Tag: Dave Cowens

Drafting an all-time Boston Celtics roster is harder than you might think

With Hall of Fame greats like Larry Bird, Bill Russell, Kevin Garnett, Bob Cousy, Kevin McHale, Dave Cowens, Robert Parish, John Havlicek, Paul Pierce, and so, so many others to choose from, building an all-time Boston Celtics squad is easier said than done.

With Hall of Fame greats like Larry Bird, Bill Russell, Kevin Garnett, Bob Cousy, Kevin McHale, Dave Cowens, Robert Parish, John Havlicek, Paul Pierce, and so, so many others to choose from, building an all-time Boston Celtics squad is easier said than done. Mix in the availability of players from today as well, and it becomes a tough out for anyone.

But that is exactly what the hosts of the CLNS Media “Garden Report” podcast set out to try to do on a recent segment filmed at TD Garden, with hosts Bobby Manning and Josue Pavon taking turns putting together the best team they can draw from the ranks of Celtics greats both present and past.

Take a look at the clip embedded below to see who the pair think ought to represent the storied ball club as the five best players one can draft.

Listen to the “Celtics Lab” podcast on:

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3zBKQY6

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3GfUPFi

YouTube: https://bit.ly/3F9DvjQ

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On this day: Jo Jo White debuts; Tom Sanders fired, Dave Cowens hired as coach; David Wesley born

On this day, Boston legend Jo Jo White debuted for the team, Tom Sanders was fired as head coach, Dave Cowens was hired to replace him, and David Wesley was born.

On this day in Boston Celtics history, point guard David Wesley was born in San Antonio, Texas in 1970. An alumnus of Baylor University, the Texan guard found himself passed over in the 1992 NBA draft due to concerns about his height at 6-foot-1 and ability to transition from the 1 to the 2 at the NBA level.

After a stint with the Wichita Falls Texans in the Continental Basketball Association (CBA — that era’s equivalent of the NBA G League), he would sign with the (then) New Jersey (now, Brooklyn) Nets before joining the Celtics the next season as a free agent.

Wesley’s scoring doubled or nearly so each of his first three seasons in the NBA, going from 3.1 to 7.4 to 12.3 points per game.

On this day: Dave Cowens leave of absence begins; Kendrick Perkins, Gene Conley born; Chuck Connors passes

On this day in Celtics history, Dave Cowens stepped away from the team for a time, Kendrick Perkins and Gene Conely were born, and Chuck Connors left us.

On this day in Boston Celtics history, Hall of Fame big man Dave Cowens took a leave of absence from the team after several days of trying to get permission from team owner Irv Levin and legendary Celtics general manager Red Auerbach.

Cowens never revealed what caused him to want the break — it came after a four-game losing streak in a season that saw friend Paul Silas traded away while Cowens was embroiled in a lawsuit, any of which or all could have been the culprit. “Dave came into my office today, and said he’s got a lot of personal problems and feels he can’t play,” said Auerbach via the AP’s Dave O’Hara.

“These things happen,” added Red. “He’s a fantastic human being and sincere. This is a shock to everyone, no one anticipated it. I ache.”

Boston Celtics place 17 alumni on the ‘Bill Russell Scale’

Yahoo Sports’ Ben Rohrbach named a metric designed specifically to measure Russell’s sort of greatness.

The greatest winner of all time, Boston Celtics Hall of Fame big man Bill Russell, had such a profound impact on the sport of basketball that Yahoo Sports’ Ben Rohrbach named a metric designed specifically to measure Russell’s sort of greatness.

Updating it for the second straight year since its creation in 2021, Rohrbach recently released the 2022 version of what he has dubbed the predictably-titled “Bill Russell Scale” to help us take stock of how greats across eras are currently stacking up against one another. “Russell’s accomplishments also do not fit neatly into a statistical box,” writes Rohrbach. “He was not an all-time great scorer, and PER fails to properly capture the impact he clearly had.”

“This is why setting him as the gold standard makes so much sense,” adds the Yahoo analyst — and with that, let’s see where Celtics alumni stack up in 2022.

Seven Boston Celtics make HoopsHype’s 20 greatest centers list

Some of the greatest players to play the game have suited up for Boston at the 5 over the course of the organization’s storied history.

Perhaps the most impactful position in the history of the Boston Celtics, centers have been instrumental in winning most of the team’s NBA-record 17 banners. Some of the greatest to play the game have suited up for the Celtics at the 5 over the course of the organization’s storied past.

Scholars of the team’s history are already aware of the names mentioned in the latest edition of HoopsHype’s 20 greatest centers list. A number of the all-time great Boston big men made the cut for H/H’s list.

Let’s dive into which former Celtics made the list.

HoopsHype updates their top 75 all-time NBA player list for 2022, dropping several Boston Celtics

We might be biased, but we’re not too crazy about the update.

While some NBA media outlets are dialed into the 2022-23 NBA season for their annual exercise to fill the late September content desert that is ranking season, our sister site HoopsHype has its eyes on a bigger prize.

Drawing on the popular all-time NBA list released adjacent to the NBA’s version put together for the league’s 75th anniversary, HoopsHype has gone a step further and updated the list again for 2022. There’s quite a bit of change (including the absence of many Boston Celtics who made the last list), and to be frank, we are not fans of an all-time list that would see so much turnover a mere 365 days later.

Take a look for yourselves at the various Celtics greats who were omitted and where those who remain are ranked now, and let us know why we are wrong if you feel so compelled.

What Celtics might have won the Larry Bird East finals MVP award had it existed before this season?

One intrepid analyst tried their hand at naming them.

The NBA has created a brand-new series of awards for postseason excellence in the Eastern and Western Conference Finals, the Larry Bird East Finals Most Valuable Player award fittingly in play for a member of the team that Hall of Fame legend played for across the entire span of seasons making up his storied career.

And though the future of the award and the fitting nature shaping up for at least one of those four new pieces of hardware on the current iteration of the Boston Celtics is sure to captivate the minds of many an NBA fan as we draw closer to the inaugural awarding of those trophies, some minds have looked to the past instead.

Who might have won the award in seasons past? FiveThirtyEight’s Mike Lynch recently penned an article trying to do exactly that.

The Celtics have retired 23 jersey numbers (and one name) – these are the players so honored

It’s no coincidence this team has the most retired jersey numbers with 17 banners hanging alongside them.

There are no teams in the history of the NBA to have more titles than the Boston Celtics — at least not yet — so it makes sense there are no other franchises with more retired numbers to honor the players over the decades who earned and hung those banners.

In fact, there are no teams in any sport with more retired jersey numbers at 22 overall, a reflection of the excellence behind the Celtics mystique built by franchise architect Red Auerbach. From his signing with the team as coach and general manager onward, Boston became one of the premier teams of the greatest basketball league on the planet.

But who were the players for which those jerseys were retired after the latest addition of Hall of Fame big man Kevin Garnett? Let’s take a look at them all.

Boston’s Dave Cowens is a big fan of Robert Williams III’s growth as a player

The Hall of Fame Celtics center might know a thing or two about Boston big men.

If there’s anyone who knows Boston Celtics big men, it’s Hall of Fame Celtics center Dave Cowens, who won two titles with the team in the 1970s as a player. And current Boston big man on the come-up Robert Williams III has caught the eye of the champion, who recently sat down with Heavy’s NBA insider Steve Bulpett to talk about the Timelord, and how Cowens has grown to become a big fan of his game.

The former league MVP had reached out to Bulpett to check in on the state of affairs with his former team and league, and after some conversation, the topic of discussion turned to the Texas A&M product and his recent leap.

“I’ve enjoyed seeing the improvement of the big guy, Rob Williams,” said Cowens.

Celtics announce all 15 members of All-Celtics roster for NBA’s 75th anniversary celebration

The Celtics released all 15 players for their all-time great Celtics list in honor of the league’s 75th-birthday celebrations.

The Boston Celtics are a founding member of the Basketball Association of America (BAA), the league that would one day call itself the NBA of today, and have thus been a prominent franchise in the league’s 75th-anniversary celebrations throughout the 2021-22 NBA season so far.

One of several such ways the Celtics have helped commemorate the league reaching its’ three-quarter century mark has been their slow reveal of their 15-man all-time team of the greatest players to don the green and white for Boston, done in three installments of five players each over the course of the last two weeks.

Selected by a panel of experts and historians, the Celtics released the final, full 15-player roster on Thursday afternoon along with a press release detailing all aspects of the team.