To celebrate Boston’s first NBA World Championship title in more than 20 years, the team wore these hats after they won Game 6 of the 2008 NBA Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers. In the locker room after the game, Kevin Garnett told Celtics legend Bill Russell, “I got my own. I got my own. […]

With a dunk in the first quarter, Bill Russell scored his 10,000th career point during a home game against the Baltimore Bullets. Coach Red Auerbach congratulated Russell with a hug for his historic achievement. Russell, who was typically unmoved by individual milestones, later said, “Certain standards I set…first, of course, we had to win.” Russell […]

No one has won more as a professional athlete than Bill Russell. With 11 NBA World Championship titles in his 13-year career, Russell set an impossibly high bar for anyone to match. Said Russell about his career, “I’d set a standard to win and that didn’t change.” And he had the rings to prove it.

The NBA celebrated its 50th anniversary season in 1996-97. As part of the festivities, the Association announced its list of the “50 Greatest Players” which included 13 Celtics, featuring franchise stalwarts Bob Cousy, Bill Sharman, Sam Jones, Bill Russell, John Havlicek, Dave Cowens, Tiny Archibald, Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish. That season’s team […]

Everyone knows Larry Bird, Bill Russell, Bob Cousy and John Havlicek, but the players that signed this basketball were all major contributors to championship teams – and some were even inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Though their time in Boston may have been overshadowed by more well-known players, NBA World Championship […]

Perhaps trying to summon good vibes for the contemporary Celtics, the 1963 NBA World Championship team graced the cover of the 1995 playoff media guide. Though the modern-day Celtics tried channeling the likes of Bill Russell, Bob Cousy and John Havlicek, they fell to the Orlando Magic in the Eastern Conference First Round, 3-1. Boston […]

Red Auerbach achieved his 1,000th career victory (including playoff games) as a professional coach on January 12, 1966. Fittingly, the victory came at home over Boston’s longtime rival Los Angeles Lakers, 114-102. A trophy ceremony followed on February 13, 1966, when the Celtics played the Lakers again. At halftime, the Boston Garden crowd of 10,000 […]

Talk about a Hall-of-Fame hat! More than a dozen Celtics legends, including Larry Bird, Bob Cousy, Bill Russell and Red Auerbach, put their signatures on a classic Celtics cap. With so many Hall-of-Famers, All-Stars and basketball icons in franchise history, we’re surprised it had enough room for all that star power.

City of Boston Poet Laureate Porsha Olayiwola read her work “Sestina” in honor of Bill Russell before the team’s 2022-23 Opening Night game against the Philadelphia 76ers. The Celtics honored the legendary center, coach and civil rights icon in part that night with this poem, which compared Russell’s on-court “swivel” to the civil rights movement […]

Following Red Auerbach’s retirement as Celtics coach in 1966, the team put out a record narrated by radio play-by-play man Johnny Most with calls from each of Auerbach’s nine playoff runs with Boston Garden as the home court. The record’s highlight was Most’s famous “Havlicek stole the ball!” call from the 1965 Eastern Conference Finals […]