By: Michael D. McClellan | Red Auerbach has a decision to make. It’s the spring of ’69, and the architect of the Celtics’ championship run faces a post-Russell rebuild, a dreaded day thirteen years in the making. The heavy lifting starts with the first selection in the 1969 NBA Draft. Get it right, and the rebuild […]

By: Michael D. McClellan |  He was on the court for less than two minutes in the third overtime of The Greatest Game Ever Played, and yet Glenn McDonald’s contributions loomed extraordinarily large on that day, as he and his Boston Celtic teammates pursued a league-record 13th NBA Championship.  Who knows what may have happened had […]

Written By:  Michael D. McClellan | Red Auerbach is only weeks removed from his 85th birthday, and the cigar-smoking patriarch of the Boston Celtics is as sharp—in mind and tongue—as ever. He answers the telephone, listening silently in a way that reminds me of Marlon Brando’s character in The Godfather, a comparison that doesn’t seem far from the truth. […]

By: Michael D. McClellan | The man known as “Cornbread” arrives as the Celtics bottom out, the organization’s future as cloudy as a room filled with Red Auerbach’s cigar smoke. After decades of acquiring talented, high-character players who put the team’s goals ahead of their own, Boston is suddenly a breeding ground for malcontents and me-first […]

By: Michael D. McClellan |  I knew that Paul Westphal was special long before I ever had the pleasure of speaking with him about his basketball successes, of which there are many.  The year was 1989, and I caught a television news report that the Phoenix Suns were going to retire Westphal’s jersey to their […]

By:  Michael D. McClellan | The coolest cat on the Celtics’ roster is a bad-ass with a hot head and a childhood history of causing trouble. He grows up in Harlem, and is five years old when the infamous Harlem Race Riot of 1943 occurs, in which police are attacked, stores are vandalized and looted, […]