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46 PTS 9 REB 7-15 3P Tatum is one of seven players in @Boston Celtics history to score at least 45 points in a playoff game, and he and Sam Jones are the only ones to do so twice. pic.twitter.com/upv2fB5JLBOn 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.
The league invoked important Black players drawn from league history in their choice of names for the awards.
The NBA announced on Monday six new awards to be presented to the teams which win each of the league’s six divisions (Atlantic, Central, Southeast, Southwest Northwest, Pacific) that will be named after pioneering Black players drawn from the 75 years of history they played in the league, several of which are to be named for Boston Celtics alumni.
In addition to those named for players that never suited up for the Celtics — the Atlantic Division’s ‘Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton Trophy,’ the Southeast Division’s ‘Earl Lloyd Trophy,’ and the Southwest Division’s ‘Willis Reed Trophy’ — there will be a total of three more named for players who donned the green and white for at least some of their careers.
That includes the Central Division’s ‘Wayne Embry Trophy,’ the Northwest Division’s ‘Sam Jones Trophy,’ and the Pacific Division’s ‘Chuck Cooper Trophy.’
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.
These are the 10 Celtics who played the most seasons with Boston.
It is increasingly rare for a player to spend a significant portion of their career with one team never mind the bulk or even all of it in the modern NBA, but throughout the course of NBA history, few teams have done a better job at retaining their stars than the Boston Celtics.
In an era where their institutional coherence was in itself an advantage over many teams in the league, a host of Celtics lifers spent all of (or very nearly so) their careers in green and white — and given they were racking up titles at an unprecedented rate in the 1960s onward, it is understandable why they were loathe to leave.
But who were the Celtics who played the most seasons with the franchise across its storied history? Let’s take a look at the players who were part of the team for the most seasons below.
Celtics nabbed the sixth-best player ever dealt at the NBA trade deadline in HoopsHype analysis https://t.co/B7prnOZxkb
— The Celtics Wire (@TheCelticsWire) February 6, 2022
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.
This is every player in Boston’s history who wore the Celtics’ No. 27 jersey for at least one game. https://t.co/UUXNHdXYGT
— The Celtics Wire (@TheCelticsWire) February 2, 2022
The Boston Celtics have announced the first of three waves of its All-Celtics team, including five of the best players in franchise history.
The Boston Celtics have announced the first wave of five players in its 75th Anniversary All-Celtics team. This team will feature basketball legends and some of the best players to ever wear the Celtics green. These are going to be players who have been a part of the team’s 17 total championships, who have established league records, are fixtures within Celtics lore and have their jerseys in the rafters at TD Garden.
There will be another group of five announced on Jan. 31 and a final group on Feb. 3, to be released on a special broadcast. In total, the three groupings will name 15 total players to the All-Celtics team, announced in no particular order. The All-Celtics team has been selected through a voting process consisting of a large-scale fan vote and a voting panel made up of media and team historians, according to the team.
Here are the first five players announced.
Can you name the other six?
Only a very small group of Boston Celtics have ever had the luck to score 50 points in a game, and in a game against the Orlando Magic at TD Garden on the second day of 2022, All-Star small forward Jaylen Brown joined that elite club of Celtics icons with a 50-point night that helped secure the win for Boston.
The list is a short one, with just seven players total on it counting the Georgia native, and one of his teammates happens to be one of two Celtics to ever do it more than once. But now Brown can compete to tie said teammate in that regard or perhaps even pass him.
But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s take a look at the list of players who have dropped a 50-piece in green and white.
Some of the best plays captured in images from Jaylen Brown’s career night. https://t.co/0hZfWc2LrJ
— The Celtics Wire (@TheCelticsWire) January 3, 2022
Our friends at CLNS Media put together this excellent tribute to the fallen Celtics icon.
Only one other human being in the history of the NBA has won more titles than Sam Jones did, and that was his former teammate and fellow Boston Celtics lifer Bill Russell. Now, Russell is the only member left of the Celtics’ golden age after Jones left us on the final day of 2021, leaving a legacy behind that has only been paralleled by Russell in the annals of North American pro sports history.
With 10 titles, 5 All-Star appearances, 3 All-NBA team selections, and a spot on the NBA’s 25th, 50th, and 75th-anniversary teams capped off with a retired No. 24 jersey and an induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, Jones was one of the giants of the game, and often a criminally underrated one at that.
Mr. Clutch — as the North Carolina native was often called as a nickname — was an instrumental part of the Celtics’ most decorated era of title dominance, and a beloved part of the wider Boston sports pantheon.
He will be dearly missed. Rest In Peace, Sam Jones — our thoughts are with those your life touched.
This post originally appeared on Celtics Wire. Follow us on Facebook!
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