Boston Celtics all-time starting five

"Jordan did play in the '60's, but his name then was Elgin Baylor."

I never saw Baylor play when I could remember it but some of the old footage I've seen shows him blowing by guys like Tom Sanders, Havlicek and Russell, all pretty fair defenders.

Someone here linked some Youtube stuff and there was one sequence where Baylor drove and was stopped cold by Nate Thurmond. Baylor while fading away double pumped and dropped it in over Nate. Very impressive.

Baylor also did a "Red on Roundball" segment on offensive rebounding where Auerbach flat out called him the greatest offensive rebounder ever. This was before Moses Malone but still quite a tribute by Red.

It seems that Elgin tarnished his legacy by spending so many years as GM of the Clippers when Donald Sterling was at the height of his buffoonish antics and the Clips were regarded as the Devil's Island of the NBA.


"Hondo might have had 30000 career points."

Hondo was physically capable of playing for several more years when he retired. My ultimate basketball wet dream was to see Hondo and Bird playing together.

This as far as I know only happened in a practice scrimmage when Hondo, two years retired, asked if he could scrimmage when he was visiting Boston during Bird's rookie year. Hondo wants to scrimmage, Hondo scrimmages.

Auerbach said that if you didn't know who he was you would have said that guy is one of your great ballplayers.

Bird said that Hondo knew all the new plays after about ten minutes.

Havlicek said of that in any game situation he knows what should be done but 90% of the time it wasn't but with Bird on the court 90% of the time it was done and that if he had known he could have played with Bird he would not have retired.

sloop I used to love seeing Havlicek wear out the opposing teams best defender, he patented the moving without the ball concept.

Run, run, run. That is what he did and made opponents try to keep up with him. He was amazing and fun to watch night in and night out, he was my favorite from the day he joined the Celtics.

Russell
Cousy
Havlicek
Bird
Garnett

How do you leave out Celtics greats like Sam Jones and Paul Pierce and even a Kevin McHale

The 5 chosen Celtics all have one common trait.

Each of them were transformative players. There impact on the team and the entire NBA was profound.

dboss

dboss

Cousy
Havlicek
Bird
Garnett
Russell

Wow!! I really like your picks, I actually forgot about KG, with his length and equal mobility, hes actually a better defender than Cowens and I like Havliceks size and defensive abilities over Sam Jones in the starting line up. Tough choices, well what a bench, Cowens, McHale, Parrish, Sam Jones, DJ, Tiny or JoJo White....what a bench!!!

cow