On this day in 1978, one of the weirdest chapters of Boston Celtics history unfolded as the Celtics became the Buffalo Braves and the Braves the Celtics.
Confused? You should be — it is perhaps the only time in the history of major North American professional sports that franchise owners swapped ownership of their respective franchises in a move that has largely been forgotten by fans, buried by the sands of time.
Boston’s owner at the time — Irv Levin — wanted to move to the west coast, but there was no way the NBA would approve a move for the Celtics to go there with him.
Instead, one the suggestion of NBA lawyer and future commissioner David Stern, he pitched Buffalo’s owner, John Y. Brown, to swap franchises, and Brown agreed.