DALLAS – If you grew up in or around Boston, and if you grew up following the Celtics, no one had to teach you about the signs. Like the championship banners suspended from the rafters of TD Garden.
It is knowledge that is acquired along the way. If you’re from Boston, no one needs to sit down and “explain” to you about the Green Monster or “Squash the Fish” or “Harvard beats Yale 29-29.” You either find out or you don’t. And the banners. You find out the signs and what they represent, or not.
But what if you’re not from Boston? What if you grew up in, say, University City, outside of St. Louis?
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Jayson Tatum grew up in University City, just outside of St. Louis. And yes, there was a day, in 2017, when Tatum was new to the NBA, new to Boston, new to Celtics history. What is a 19-year-old from University City outside of St. Louis going to know about the Boston Celtics?
“Actually, yeah, someone walked me around the old practice facility in Waltham and showed me all the signs and the history,” Tatum said Thursday afternoon before a team practice at the American Airlines Center.
“I was born in 1998, so I didn’t know all the championships before,” he said. “I knew Bill Russell earned a lot. “I knew (Larry) Bird had a partner.” (Three of them, actually).
“But I only saw it in 2008 and then when they lost in 2010,” Tatum said. “I learned a lot about the history of the game, the history of the Celtics.”
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This is important information, especially now that the Celtics took a 3-0 series lead in Game 4 of the NBA Finals against the Dallas Mavericks on Friday night. As Professor Tatum will tell you, beating the Mavs will give the Celtics their first championship since 2008. As no one needs to tell you, no team in NBA history has lost a postseason series after winning Games 1, 2 and 3.
On June 17, 2008, when Boston cruised to a championship-clinching 131-92 victory over the Lakers at the Garden, it gave Celtic veteran Paul Pierce a piece of history, but also some peace of mind: He wouldn’t have to . He lives his years as a great Celtic who had his number retired but did not win a championship. He was in his 10th season as a Celtic in 2007-08 and had already established a body of work worthy of retiring his number 34. (Which happened in 2018). What he was missing, before 2007, was a championship. But then Danny Ainge, the Celtics’ president of basketball operations at the time, arranged for Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen to join Pierce to form a 21st-century Big Three in the mold of Robert Parish, Kevin McHale and Bird. .
The rest, as they say, is history. And it’s a story Jayson Tatum knows well.
Jayson Tatum really dropped the mic with this one… 😶 pic.twitter.com/PkMfrv6g54
– Celtics on KeynoteUSA Sports Boston (@KeynoteUSASCeltics) June 13, 2024
“I would say the first (Celtics) legend I met was Paul Pierce,” Tatum said. “It could have been summer league or my first training camp when he was around for a few days. He was the first Celtics legend I really got to talk to.”
Sounding more like Jayson Tatum of Cambridge, or Jayson Tatum of Eastie, or Jayson Tatum of Roxbury, and not Jayson Tatum of University City, just outside St. Louis, he made an interesting comment during Thursday’s media availability. “Since I’ve been in the NBA, especially with the Celtics, everyone knows we only put up championship banners,” he said.
What wasn’t said was whether that was something a club official told him that first day at the old practice facility in Waltham, about 12 miles west of Boston. Or if he picked up that little nugget himself. The romantic in me likes to think it’s knowledge gained throughout his journey to the NBA, which is now in its seventh season. I like to think that because he’s been to this, that and all the arenas, he’s seen the banners of various divisions and conferences of other teams. But the other day Tatum said, “Everyone knows we just hang championship banners.”
It could have been Paul Pierce who said that. It could have been Bird, it could have been Dave Cowens, it could have been John Havlicek, it could have been Bill Russell. It could have been the Cooz. This time it was Jayson Tatum. He is a poster expert.
“Being a part of Celtics history means you have to win a championship,” Tatum said.
For the record, the two members of the Celtics family who were not part of championship teams but whose numbers are retired are Easy Ed Macauley and Reggie Lewis. But Macauley was a Celtics star who was traded to the former St. Lous Hawks before the C’s won their first championship. (It was, in fact, the transaction that resulted in Bill Russell landing in Boston.) And Lewis was a rising Celtics star who was just 27 years old when he died in 1993.
It’s safe to say that Jayson Tatum will one day have his “0” retired. It’s safe to say that Jaylen Brown will one day retire his No. 7. As Tatum more or less noted on Thursday, the expectation is that both men will wear championship rings when those ceremonies take place.
(Photo: Kevin Jairaj / USA Today)
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