I was born and raised in Boston during a very volatile time in it’s history. Back when I was a kid the city was still experiencing fallout from the numerous uprisings in the 60’s and the era of forced busing in an effort to desegregate the schools beginning in 1974.

The end results were mass school closings, White flight from the Boston Public School system and even more volatility between an already segregated Boston spilling out into the streets. By the time the entire busing experiment ended in Boston it was 1988 and White students only comprised about 15% of the Boston Public Schools total enrollment.

The racial climate of the city was completely different back then. As a kid living in the mostly Black, Latino & Asian populated South End of Boston I was slightly more than 2 miles away from Fenway Park and Boston Garden but I never even thought about going to either place though I loved the Celtics and Red Sox. I was more than happy to catch the games on television and watch in the comfort of my home with family and friends.

We’d turn to the Celtics game on TV then we’d promptly turn the sound down. Next, you’d turn on the radio to WHDH (now WEEI) to hear Johnny Most call the game. Johnny Most was the biggest homer you could ever imagine but he was brilliant at describing the action on the court. He bled green and you could feel that he was genuinely hurt when the Celtics lost big games.

The Celtics teams of the 80’s were first coached by Bill Fitch, a no nonsense guy. That first team was comprised of the young forwards Larry Bird and Cedric Maxwell, veteran guards Tiny Archibald and Chris Ford and Robert Parish at center.

Robert “The Chief” Parish was a big man in the mold of Bill Russell who did whatever was necessary to win the game. Biggest difference between the stoic Parish and Russell being he was a great shooter in addition to having an unblockable rainbow jumper and a deadly baseline spin move. The team’s sixth man was rookie Kevin McHale.

Gerald Henderson, M.L. Carr and Rick Robey were all key support players during the team’s first championship season. Three of the five starters were Black and five of the nine players in the regular rotation were Black. No one ever mentions these facts when they discuss those Celtics teams of the 80’s.

The next time the Celtics won the championship they’d ousted Bill Fitch and hired K.C. Jones to coach the squad. K.C. was a former player and a Hall Of Fame point guard that specialized in defense, passing and pushing the ball. K.C. Jones was a college and NBA teammate of Bill Russell’s. Neither of them could shoot worth a damn but for some odd reason all they did was win at University Of San Francisco and with the Celtics.

K.C. Jones got the Celtics back to playing the brand of basketball they were accustomed to but he also loosened the reins. Bill Fitch was a dictator that ruled with an iron hand whereas K.C. remembered what it was like to be a player and he understood that he had a veteran team. He focused on what needed improvement and knew when to push buttons and when to back off.

Many supposed basketball experts also neglect to mention that at the time (1984) K.C. Jones had become the team’s third Black head coach. What other NBA team in the 80’s was on it’s third Black head coach? Doc Rivers is currently the Celtics sixth Black head coach (out of 16) and the third one to win an NBA championship, far ahead of any other NBA franchise. Suck on that fact, Spike!

The 1984 championship squad had Bird and Maxwell at the forward positions but the new point guard was Dennis Jonson who they acquired from the Phoenix Suns while Gerald Henderson was inserted at shooting guard. Robert Parish remained the center and Kevin McHale stayed the sixth man. Danny Ainge, Scott Wedman, Quinn Buckner & M.L. Carr were the full ten man rotation.

That meant that four out of five starters were Black (with the exception of Bird) and six out of the ten players in the rotation were Black (don’t forget that their coach was Black as well). That being the case why do people think the Celtics were a mostly White team throughout the 80’s? I watched the games. I lived here. A documentary made by someone not from Boston can’t tell me shit about my squad. These are the kind of facts I wouldn’t allow Spike Lee to gloss over.

In 1986, Kevin McHale and Danny Ainge entered the starting lineup along with Larry Bird. Dennis Johnson remained at point guard and Robert Parish was still the center. The big difference was that Bill Walton was now the sixth man. He spelled both Kevin McHale and Robert Parish at power forward and center. The ten man rotation only featured four Black players (Sam Vincent & David Thirdkill were rarely used).

Since the 1986 team was considered one of the greatest in NBA history, I guess this incarnation of the Celtics completely overshadowed the previous two championship squads of the 80’s? Even odder was this team faced the Houston Rockets twice in the 80’s (1981 & 1986) and won titles. They faced the Lakers three times in the 80’s (1984, 1985 & 1987) and only won once (1984).

To recap, the Celtics did beat the Lakers in 1984, lost against them in 1985 (when they had a roster of 13 players, 7 of which were Black) and lost again in 1987 (Only 5 of the 15 players on the Celtics roster were Black that season). That being the case, why is it everyone has the image that the Celtics were a team full of White guys? I think I know why.

The NBA playing up Larry Bird & Kevin McHale as being the best forward tandem in the NBA (they were both MVP candidates during the mid to late 80’s) had a great deal to do with it. The propaganda they allowed to spread was that the Celtics roster represented the actual racial makeup of Boston (even though the city itself was teeming with Blacks, Latinos & Asians). We knew different. The rest of the country? Not so much.

Meanwhile, the prevailing attitude was that the Lakers stood for everything Los Angeles (though in reality only about 10% of L.A.’s population was Black whereas Boston’s Black population was 25%). Ironically, neither the Celtics or the Lakers roster came close to reflecting the populations of the actual cities they represented.

Even more ironic was that the Los Angeles Lakers played basketball in the exact same fashion that the great Celtics teams of the 60’s did. The Celtics had simply become too old and had too many injuries to effectively play uptempo basketball anymore. They eventually were surpassed by teams such as the Cleveland Cavaliers, Chicago Bulls and Detroit Pistons in the late 80’s and early 90’s.

The 80’s Celtics rarely played rookies, played a fundamental style of basketball devoid of any flash or excitement and the city’s reputation as being racist coupled with the image they were given by partly the NBA and it’s broadcast affiliates kept them from landing any major Black free agents. After the death of Len Bias in 1986, the team was essentially doomed.

The Big Three aged out of the league with the exception of Robert Parish who went on to play for the Charlotte Hornets and Chicago Bulls after leaving Boston following the passing of Reggie Lewis. Lewis’ death was yet another blow that sank the Celtics franchise and even though Boston is nothing like it once was in the 70’s and 80’s it helped result in a 22 year drought between championship seasons.

Next: I Am A Celtic Pt. 2

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