With one of the longest careers in NBA history at 21 total seasons, it probably shouldn’t surprise that legendary Boston Celtics big man Robert Parish ended up in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
But he wasn’t always an elite center, and at one point in his basketball-playing career, the Shreveport native wasn’t even the best player on his team, or even close to it. In fact, that happens to be the reason the Centenary College product began wearing his signature jersey number with the Celtics, ’00’. Now among the rafters hanging in glory in TD Garden after said Hall of Fame career, Parish once told the tale of how he ended up with that most unusual of jersey numbers on the “In the Post With Elvin Hayes” podcast.
“My junior high school team gave out jersey numbers to the players [based on] the scale of talent,” began Chief, as he is sometimes called.
These are the 10 Celtics who played the most seasons with Boston. https://t.co/0KtO4GXIIg
— The Celtics Wire (@TheCelticsWire) October 2, 2023