Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Celtics History


Clearly the Celtics are the best franchise in NBA history, winning seventeen NBA championships. Most of these championships come from 1957-1969, during these years the Celtics won thirteen of the fifteen championships. This team was mostly led by Bill Russel. Bill was player, a player-coach, and a coach. He was the best player on the team while he played along with Bob Cousy, another great player. This was where the Celtics Lakers rivalry began because they always seemed to meet in the finals almost every year, but the Celtics would come out on top. The Celtics also won two championships in the 70s led by John Havelcheck, who is now the all-time leading scorer in Celtics history.

Then in the 80s there was the big three: Larry Bird, Robert Parish, and Kevin Mchale. This lineup was definitely the best Celtics team of all time and arguably the best team of all time in 1986. Other players like Dennis Johnson and Danny Ainge were also a great contribution to their four year stretch of being in the finals. This was when the Celtics Lakers rivalry became big. Bird vs. Magic, Mchale vs. Worthy, and Russel vs. Kareem these were great matchups with the three best players on each team. They would go at it and have some very exiting series in the finals every year.

            Larry Bird is said to be the best Celtic of all time and one of the top five players of all time. You can’t tell how great of a player Larry is just by his stats. His ability to close games and come up in the clutch is unbelievable. With the game on the line or anytime during the game when the Celtics needed a big shot, Larry always had the ball and almost always made that shot.        

The Celtics then didn't win another championship until 2008. That was a huge win for the Celtics because everyone knew the Celtics were back to the old winning ways. When the new Celtics big three came into Boston everyone knew that the Celtics would be a top contender in the league. And the first year with Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, and Paul Pierce all on the same team the Celtics were ranked first in the regular season and won the NBA title for the 17th time in Celtics history. Once again the Celtics and Lakers meet in the finals two straight years and split the games one to one. The Celtics had some of the best team in history and the biggest dynasty of all time.

WORD COUNT 428

1 comment:

  1. Good job on the Celtics history. Now, if only it were accurate. Burn! Seriously, you have Russell taking on Kareem in the mid-eighties? Russell was in his fifties by then! You mean Parish v. Abdul-Jabbar.

    OK--enough teasing. For the most part, this is accurate, but the names are off in places. Details count--and "close enough" only flies in horseshoes, hand grandees, and nuclear weapons.

    I like the part about Larry Bird's clutch shooting. I've never seen a player who could be relied upon to nail the go-ahead three with one second on the clock like Larry Legend. The closest the NBA has to a clutch, Birdesque player today is Kobe Bryant.

    As much as I love Larry, he's not the greatest Celtic ever. That honor goes to Russell, who has more championship rings than he has fingers. Larry only has three. (Championships, that is, not fingers. He's got ten of those, though two are pretty mangled from a baseball accident in his youth. Yeah--I know my Larry history!)

    One problematic sentence: Most of these championships come from 1957-1969, during these years the Celtics won thirteen of the fifteen championships. (First, this is a run-on sentence because the part after the comma can stand on its own as a sentence. Second, your math is off--this is a span of thirteen years, inclusive, and you call it fifteen.) If you want to make this grammatically accurate, it needs to read : "Most of these championships come from 1957-1969, during which the Celtics won thirteen of the fifteen championships." I'll let you handle fixing the accuracy of the information.

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