Boston Celtics

• 1. Introduction

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  The Boston Celtics were formed on the 6th of June 1946, by Walter A. Brown, the president of Boston Garden-Arena Corporation. They were one of the Basketball Association of America's original eight teams. What few people expected, in that first year of professional basketball, was that this franchise would go on to win more championships than any other team in NBA history. Eighteen titles. More regular-season wins than any other franchise. Forty-nine members of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame connected to the organization. How did a team from Boston build a dynasty so dominant it has never been matched? The answer runs through a single trade in 1956, a rookie named Bill Russell, and a coach who was willing to promise the Ice Capades to a rival city just to get his man.

• 2. Red Auerbach's Gambles

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  Red Auerbach had no assistants in the franchise's early days. He ran all the practices, did all the scouting, and scheduled every road trip himself. His relationship with point guard Bob Cousy began with rejection: Auerbach refused to draft Cousy out of nearby Holy Cross because he considered him too flashy. Cousy's contract wound up with the Chicago Stags, and when that franchise went bankrupt, the dispersal draft landed him in Boston anyway. Fate and frugality conspired to give Auerbach one of the game's first great playmakers.

  The bigger gamble came after the 1955-56 season. Auerbach sent perennial All-Star Ed Macauley and the draft rights to Cliff Hagan to the St. Louis Hawks for the second overall pick in the draft. He then negotiated with the Rochester Royals, reportedly offering to send the highly sought-after Ice Capades to Rochester in exchange for letting Bill Russell slide to that second slot. The maneuver worked. Auerbach selected the University of San Francisco center, and the architecture of the greatest dynasty in American professional sports was in place. He also acquired Tom Heinsohn, the 1957 NBA Rookie of the Year out of Holy Cross, who became the third pillar alongside Russell and Cousy. The Celtics won their first championship in 1957, defeating the St. Louis Hawks in seven games.

• 3. Eight in a Row

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  Following the acquisition of K.C. Jones in 1958, the Celtics embarked on a run that has no parallel in American professional sports: eight consecutive NBA championships from 1959 to 1966. The streak opened with a sweep of the Minneapolis Lakers in 1959. During those years, the Celtics met the Lakers in the Finals five times, planting the roots of a rivalry that would define the league for generations.

  The supporting cast around Russell reads like a Hall of Fame ballot. Heinsohn, Don Nelson, K.C. Jones, Sam Jones, John Havlicek, Satch Sanders, and Bill Sharman all contributed to those championship squads. On the 26th of December 1964, the Celtics became the first NBA team to field an all African-American starting lineup when Willie Naulls replaced an injured Heinsohn alongside Sanders, K.C. Jones, Sam Jones, and Russell. Boston won that game against St. Louis 97-84 and then won its next 11 games with Naulls starting.

  Auerbach retired as head coach after the 1965-66 season. His replacement was Russell himself, a move Auerbach later acknowledged was partly designed to keep his star center engaged. With that appointment Russell became the first African-American head coach in any United States professional sport. The dynasty stumbled once in 1967, losing to the Philadelphia 76ers in the Eastern Division finals, but the aging roster produced two more championships in 1968 and 1969, both against the Lakers. When Russell retired after the 1969 season, the Celtics had won 11 titles in 13 seasons.

• 4. Tragedy and the Big Threes

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  The Celtics assembled a second dynasty in the 1980s around a new Big Three: Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, and Robert Parish. Auerbach acquired Bird by spending the sixth overall pick in the 1978 draft on the Indiana State junior, knowing Bird would stay in college for his senior year. The team retained his rights and signed him after Bird led Indiana State to the NCAA championship game. Auerbach then sent two first-round picks to the Golden State Warriors for both Parish and the Warriors' first-round pick, which he used to select McHale. The trio played together until 1992, won three championships in 1981, 1984, and 1986, and were later described as the best NBA frontcourt of all time.

  The 1986 championship was the pinnacle. But the Celtics also held the second pick in the 1986 draft and selected University of Maryland star Len Bias. Bias died 36 hours after being drafted from an accidental cocaine overdose. The franchise never fully recovered in that era. Star Reggie Lewis, a 26-year-old small forward from Northeastern University, fainted during the 1993 playoffs, was cleared by doctors to return, and then died of a heart attack while shooting baskets at Brandeis University during the offseason. The Celtics retired his number 35. McHale retired after the 1993 playoffs. Robert Parish signed with Charlotte in 1994. The original Big Three era ended not in triumph but in grief.

  A third era of contention began in 2007 when general manager Danny Ainge traded for Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett to form a new Big Three around team captain Paul Pierce. Under coach Doc Rivers, the 2007-08 Celtics completed the largest single-season turnaround in NBA history, going from 24 wins to 66. They won their 17th championship in 2008, defeating the Lakers in six games. Pierce was named Finals MVP.

• 5. The Jays and Championship 18

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  With two first-round picks acquired in the 2013 trade that sent Garnett and Pierce to the Brooklyn Nets, the Celtics drafted Jaylen Brown in 2016 and Jayson Tatum in 2017. The foundation for what became known as the Jays era was built on the patience required by that four-pick haul from Brooklyn.

  After losing to the Golden State Warriors in the 2022 Finals and the Miami Heat in the 2023 conference finals, the Celtics retooled again, acquiring Kristaps Porziņģis from Washington and Jrue Holiday in separate deals before the 2023-24 season. The team finished that regular season with the best record in the NBA at 64-18. In the 2024 playoffs the Celtics swept through the Heat in the first round, defeated the Cavaliers, and then beat the Indiana Pacers in the conference finals on the 27th of May 2024, when Brown was named Eastern Conference finals MVP and received the Larry Bird trophy for the first time in his career. The Celtics then defeated the Dallas Mavericks in five games to win their 18th NBA championship, breaking the tie with the Lakers. Tatum and Brown had become the first duo since Russell and the supporting cast of the 1960s to carry Boston to a title built through the draft rather than free agency.

  In May 2025, private equity investor William Chisholm purchased the franchise for $6.1 billion, at the time the highest-valued transaction for a sports franchise in North American history.

• 6. The Lakers Rivalry

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  No rivalry in professional basketball has produced more championship meetings than the one between Boston and Los Angeles. The two franchises have met a record twelve times in the NBA Finals. The Celtics won the first eight of those meetings. The Lakers won three of the last four.

  Together the two franchises hold 35 of the 78 championships in NBA history, nearly half the total. The Celtics lead the all-time regular-season series 212 wins to 166, making them the only franchise in the NBA with a winning record against the Lakers. The rivalry burned most intensely in the 1960s, when the teams met six times in the Finals, and again in the 1980s when Bird's Celtics and Magic Johnson's Showtime Lakers met three times. The 1985 Finals marked the first time the Lakers defeated the Celtics in a championship series and the only time a team won a title on the floor of Boston Garden. After a long dormancy following the retirements of Bird and Johnson in the early 1990s, the rivalry was renewed in 2008 when the two teams met in the Finals for the first time since 1987, with Boston winning in six. The Lakers won their rematch in 2010 in seven games. Doc Rivers, who coached the 2008 championship team, was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a coach in 2026.