Tag: Sam Jones

On this day: Russell, Jones retire; ’69 banner; 76ers confetti game

On this day, Bill Russell and Sam Jones retired after winning the 1969 NBA championship, and in 2018, Boston beat the 76ers in OT.

On this day in Boston Celtics history, franchise legends Bill Russell and Sam Jones retired as champions, deciding to call it quits after winning the 1969 NBA Championship.

For Russell in particular, it was a sweet ending, defeating longtime rival big man (and good friend) Wilt Chamberlain and his Los Angeles Lakers four games to three in a 108-106 Game 7 triumph that is widely considered one of the biggest upsets in sports history. The Celtics were by then an old team and managed to make the Finals as a four seed, while Los Angeles had Hall-of-Famers Elgin Baylor and Jerry West in addition to Chamberlain, the latter winning the Finals MVP award in a loss, the only time that has happened in the history of the league.

It was Boston’s 11th championship, and that in a span of just 13 years.

Which Boston Celtics alumni won the most playoff series?

The Boston Celtics have won more titles than any other organization based in the same city in which the franchise was started, but who won the most series?

The Boston Celtics have won more titles than any other organization based in the same city in which the franchise was started, and are tied with the Los Angeles Lakers for the most NBA championships in league history with 17 apiece. But the Celtics also won them more as a team effort and with more of their titles coming in the years when the playoffs had fewer rounds as well.

Thus, the list of total postseason series won by individual players in the history of the league put together by the staff of our sister site Hoops Hype has fewer Boston alumni on it despite the Celtics’ dominance of the sport for much of the history of the NBA.

But that list has more than a few Celtics alumni on it — let’s take a look at who won how many series among former Boston players.

On this day: Red names Bill Russell head coach; Sam Jones drafted

On this day in 1966, Celtics legend Red Auerbach named Bill Russell his successor as head coach, 9 years after they drafted Sam Jones.

On this day in Boston Celtics history, legendary coach and general manager Red Auerbach announced iconic Boston big man Bill Russell would replace him as head coach.

Earlier in the season, Auerbach revealed the 1965-66 NBA season would be his last as head coach, and after losing Game 1 of the 1966 NBA Finals, the Celtics luminary revealed Russell would succeed him. The Louisiana native would become the first Black head coach of any major professional sports team in North America — never mind just basketball — and Boston went on to win the 1966 NBA championship.

Auerbach stayed on as the team’s general manager until late in the 1980s and remained involved in team affairs until he passed away in 2006.

On this day: Sam Jones’ jersey retired; Cs 1st team to win 60 games; Clyde Lovellette passes

On this day in Celtics history, Boston honored Sam Jones, won 60 games in a season for the first time, and lost Clyde Lovellette.

On this day in Boston Celtics history, Hall of Fame Celtics shooting guard Sam Jones had his jersey number raised up to the rafters of the old Boston Garden in honor of his iconic career in Boston as one of the winningest players ever to play the sport of basketball professionally.

A 10-time champion at his retirement — a feat only bested by friend and teammate Bill Russell with 11 titles as a player — Jones had his No. 24 jersey forever taken out of circulation in respect for “The Shooter” (as Jones was called as a nickname). Ironically drafted by the (then) Minneapolis Lakers (later, Los Angeles), the Wilmington, North Carolina native would instead return to college for another year, and would be picked up by Red Auerbach and the Celtics with the eighth overall selection of the 1957 NBA draft.

He was also the franchise career-scoring leader at the time of his retirement.

Which Boston Celtics have scored the most 50-point games?

Can you name them all without checking first?

When it comes to players with 50-point games in the history of the Boston Celtics, there are probably fewer of them than you think if you are basing your estimations on how many current Celtics have accumulated in their young careers as stars of the storied franchise.

We are of course talking about wings Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, who have notched 50-point outings with Boston before either had turned 26 years old. But they are something of a rarity, even among Celtics alums, to have reached such lofty scoring heights. In fact they are two of seven Boston alumni to score a 50-burger or better.

Let’s dive into the other five — can you name them all without checking first?

On this day: Boston Celtics field NBA’s first All-Black starting five

On this day in 1964, the Boston Celtics fielded the first all-Black starting 5 in league history when Willie Naulls replaced Tommy Heinsohn in the lineup.

On this day in Boston Celtics history, the storied franchise made history by starting the first all-Black starting five in NBA history back in 1964. The Celtics were on the road to play a regular season game with the (then) St. Louis (now, Atlanta) Hawks when Hall of Fame power forward Tommy Heinsohn ended up a scratch due to an injury he sustained previously.

In that era, there was a so-called “gentlemen’s agreement” that acted as an unspoken agreement to always have at least one white player on the court at all times, supposedly in the interest of racial harmony.

But, legendary team manager and head coach Red Auerbach decided to play recently-acquired Willie Naulls in his place, breaking that tacit, racist agreement.

Supremely clutch Sam Jones hits the game-winner in Boston’s G4 victory over the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1969 NBA Finals

The Celtics legend had ice in his veins for the win.

On their way to winning their 11th of a current NBA-record 17 titles, the Boston Celtics had to win Game 4 of the 1969 NBA Finals, and it took a friendly bounce for it to happen.

The game itself saw a record-low number of assists for any game in the NBA Finals, with a combined total of just 21 assists from both ball clubs recorded in the historic game. The series victory for Boston was unexpected given the arrival of Wilt Chamberlain, longtime foe of Celtics Hall of Famer Bill Russell, who was dealt to Los Angeles from the Philadelphia 76ers over the previous summer.

At the end of the eventual 89-88 nailbiter win for the Celtics, Russell subbed himself out in favor of forward Don Nelson, who got the ball to Sam Jones.

Watch the shot for yourself to see how close things got to a possible Lakers victory that could have changed the momentum of Boston’s title run.

Listen to the “Celtics Lab” podcast on:

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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.

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.

On this day: Pierce, Jefferson, Allen, Bradley drafted; Jones born

On this day, the Boston Celtics drafted Paul Pierce, Al Jefferson, Tony Allen, and Avery Bradley; it is also the birthday of Celtics legend Sam Jones.

On this day in Boston Celtics history, the 1998 NBA draft was held in General Motors Place in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and in it, the Celtics took only one player of note. The Celtics selected forward Paul Pierce out of Kansas with the 10th overall pick of the draft, a team the Californian was no fan of as a youth.

Even casual fans know the legacy of “the Truth” — as he was dubbed by future teammate Shaquille O’Neal in 2001 — has had on the franchise. An instrumental part of the 2008 title that brought Boston its league-record 17th championship, the Oakland native racked up a finals MVP for that series as well.

Over the course of his career with the Celtics, Pierce amassed 10 All-Star and four All-NBA elections, All-Rookie First Team, election to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, and several other honors