Chamberlain's Superman. Wilt might light up Big Bill for 50, but the Celtics would win in the end.
The Celtics were everything right about team sports. They never had a scoring champion, but it wasn't unusual to see eight guys in double figures. Russell, Satch Sanders and K.C. Jones were paid to play defense, not to score. It didn't matter who started -- but who finished. Frank Ramsey and John Havlicek made it to the Hall of Fame while coming off the bench for much of their careers.
The Celtics were in better shape than other teams. In a time when America was grappling with civil rights, the Celtics were colorblind. Auerbach was the first NBA coach to draft an African-American player (Chuck Cooper), and the first to start five blacks. Russell became the first black head coach in American professional sports. Auerbach sold Celtic Pride and Celtic Mystique and nobody snickered. The stuff really worked.
From 1957 through 1969 the Celtics won 11 championships in 13 NBA seasons, including a never-to-be-broken eight consecutive titles straight from 1959-66. The Celtics reign spanned four presidential administrations. It started before Sputnik and ended the same year we landed on the moon. Eight straight championships elevates the Celtics above the New York Yankees, Montreal Canadiens, Green Bay Packers and every other American pro sports juggernaut. Today it's fashionable to talk dynasty after two or three championships. Try eight in a row or 11 of 13. It's unfathomable in the 21st century sport world.
The first championship came in 1957 thanks to the potent additions of rookies Russell and Tom Heinsohn. The pre-Russell Celtics were carried by Hall of Fame guards Bob Cousy and Bill Sharman, but needed more rebounding and defense. Russell delivered both. He arrived 24 games into the regular season after winning Olympic Gold in Melbourne. The NBA had never seen anything like the 6-9 floor runner/shotblocker, and Boston beat the St. Louis Hawks in a thrilling seven-game final in '57. Game 7 was a 125-123 double overtime victory at the Boston Garden. Russell scored 19 with 32 rebounds and five blocks. Fellow rookie Heinsohn chipped in with 37 points and 23 rebounds.
Cousy said, "Once we won the first time, we were so certain that nobody would beat us. That, I guess, added to our ability to function. We had this inner confidence.
Russell turned his ankle in the third game of the Finals the next year and St. Louis won the the match, but it would be nine long years before the Celtics would lose again.
They won the 1959 title in four games against the Minneapolis Lakers, then beat the Hawks in seven again in 1960. But it was the conference final series which got more attention. Chamberlain had made his dramatic entry into the league in '60 (averaging 38 points and 27 rebounds) and there was speculation that he might dominate for the entire decade. But the Celtics beat Chamberlain's Philadelphia Warriors in six games, paving the way to a second straight title and establishing a pattern that would forever haunt Wilt.
The 1960-61 Celtics were so deep they had three Hall of Famers on the bench (Ramsey, K.C. and Sam Jones). Counting Auerbach and owner Walter Brown, there are nine Hall of Famers in the '61 Celtic team photo. Six players averaged 15 or more points, but none of them ranked in the top 15 in league scoring. They routed the Hawks in five games and Auerbach declared, "This is the greatest team ever assembled." Sharman was the first Celtic Hall of Famer to retire after winning a championship. There would be many more.
A year later the Celtic leprechaun wove some magic when Frank Selvy missed an eight-footer that would have won the championship for the Lakers. This was the year Chamberlain averaged 50 and Russell needed the full seven games to defeat Goliath in the conference finals.
The 1962-63 season was Cousy's last year and Havlicek's first. It's pro basketball's answer to the 1951 Yankees who had an outgoing Joe DiMaggio in center and rookie Mickey Mantle in right. The Celts beat the Lakers in six for the title, and the final seconds of the final game featured Cousy dribbling out the clock, then chucking the ball toward the Los Angeles Sports Arena ceiling as the buzzer sounded.
Boston's sixth straight title in 1964 -- the one that broke the record set by the Yankees and Canadiens -- was one of the more unremarkable Celtic campaigns. They beat Wilt's San Francisco Warriors in five games for the championship. It was Ramsey's turn to retire.
The 1964-65 Celtics won a record 62 games, but almost lost the conference finals when Russell hit a basket support wire with an inbounds pass in the closing seconds of Game 7 against the Philadelphia 76ers. The Sixers were led by Chamberlain, who'd been traded from the Warriors at midseason. Boston led by one with five seconds left when Russell turned it over, but the blunder was forgotten because when Hal Greer inbounded . . . Havlicek stole the ball! Celtic radio legend Johnny Most made the most famous call of his career. To this day, "Havlicek Stole the Ball," is as much a part of Boston folklore as, "The British Are Coming!" The Celts went on to beat the Lakers in five -- a going-away championship gift for Heinsohn.
Auerbach announced that 1965-66 would be his last season on the bench and issued a challenge to the league. The Sixers thought they were up to the task, but Boston beat Philly in five then took the Lakers in seven to send Red out in style. Auerbach named Russell his successor before the conclusion of the playoffs.
The 1967 Philadelphia 76ers snapped Boston's streak in Russell's first year as player-coach. It was bound to happen sooner or later and the '67 Sixers are still regarded as one of the NBA's best teams. But it didn't take Russell and Co. long to dismantle the one-year Sixer dynasty. Growing long in the tooth, the Celtics bounced back to win two more championships in 1968 and '69 -- beating Chamberlain-led teams both times. Russell and Auerbach still wear the 1969 ring. It's their favorite.
The Celtics never had a slick marketing machine that would churn out slogans designed to spur their continued greatness. Instead, they motivated from within. After winning the first, they wanted to prove they could repeat. Then they wanted to win one for the Cooz, or for Walter Brown, or for Auerbach. According to Russell, "For a few years in there we couldn't think of anything special, so we won those on general principle.
A Celtics championship was so routine that it ultimately created its own slogan. Even today, more than three decades after the 11-in-13 run ended, “Celtics Tradition,” remains a permanent part of American sports lore.
