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It’s History Month at CelticsBlog, celebrating all 18 banners hanging in the rafters. Today we look back at the team to bring the water back to the Garden, the utterly dominant yet humanely vulnerable 2008 Boston Celtics.
NBA history spans 80 seasons, and as CelticsBlog readers well know, the Boston Celtics have won a league-high 18 championships. This month, we are recapping each of those title years.
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Five Olympics, five World Cups, 8,000 sleepless nights. A lot can happen in 22 years. For many a Celtics fan, the gap between 1986 and 2008 felt like an eternity. A franchise so renowned for its pedigree, with a fanbase so addicted to victory, had been starved of it for over two decades. It seemed that Bostonians, local and spiritual, had spent all their basketball capital to watch the most beautiful basketball ever put to the hardwood in 1986; what awaited was tragedy, disappointment and the feeling that Lucky the Leprechaun was never to witness the Green lifting the gold at the end of the rainbow again.
In 2007, spectators at TD Garden were subjected to the second-worst season in the history of the franchise at 24-58, all in the hopes of landing a top-two pick in the draft. Boston had been rescued by an ascendant rookie talent 28 years prior. Wyc Grousbeck, Paul Pierce, and anyone else who bled green hoped that one of Kevin Durant or Greg Oden would don the shamrocks to do the same once more.
It wasn’t to be.
Despite having the second-best odds at the number one pick, the Celtics slipped to fifth when the lottery balls fell as they did. It seemed purgatory wasn’t ready to let go of the Celtics just yet. Danny Ainge, former Celtics player and now GM, had to take matters into his own hands.
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Assembling the Big Three:
June 28th, 2007. Draft Night.
“And with the 5th pick, in the 2007 NBA Draft, the Boston Celtics select… Jeff Green, from Georgetown University!” And immediately traded both him and Wally Szczerbiak to the Seattle SuperSonics for Ray Allen and Glen Davis.
LOS ANGELES, CA – JUNE 12: Assistant coach Tom Thibodeau and Ray Allen #20 of the Boston Celtics against the Los Angeles Lakers in…
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Publish date : 2026-08-25 10:00:00
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