Boston Is a City of Champions Again: The Growth Odyssey
“The energy is about to shift.”
There are no sports fans in the world who are more entitled than the ones from Boston. In the twenty-first century, Boston sports fans have experienced thirteen professional championships (six Super Bowls for the New England Patriots, four World Series for the Boston Red Sox, one Stanley Cup for the Boston Bruins, and now two NBA Finals titles for the Boston Celtics) and many, like myself, have never known a life without complete success and expectation.
Yet, if you look within the various factions of the Boston sports fanbase, you will notice marked discontent. Bruins fans jeered dispassionately after their hockey team was bounced from the postseason two years ago, following the greatest regular season in NHL history. Patriots fans happily joined Robert Kraft in chasing head coach Bill Belichick out of Foxborough after a few seasons of disappointment, following decades of the most success ever in the Super Bowl era. And Red Sox fans are calling for John Henry and his ownership group — the same triumvirate that ended the eighty-six year curse for the team and rescued Fenway Park from demolition — to sell the baseball team after not pushing for more free agents in the 2023 offseason.
To outsiders, how can these responses be described as anything but the greed-fueled tantrums of spoiled rotten fans? As with most things, nuance exists on the inside. Specifically, Red Sox fans are not upset with four World Series titles in twenty years (more than any other franchise during that span). Certainly not! They are upset that the ownership group seems to deliberately eschew loyalty and the “hometown” favorites who once defined the club.
Boston used to be the place where Tim Wakefield and Jason Varitek retired after never dreaming of pursuing opportunities elsewhere in free agency. It was the place that brought up Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis, Jacoby Ellsbury, Clay Buchholz, and more through the farm system. Yet, when the new era of these types of players started and was led by outfielder Mookie Betts, Boston refused to pay their new star and MVP player. They would spend a limitless amount of money on outside talent like Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval, but when it came to retaining their vastly superior hometown heroes, they were uninterested. They traded Betts for a borderline-criminal return. After pinning blame on managers like Alex Cora and Terry Francona. After running Don Orsillo out of the NESN broadcasting booth during the twilight of partner Jerry Remy’s career.
That is to say, it’s one thing to win championships and fade into a rebuild. It’s another to alienate the people who made Boston fans fall in love with the team in the first place.
So, yes, as of late, there has been a lot of discontent in Boston sports. The Patriots are now coached by Jerod Mayo. The Bruins’ championship window is closing rapidly. And the Red Sox are now led by Rafael Devers and Jarren Duran, two beloved players whom you can’t help but not want to get too close to yet — just in case.
However, if anyone is safe, it’s probably Devers, the left infielder chosen by Red Sox executives to retain, rather than shortstop Xander Bogaerts, when deal re-ups came due. As manager Cora explained when announcing Boston’s 2024 All-Star selections, Devers is the “face of the franchise,” now. But there was a time not so long ago when he was the ice cream-loving, overgrown toddler with an ungainly pace around the bases and a Plexiglas wall for a glove at third base. Yet, these are the exact qualities that make Devers so lovable.
It’s what made the Red Sox’s 2018 championship team so lovable, too. After 2013’s title-soaked, beard-laden veterans departed from Fenway Park, a new crop of young stars emerged for abbreviated postseason runs during 2016 and 2017. Upstarts like Betts, Bogaerts, Devers, and Andrew Benintendi now coexisted alongside veterans like Pedroia and David Ortiz. In this proverbial torch passing, I found myself becoming invested in the new crop of players and I loved them dearly. I wanted to see them win the title, just as Ortiz and Pedroia had done multiple times over. It’s almost as if, as I grew as a sports fan, I wanted to see these players win the World Series, rather than the Red Sox themselves; it mattered who actually played for Boston. I was not just affixed to the logo.
Watching that Red Sox team grow over multiple seasons and eventually get over the hump in dominant fashion in 2018 made the experience among my most fulfilling as a sports fan. Yes, I’d already seen three titles while fans of the Seattle Mariners have never even sniffed November, but I cared about Devers and Betts like they were my friends. I felt they deserved to hoist the same trophy the previous players I’d cared so deeply for had.
That’s the same experience I felt watching the team I’ve only briefly mentioned so far in this article, but is still the one in the headline: the 2023–24 Boston Celtics. This level of investment is exactly what I’ve seen with the Celtics over the past eight years, dating back to when the team drafted Jaylen Brown.
Put aside all the ring counting/measuring contests and the injury criticisms and the legacy comparisons, and just consider them as a team. You just grow with a team when you’re a sports fan and you want to see these players win, beyond a city or an arena or a uniform. And when you’re a kid, you’re kind of just born into an ongoing initiative. (Pedro Martinez, for example, was throwing unhittable changeups long before I was born.) But as you get older, you can watch an overarching plan from a team and a front office unfold over the course of years. What a journey it was to experience that with these newly minted championship Celtics.
The first Celtics title I was alive for was the 2007–08 team, led by Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, and Rajon Rondo. After five seasons, these veteran players had aged out of competitive relevance and the Celtics front office (at the time headed by Danny Ainge) recognized that the summer of 2013 was the time to move on from the era that netted them one title, even if it never fulfilled the promise of more (by just four points in 2010’s Finals game seven, mind you). Boston moved on from Garnett, Pierce, and two other players — as well as head coach Doc Rivers. In return, a smattering of role players traveled to New England, but the real focus was on the draft picks Boston earned from the Los Angeles Clippers and the Brooklyn Nets in the process.
With Butler upstart Brad Stevens as the new head coach, the Celtics cobbled together a rag tag roster of players like Marcus Smart, Avery Bradley, Jae Crowder, Isaiah Thomas, and Terry Rozier. Harnessing this nucleus, the Celtics never actually competed for a championship (not with the Golden State Warriors dynasty on the rise and LeBron James having his way with any reconstructed team in the Eastern Conference), but they moved out of the “tanking” era of their rebuild far quicker than anyone had anticipated, even earning a number one seed and blossoming Thomas into a true local hero along the way.
With Pierce and Garnett providing nearly nothing of substantive value to Brooklyn, the picks from the Nets ended up becoming high-ranking ones in the NBA Drafts (in 2017, the Lottery even earned Boston the number one pick, which they used to trade down to number three). In 2016, the pick turned into Jaylen Brown. In 2017, it turned into Jayson Tatum. At the same time, Ainge was a prolific executive in the front office, wooing Al Horford and Gordon Hayward to the team in consecutive offseasons (and, if rumors are to be believed, nearly securing Kevin Durant, too) before pulling the trigger on a massive trade to bring superstar point guard Kyrie Irving to the team, like he was the halved Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup atop the Friendly’s sundae that was the bolstered Boston team.
With a lineup of All-Star caliber players past, present, and future (Irving, Brown, Tatum, Hayward, Horford), the Celtics were totally geared up for a “championship or bust” mentality. On day one of the 2017–18 regular season, the basketball gods chose “bust,” as Hayward broke his ankle and was out for the remainder of the season. For a few seasons, the Celtics flirted with a deep playoff run, but Irving was never built to last in Boston (both mentally and physically) and LeBron’s juggernaut run was simply unstoppable. The dream lineup never materialized, but it did prove to be a beneficial learning experience for Brown and Tatum, who were now being eyed as the future of the Celtics with the Celtics brass all but driving Irving to Logan Airport following increasingly earlier exits from the playoffs.
To bridge the gap between the short-lived “Kyrie Era” of the Celtics and the team’s identity as led by “the Jays,” Boston brought Kemba Walker in as a much more chemistry-friendly fit for a team that was now largely comprised of “hope for the best” prospects with high ceilings and low floors, like Robert Williams III, Romeo Langford, and Grant Williams. Through it all, the Celtics’ developmental staff continued to nurture the gradual growth of Brown and Tatum, both of whom had flashed enough promise to encourage Ainge to invest in their futures with contracts that would have to be proven after they were signed.
Following a 2021 exit at the hands of a team that embraced Irving as one of its best options (the new-look Nets), the Celtics decided it was time to rejigger the executive side of the team, rather than the carousel of free agents (Tristan Thompson! Enes Kanter! Dennis Schroder! Horford’s here and then he’s not and then he is!) that had occupied the Boston Garden parquet. Ainge retired from his post (before eventually joining the Utah Jazz) and Stevens left the head coach role to assume the position instead. Now, Ime Udoka was to be the head coach of the Celtics. Feeling that Stevens’ strategies had gone as far as they could with this crew, Udoka sought to maximize the next level of the players’ potential. They all had it, but none were unlocking it yet.
However, after a stuttering start to the 2021–22 campaign, fingers were pointed in every direction. In Boston and in the media writ large, Udoka was labeled as unfit for a leadership role; Stevens was said to be unqualified for his professional clout and was coasting on a miracle Butler run in March Madness from almost a decade prior; Brown and Tatum were deemed incompatible players with one another and only one must be chosen as the face of the team.
Curiously, though, Jaylen Brown tweeted right before All-Star Weekend that “the energy [was] about to shift” in a Tim Tebow-esque promise. Ten days later, the Celtics moved on from a couple pick swaps, Langford, and Josh Richardson in exchange for the San Antonio Spurs’ defensive guard, Derrick White. With White blossoming into a player with potential beyond even what Stevens might have seen in him, the Celtics became the best team in the NBA for the entire second half of the season, en route to a trip to the 2022 Finals. With a core comprised of Tatum, Brown, White, Smart, and Horford, the Celtics hung tough with the Warriors, at the tail end of their own Stephen Curry-led dynasty, but ultimately fell in six games. The experience and the ache of it was enough to fuel the team to remember what it took to get to that stage and how painful it was to falter on it.
Udoka had gotten the best out of the players, as he vowed to do, but before he ever got the chance to push them to yet another tier of talent, he ruined his own chances by violating team policy by facilitating an inappropriate relationship with an anonymous woman in the Celtics organization. Rightfully, Udoka was ousted, but just days before the season tipped off, Boston was forced to promote a new coach, who lacked experience — as well as a plan and supporting cast of assistants of his own. This was the position for Joe Mazzulla, who was the interim head coach before he became the official head coach just five months later.
In spite of some shaky moments, the Celtics found themselves with ostensibly the same team in the 2023 Eastern Conference Finals against the eighth-seeded Miami Heat. Boston seemed destined for back-to-back Finals trips — until they went down three games to nothing against the red-hot Heat and couldn’t quite overcome the historical deficit (in spite of some heroics from White in game six). Now, the grand Celtics rebuild/experiment of the past decade had seemed to have run its course. They couldn’t win in the Finals and they couldn’t even overcome an inferior (on paper) Heat team. Disadvantages from coaching to clutch time seemed to plague Boston and any path forward felt incongruous for what could actually turn Boston into a team that could contend with the likes of the Denver Nuggets, the Milwaukee Bucks, and (apparently) the Dallas Mavericks.
As such, Stevens tore it down. Yes, Marcus Smart was the heart of the team, but he was holding Brown and Tatum back from what they could accomplish if the Celtics were theirs. Therefore, he was off to the Memphis Grizzlies and a selection of other players were set to become Washington Wizards in exchange for unicorn center Kristaps Porzingis, who could enable the Celtics to space the floor like never before. And, fortunately, when Damian Lillard decided his time as a Portland Trail Blazer was over, it led to the Bucks pulling the trigger on the all-time point guard. What could’ve been a juggernaut for the Celtics to reckon with in the East instead resulted in a domino effect that deposited Jrue Holiday (a defensive point guard with title experience and impeccable decision-making on the court) as a newly minted Celtic. Now, a lineup more formidable than 2017’s had emerged in the Garden. Brown, Tatum, Porzingis, White, Holiday, and Horford (off the bench) were ready for the 2023–24 campaign.
To go on that journey so deeply that I can recall it from memory will attach you to the ones who were there through it all. I remember sitting in the Longfellow museum parking lot as I tried to justify to myself how Kemba Walker was the missing piece the Celtics needed to go all the way. I convinced myself Hayward could come back to his peak form as a player. I forced my brain to accept that Daniel Theis was the answer against Nikola Jokic. But then to actually see the construction of a championship roster lead to the culmination of this historically great season and dominantly wobbly playoff run was just so euphoric. It was like watching an intricately plotted story wind its way to a deeply satisfying and worthwhile conclusion.
Brown’s buzzer-beating three against the Pacers. Porzingis’ massive first game against the Mavericks in the Finals when he was “doing it all.” Holiday picking the pockets of the world’s best players in the clutch. White’s ability to miss wide-open threes, but nail the off-kilter shots at the end of a shot clock. Sam Hauser regaining his speedy shooting form at the exact right moment. Sam Cassell, a member of the 2008 championship team, holding down the bench to coach the 2024 squad. Stevens believing in the two players whom the rebuild was always about from the beginning. Mazzulla forcing his players to watch The Town and it somehow paying off. Horford winning his first championship as an NBA player ever, almost twenty years after going back-to-back as a Florida Gator. Payton Pritchard entering games at the ends of quarters with everyone knowing he’s going to swish half-court buzzer beaters and then actually swish them. Tatum proving every single doubter wrong and becoming the best player on the court in every category, even when his shot isn’t falling. It was so rewarding to witness all of these elements coalesce together after years of stops and starts in a true GM-led effort to build a contending team.
And now, we can just sit back and rest and love that contending team, which is secured for the foreseeable future as either a potential dynasty or a one-off team that still got over the hump when so many others never could. It’s not just the euphoria of winning the championship that led to Jayson Tatum sobbing on the court while the confetti fell and he found his son. It’s that so much effort went into getting to that point in the first place. And the nucleus never wavered from the mission. It was always going to be Tatum and Brown together with their team or it was never going to be them hoisting the Larry O’Brien trophy at all. But after all this time and all the wheeling and dealing that went into the construction of the team that won it all for the Celtics’ eighteenth title, they are now champions forever. Another one for Boston! The journey was a grueling one, but it was one that reminded us of why we love sports and why we love our teams in the first place. And now, the journey is one to coast into the narratives with forever. The Boston Celtics are NBA champions.
