In 1946, Boston hardly seemed like a city where basketball's most successful franchise would take root and grow. It was a hockey town, and original Celtics owner Walter Brown knew almost nothing about basketball. Still, as head of the Boston Garden-Arena Corporation, he jumped at the chance to own part of the new club. The Boston Celtics Basketball Vault: The History of a Proud Franchise recounts that humble beginning and details how the team rose from mediocrity to become arguably America's most successful sports franchise. Author Roland Lazenby includes tales about such celebrated Hall of Famers as Bob Cousy, John Havlic, Tom Heinsohn, Bailey Howell, Dave Cowens, Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish. Fans will also discover vintage photographs, artwork and memorabilia drawn from the Boston Celtics' archives, including rereproductions of old game programs, historic tickets, stickers and other amazing replicas tucked into dozens of pockets.
Sports Illustrated, the most respected voice in sports journalism, has covered the NBA for the much of its existence, documenting its expansion from fledgeling league to global force. Curated by editor and bestselling author Chris Ballard, this anthology features the best hoops writing from the SI archives along with new postscripts from nationally renowned basketball journalists including Jackie McMullan, Jack McCallum, Jeff Pearlman, S.L. Price, Lee Jenkins, Frank Deford, and more.
Celebrate the championship glory, Hall of Fame personalities, and passionate fans that make the Boston Celtics one of the most revered teams in basketball Sports Illustrated™ celebrates basketball greatness with The Boston Celtics at 75, an extraordinary collection of classic stories and photographs from the pages of SI. This commemorative book salutes hall of famers like Bill Russell, Larry Bird, Bob Cousy, Paul Pierce, and coach Red Auerbach. Fans will unearth countless gems from the Celtics' past on each page of this diamond celebration.
Examines the sports dynasty whose spectacular successes on the court have often been overshadowed by a marketing strategy that plays to America's latent racism
New York Times Bestseller "On the subject of his love of Red Auerbach and his Celtic teammates, Russell is loud and clear. He might object to my use of the word 'love,' but deny it though you will, Mr. Russell, that's what sits at the heart of this beautiful book." — Bill Bradley, New York Times Book Review In Red and Me, Boston Celtics basketball legend Bill Russell pays homage to his mentor and coach, the inimitable Red Auerbach. A poignant remembrance of a life-altering relationship in the tradition of Big Russ and Me and Tuesdays With Morrie, Red and Me tells an unforgettable story of one unlikely and enduring friendship set against the backdrop of the greatest basketball dynasty in NBA history. Red Auerbach was one of the greatest basketball coaches in sports history. Bill Russell was the star center and five-time MVP for Auerbach's Celtics, and together they won eleven championships in thirteen years. But Auerbach and Russell were far more than just coach and player. A short, brash Jew from Brooklyn and a tall, intense African-American from Louisiana and Oakland, the men formed a friendship that evolved into a rare, telling example of deep male camaraderie even as their feelings remained largely unspoken. Red and Me is an extraordinary book: an homage to a peerless coach, which shows how he produced results unlike any other, and an inspiring story of mutual success, in which each man gave his all and gained back even more. Above all, it may be the most honest and heartfelt depiction of male friendship ever captured in print.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The NBA according to The Sports Guy—now updated with fresh takes on LeBron, the Celtics, and more! Foreword by Malcom Gladwell • “The work of a true fan . . . it might just represent the next phase of sports commentary.”—The Atlantic Bill Simmons, the wildly opinionated and thoroughly entertaining basketball addict known to millions as ESPN’s The Sports Guy, has written the definitive book on the past, present, and future of the NBA. From the age-old question of who actually won the rivalry between Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain to the one about which team was truly the best of all time, Simmons opens—and then closes, once and for all—every major pro basketball debate. Then he takes it further by completely reevaluating not only how NBA Hall of Fame inductees should be chosen but how the institution must be reshaped from the ground up, the result being the Pyramid: Simmons’s one-of-a-kind five-level shrine to the ninety-six greatest players in the history of pro basketball. And ultimately he takes fans to the heart of it all, as he uses a conversation with one NBA great to uncover that coveted thing: The Secret of Basketball. Comprehensive, authoritative, controversial, hilarious, and impossible to put down (even for Celtic-haters), The Book of Basketball offers every hardwood fan a courtside seat beside the game’s finest, funniest, and fiercest chronicler.
This is the ultimate insider's look at the personalities of the players and coaches who contributed to Celtics Pride. The late Johnny Most describes in vivid detail his firsthand accounts of the greatest Celtics moments in history! A referee once said that Johnny Most could cause a riot at a High Mass with his emotional, pro-Celtic descriptions. He turned shoving matches into bloodbaths and minor fouls into vicious muggings. As Danny Ainge, Boston's recently appointed director of basketball operations commented, I always believed we had thirteen guys on the active roster-twelve wore uniforms--and the thirteenth, Johnny Most, was the voice of the celtics!
"Herein, we bring you to sites that have been central to the lives of 'the people' of Greater Boston over four centuries. You'll visit sites associated with the area's indigenous inhabitants and with the individuals and movements who sought to abolish slavery, to end war, challenge militarism, and bring about a more peaceful world, to achieve racial equity, gender justice, and sexual liberation, and to secure the rights of workers. We take you to some well-known sites, but more often to ones far off the well-beaten path of the Freedom Trail, to places in Boston's outlying neighborhoods. We also visit sites in numerous other municipalities that make up the Greater Boston region-from places such as Lawrence, Lowell and Lynn to Concord and Plymouth. The sites to which we do 'travel' include homes given that people's struggles, activism, and organizing sometimes unfold, or are even birthed in many cases in living rooms and kitchens. Trying to capture a place as diverse and dynamic as Boston is highly challenging. (One could say that about any 'big' place.) We thus want to make clear that our goal is not to be comprehensive, or to 'do justice' to the region. Given the constraints of space and time as well as the limitations of knowledge--both our own and what is available in published form--there are many important sites, cities, and towns that we have not included. Thus, in exploring scores of sites across Boston and numerous municipalities, our modest goal is to paint a suggestive portrait of the greater urban area that highlights its long-contested nature. In many ways, we merely scratch the region's surface--or many surfaces--given the multiple layers that any one place embodies. In writing about Greater Boston as a place, we run the risk of suggesting that the city writ-large has some sort of essence. Indeed, the very notion of a particular place assumes intrinsic characteristics and an associated delimited space. After all, how can one distinguish one place from another if it has no uniqueness and is not geographically differentiated? Nonetheless, geographer Doreen Massey insists that we conceive of places as progressive, as flowing over the boundaries of any particular space, time, or society; in other words, we should see places as processual or ever-changing, as unbounded in that they shape and are shaped by other places and forces from without, and as having multiple identities. In exploring Greater Boston from many venues over 400 years, we embrace this approach. That said, we have to reconcile this with the need to delimit Greater Boston--for among other reasons, simply to be in a position to name it and thus distinguish it from elsewhere"--
Bingo!: Reflections On Over 40 Years in the NBA is the autobiography of legendary Los Angeles Clippers and sports broadcaster Ralph Lawler. The book covers Lawler's extraordinary life and career, from his childhood in Peoria, Illinois; through his time at Bradley University; to the beginning of his sports announcing career at the Riverside International Raceway; his years spent in Philadelphia with the Flyers, Phillies, and 76ers; his years in San Diego with the Conquistadors and the Chargers; and culminating in his 40-year career with the Clippers. Along the way, basketball and the NBA is the focus of the book, with Lawler's observations and stories about players, coaches, and teams from the 1940s through his retirement at the close of the 2019 season forming the core of the book. Included among the myriad stories and reflections will be his relationships with NBA legend Bill Walton, infamous Clippers owner Donald Sterling, Clippers GM and NBA great Elgin Baylor, and a variety of famous players and coaches from throughout the NBA. As Lawler used to famously say from behind the microphone, "Fasten your seatbelts!" Bingo! is a fun-filled journey through professional basketball, with plenty of "Oh me, Oh my!" moments, and the definitive answer to the burning question all NBA fans want to know: Is there any truth to "Lawler's Law"?
