Nice read..
By Harvey Araton
June 8, 2022, 12:01 a.m. ET NYT
When Bill Walton revived and concluded his N.B.A. career with the Boston Celtics, he devised a plan on game nights to beat the city’s notoriously gridlocked traffic: He rode the subway to work.
Picture a towering, unmistakable redhead, 6-foot-11, boarding the T, as it is known in Boston, at the Harvard station. Walton lived nearby during the Celtics’ 1985-86 championship season, and in 1986-87, when they lost in the N.B.A. finals to the Los Angeles Lakers.
“Red Line to the Green Line to the old Garden,” he said. “And with a packed car of crazed fans banging on the walls and ceiling, rocking the car, chanting, ‘Here we go Celtics, here we go!’ ”
In a recent telephone interview, Walton added that after six injury-plagued years with the dysfunctional and Donald Sterling-owned Clippers of San Diego and Los Angeles, those rides were neither scary nor a culture shock for a West Coast native.
“It was heaven,” he said.
The old Boston Garden was replaced in 1995 by what is known now as TD Garden. But the bustling North Station commuter hub remains, reached by the T’s trolley cars clanging through tunnels old enough for archaeological digs.
So, too, exists the famed parquet playing floor, with a few holdover pieces from the original Garden: the now 23 retired jersey banners, a fair number of ruddy face ushers with Southie accents, and ticket scalpers hiding in plain sight out on Causeway Street.
“The new place doesn’t have the sightlines and overhang from the second tier, where we called the games from and had, in some ways, a better view than courtside,” said Marv Albert, the Hall of Fame broadcaster whose radio debut — Knicks at Celtics, Jan. 27, 1963 — was in Boston, subbing for Marty Glickman, at age 21.
He added: “The TD Garden is not a very glamorous arena, like what the Warriors built in San Francisco. And with the surrounding area and the Celtics’ history, there is still an old-time feel to it.”
To that end, when the N.B.A. finals return to Boston for the first time since 2010 — with the aforementioned Golden State Warriors hitting town for Game 3 Wednesday night — it will be the league’s version of strolling the somewhat gentrified but still old neighborhood, making the nostalgic rounds of where it grew up.
It wasn’t until years after the Bill Russell-era Celtics won 11 titles from 1957 through 1969 that professional basketball became a hot ticket in Boston, or anywhere in the United States, much less a sexy global sell. But it was largely at North Station, that nexus of unwieldy urban design, that the N.B.A. progressed from crawl to walk.
It has been a rough few years, the losses of the Retired Number Celtics painful and profound for those who remain from Boston’s unmatchable dynastic period. John Havlicek, No. 17, died in 2019; K.C. Jones (25), and Tom Heinsohn (15) passed in 2020; Sam Jones(24) in 2021; Jo Jo White (10), a 1970s star on two title teams, in 2018.
Still, Dan Shaughnessy, the venerable Boston Globe columnist, checked in recently with Bob Cousy (No. 14), who told him, “To have this happen at the age of 93 is really a special moment.” He meant the Celtics’ 22nd championship series, of which they’ve won 17, deadlocked with the Lakers franchise that originated in Minneapolis.
No awe-struck neophyte, Shaughnessy was nonetheless moved by the trophy presentations after the Celtics’ narrow escape from Miami in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals. There was Cedric Maxwell, a Celtics broadcaster and retired No. 31, handing the conference championship trophy, named for Cousy, to the veteran forward Al Horford. Then, Maxwell passed the new conference most valuable player trophy, named for Larry Bird, over to the Celtics’ ascendant star, Jayson Tatum.
“Where else do you get that?” Shaughnessy said before answering his question. “The Yankees in baseball.”
These Are Not Larry Bird’s Celtics. And That’s Just Fine.
Trips down memory lane have grown harder as Celtics greats pass away. But the new generation is carving a memorable path of its own.By Harvey Araton
June 8, 2022, 12:01 a.m. ET NYT
When Bill Walton revived and concluded his N.B.A. career with the Boston Celtics, he devised a plan on game nights to beat the city’s notoriously gridlocked traffic: He rode the subway to work.
Picture a towering, unmistakable redhead, 6-foot-11, boarding the T, as it is known in Boston, at the Harvard station. Walton lived nearby during the Celtics’ 1985-86 championship season, and in 1986-87, when they lost in the N.B.A. finals to the Los Angeles Lakers.
“Red Line to the Green Line to the old Garden,” he said. “And with a packed car of crazed fans banging on the walls and ceiling, rocking the car, chanting, ‘Here we go Celtics, here we go!’ ”
In a recent telephone interview, Walton added that after six injury-plagued years with the dysfunctional and Donald Sterling-owned Clippers of San Diego and Los Angeles, those rides were neither scary nor a culture shock for a West Coast native.
“It was heaven,” he said.
The old Boston Garden was replaced in 1995 by what is known now as TD Garden. But the bustling North Station commuter hub remains, reached by the T’s trolley cars clanging through tunnels old enough for archaeological digs.
So, too, exists the famed parquet playing floor, with a few holdover pieces from the original Garden: the now 23 retired jersey banners, a fair number of ruddy face ushers with Southie accents, and ticket scalpers hiding in plain sight out on Causeway Street.
“The new place doesn’t have the sightlines and overhang from the second tier, where we called the games from and had, in some ways, a better view than courtside,” said Marv Albert, the Hall of Fame broadcaster whose radio debut — Knicks at Celtics, Jan. 27, 1963 — was in Boston, subbing for Marty Glickman, at age 21.
He added: “The TD Garden is not a very glamorous arena, like what the Warriors built in San Francisco. And with the surrounding area and the Celtics’ history, there is still an old-time feel to it.”
To that end, when the N.B.A. finals return to Boston for the first time since 2010 — with the aforementioned Golden State Warriors hitting town for Game 3 Wednesday night — it will be the league’s version of strolling the somewhat gentrified but still old neighborhood, making the nostalgic rounds of where it grew up.
It wasn’t until years after the Bill Russell-era Celtics won 11 titles from 1957 through 1969 that professional basketball became a hot ticket in Boston, or anywhere in the United States, much less a sexy global sell. But it was largely at North Station, that nexus of unwieldy urban design, that the N.B.A. progressed from crawl to walk.
It has been a rough few years, the losses of the Retired Number Celtics painful and profound for those who remain from Boston’s unmatchable dynastic period. John Havlicek, No. 17, died in 2019; K.C. Jones (25), and Tom Heinsohn (15) passed in 2020; Sam Jones(24) in 2021; Jo Jo White (10), a 1970s star on two title teams, in 2018.
Still, Dan Shaughnessy, the venerable Boston Globe columnist, checked in recently with Bob Cousy (No. 14), who told him, “To have this happen at the age of 93 is really a special moment.” He meant the Celtics’ 22nd championship series, of which they’ve won 17, deadlocked with the Lakers franchise that originated in Minneapolis.
No awe-struck neophyte, Shaughnessy was nonetheless moved by the trophy presentations after the Celtics’ narrow escape from Miami in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals. There was Cedric Maxwell, a Celtics broadcaster and retired No. 31, handing the conference championship trophy, named for Cousy, to the veteran forward Al Horford. Then, Maxwell passed the new conference most valuable player trophy, named for Larry Bird, over to the Celtics’ ascendant star, Jayson Tatum.
“Where else do you get that?” Shaughnessy said before answering his question. “The Yankees in baseball.”
