The Boston Celtics had been mired in mediocrity for over a decade after their great dynasty of the 1980s and in an attempt to get back to relevance, they made some massive moves in 2007. The Celtics acquired both Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett via trade that year, to form a Big 3 along with Paul Pierce.
Success came very quickly for the Celtics with their star trio, as they won 66 games in the 2007-08 season and then went on to win their first title since 1986 by beating the Lakers. They were a loaded basketball team who seemed destined for more success in the following years, but it didn’t happen.
Doc Rivers On The Biggest Mistake The Celtics Made After Winning The Title
The start of the 2008-09 season promised great things as the Celtics were 27-2 at one point but fell off a bit after that and a season-ending injury to Kevin Garnett in February all but ended the hopes of a repeat. The Celtics would lose in the Conference Semifinals to the Magic, but the season after that, they would return to the Finals, only to lose to the Lakers this time around. That core would never again make it to the Finals and Doc Rivers, who was their head coach at the time, recently spoke of the biggest mistake they made after winning the championship.
via The Woj Pod (starts at 19:48 mark):
“We do make mistakes like if I went back into Boston, the biggest mistakes, what did we make, after 2008, we start giving pieces away, Tony Allen (and) James Posey, where I thought what Golden State did (was) smart. They kept their core as long as they could keep it, and then obviously they started making moves when the guys got older.”
James Posey even wanted to return to the team, but they didn’t want to offer him a multi-year deal in 2008, so he left for the Pelicans, who gave him a 4-year, $25 million contract. Tony Allen would depart for Memphis in 2010, as he felt he was being overshadowed by their stars and he ended up becoming a key member of the Grizzlies for quite a few years.
It is not easy to keep teams together both from a financial perspective as well as from an ego perspective, so the Warriors do deserve a lot of credit for retaining their players for the most part. Even the Warriors, however, lost some pieces like Gary Payton II who they really wanted to keep, but couldn’t due to the financial aspect.
As for the upcoming season, it is a big one for Rivers, who will be hoping to recapture that magic of 2008. James Harden will be key to that and Doc stated during this episode that Harden can be a scoring version of Magic Johnson for the Sixers this upcoming season.
