You may have heard the statistic by now: the Boston area has witnessed eight championships since 2001. This kind of unprecedented success puts Boston sports fans in a unique position to reflect on each title, but it also gives us the opportunity to compare them.
Boston media personalities have been understandably hesitant to rank each championship team lest they diminish any other team’s accomplishments. In this five-part commentary, I’m going to attempt to objectively order the top five Boston champions of the twenty-first century.
We will start with number five and count down to the “best” champions. Each week I will break down a different championship team using some basic criteria that I’ve developed.
AP Photo: Rajon Rondo was in his second year when he became a world champion as the starting point guard for the 2008 Boston Celtics, averaging 10.6 points and 5.1 assists.
The first is team likability. Each championship roster features players who are easier to root for than others. Sometimes, that is because they’re humble (Zdeno Chara), sometimes it is because they’re cocky (Dustin Pedroia), but this category is looking at how much a fan would’ve enjoyed these teams if they weren’t from Boston.
The second component I will be ranking is the historical impact of the title. The Patriots second title in three years might not mean as much historically as the Red Sox first in 86. There are some champions that were in a better position to change the overall view of the franchise than others.
The third factor is the championship run that each team went on. Sweeping every playoff round is less dramatic than gutting out game sevens on the way to a title, and these rankings will account for that as well.
Now that I’ve established ground rules, let’s get started with number five: the 2008 Boston Celtics.
The Recap
It’s easy to forget how hopeless things were for the Celtics on draft night in 2007. Coming off a 24-win season, Boston was projected to take Yi Jianlian with the fifth overall pick. When general manager Danny Ainge traded that pick for Seattle sharpshooter Ray Allen, there was more confusion than optimism. The team that was supposed to be building a core of promising young players just traded their high draft pick for a guy who turned 32 later in the month.
But things changed when a mega-deal was announced that would land the Celtics superstar forward Kevin Garnett; now there was a clear picture of where the franchise was going, a genuine championship roster, a Big Three.
From the first game of the season the Celtics showed they would be a defensive force behind assistant coach Tom Thibodeau’s revolutionary schemes and Garnett’s nightly intensity.
The team routinely made opponents miserable, holding them to a league-low 41.9 field goal percentage.
Paul Pierce showed maturity by transforming his game, taking nearly five less shots a night and having one of the most efficient seasons of his career, per basketball-reference.com.
Journeymen James Posey and Eddie House endeared themselves to fans by giving the team productive minutes off the bench and partaking in goofy pregame rituals during player introductions.
There was also the emergence of Rajon Rondo, Glen “Big Baby” Davis and Leon Powe, who together entered the season with a combined two years of NBA experience.
By the time the playoffs came along, the team was 66-16, easily the best record in the league. But that didn’t mean things would be easy for the Celtics in the Eastern Conference playoffs.
They didn’t win a road game until the conference finals, dropping their first six contests away from the TD Garden.
That led to do-or-die game sevens against the Atlanta Hawks and Cleveland Cavaliers, the latter of which proved to be a legendary shoot-out between Paul Pierce (41 points) and LeBron James (45 points) while they guarded each other for the majority of the game.
The Celtics came from behind to put away the Detroit Pistons in game six and vault into the NBA Finals to face their old rivals, the Los Angeles Lakers.
The series was hard-fought but never quite in doubt, as the Celtics held at least a game advantage throughout. They added an exclamation point to the title-clinching game six with a 39-point blowout in front of 18,624 celebrating fans.
The Ranking
The team was certainly fun to cheer for. The three stars complemented each other off the court almost as well as they did on it.
Allen, the consummate professional, was the least vocal—but then again sometimes it seemed Garnett did enough talking for the entire team.
Pierce had long ago won himself over to fans, and Powe (who exploded for 21 points in game two of the finals) encapsulated the rags-to-riches story-line.
It was the franchise’s first title since 1986, but those were a long 22 years for Celtics fans.
The championship gap included the tragic deaths of Reggie Lewis and Len Bias, the failed tanking experiment for Tim Duncan, eight different head coaches and far too many Antoine Walker shimmy-shakes. The 2008 season was the biggest turnaround (in terms of win totals) ever for an NBA team.
The playoff run was spectacular, including career-defining games for Pierce, Powe and even House. That they finished with a victory over the 1980s-nemesis Lakers only helped their case.
The Lasting Image
“Anything is possible!” –Kevin Garnett
Stay tuned for parts 1-4 in coming weeks!
Zach Winn can be contacted at zwinn@keene-equinox.com