The Ringer NBA Show - 'Celtics City' and the History of an Iconic Franchise. Plus, Director Lauren Stowell on Telling the Story of the Boston Celtics.

Episode Date: March 5, 2025

The Ringer’s Michael Pina and Howard Beck sit down to give their thoughts on the new nine-part documentary series, 'Celtics City,' on HBO. They discuss how their perspectives were shaped after the documentary, what Celtics season they would’ve liked to have covered, whether their opinion on anyone changed, and much more. Then, Wosny Lambre sits down with the director of 'Celtics City,' Lauren Stowell, to discuss how Lauren got involved with the project, interviewing legends like Larry Bird and Kevin Garnett, handling the perception of the city of Boston, and more. Hosts: Michael Pina, Howard Beck, and Wosny Lambre Guest: Lauren Stowell Producers: Isaiah Blakely and Ben Cruz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, everybody, and welcome to a special episode of The Ringer NBA show, maybe the most special episode in this feeds history. I'm Michael Pina, a senior staff writer at The Ringer, and today I'm joined by one of my most esteemed colleagues, fellow Ringer senior staff writer and co-host of The Real Ones podcast, the one and only Howard Beck. Howard, it's always lovely to see you. How you doing today? Great to see you. Thank you for calling me esteemed. I feel very esteemed today, so ready to roll. It's the most perfect adjective I could come up with.

On today's show, we'll be having a conversation about the new nine-part documentary series, Celtic City, which premieres on Max on March 3rd, and is produced by HBO sports documentaries, ringer films, and words and pictures. It's executive produced by our boss Bill Simmons, along with his 30-for-30 co-creator Conor show. Later in this episode, our buddy Was is going to. interview the director of Celtic City, Lauren Stowe, which you'll definitely want to stick around for. Until then, enough with the preamble. Howard, you and I both watched this documentary and enjoyed it very much.

We also come to this from two very different sides of the spectrum. I was born and raised in Boston. I grew up a Celtics fan, and despite covering the NBA professionally for over a dozen years, I still have what some like yourself might call a psychotic emotional attachment to the team. Meanwhile, you are someone who grew up in California very much not a fan of the Celtics. So let's start the conversation there. How would you just describe your lifelong relationship to slash opinion of this franchise and why have you always been super jealous of their fan base?

Yeah, the subtext there, of course, is that you and I have had many go-rounds of this over the years that we've known each other through multiple places that we've worked where I have to tweak you a little bit about at staying so attached to your Celtics fandom because I am completely emotionally detached from any and all NBA franchises, players, coaches, teams, cities. I grew up in the Bay Area in the 70s and 80s at a time when the Warriors, yet they did win a championship in the 70s, but the Warriors were not like really part of the zeitgeist of my childhood.

The Bay Area was all about the Niners and the Raiders, the A's and the the Giants. Sharks didn't exist yet. So the NBA in general was not really firmly part of my life as a kid. I think my favorite team growing up, I swear this is no joke, was the Harlem Globetrotters. Like, they were awesome. And they were like, they were on Gilligan's Island. They were like animated on Scooby-Doo. And plus, like, even though the real live version of them watching them on TV and stuff, like, those guys were awesome. The Warriors, the Lakers in the 80s, of course, because we're in California, like I had a lot of friends. We're like huge Magic Johnson fans.

So Larry Bird and the Celtics are kind of like this distant thing. Even when I got to college, run TMC is going on at that time. So the Warriors are finally starting to like become a little bit more. But like the Celtics were a distant thing. I will tell you my first real introduction to the Celtics and Celtics Lakers as a thing. My first year as a Laker beat writer in 97 at the LA Daily News, the first player I got to sit down with for a feature story was Rick Fox. Rick had just come from the Celtics where they renounced his rights.

And Rick was, it's funny because a lot of the quotes I remember having looked up actually are so much in line with the things you see in this documentary about the way Paul Pierce and others talk about the Celtics and about winning is like the only thing there. Rick Fox is wired that way. He joins the Lakers and he chooses the number seven. Why? Specifically because at that time the Celtics were stuck on 16 and Rick had just gone through some hellacious years with the Celtics and it had his bird rights renounced and he picked 17 because as he told me, I want to win my first championship with the Lakers before they win 17. And I think honestly in my professional career just in my life, like that's the first time I really feel like the gravity of what it means to have been associated with either of these franchises.

And in Rick's case, as somebody who lived on both sides of that divide. All of which is to say, a very distant relationship for me personally growing up. But your relationship to the Celtics is clearly much more personal. You grew up there. But as I was scrambling to do the math, I realized suddenly you missed out on the 80s dynasty. Because you're just a young. So how do you end up being immersed in Celtics exceptionalism when most of your life, to, you know, to overdo this.

But you're growing up at a time when they're kind of, you know, in the desert and trying to find their way back. It was super sad. There's an episode in this doc, which I don't think we can spoil this doc. You know what I mean? Like, we're not going to go through the beat by beats of every episode, but there is an episode that basically covers my childhood, the teams that were so terrible. It's the Rick Petino era, if you will.

and it's just a lot of what could have been, honestly, just terrible luck from, I mean, this was before I was born, but Len Baez dying, Reggie Lewis dying. Not to equivocate these things, but bad luck in the lottery where they could have gotten Tim Duncan. And as I think I was about 10 years old for that NBA draft lottery, being told that there was a 40% chance that we were going to get Tim Duncan. and everything would be fine, and he would be the next Bill Russell, and we'd be saved to getting Ron Mercer and Chauncey Phillips and being super depressed. It was tough, but, you know, I am not super proud of this, but I did spend a portion of my childhood rooting for the San Antonio Spurs. We talked about this right before we started recording because I loved David Robinson, and when Tim Duncan went there, I was like, oh, it's just, this is serendipitous. I meant to be

a San Antonio Spurs fan. And as the years kind of went on, and, They got Paul Pierce a few years later, and I was like, okay, there's someone I can actually root for and who I can watch their career from the ground up. He's super talented player, the best player, better than everyone from my younger years watching the team. And so then you just kind of are, you know, they're competitive. They go to the playoffs, et cetera, and it's, it kind of grows from there. But I want to talk real quick about just kind of watching this documentary how it, like, where I came from watching it beyond just fandom, which was, you know, I'm a lover of basketball. I'm a lover of the Celtics, et cetera. But also as a person from Boston, I thought that this was a really powerful piece because this documentary captures so much of what the city is. and how it's evolved and why it's so ugly and from like the racism to the busing to segregation

to um you know the iconic and super disturbing photo of ted landsmark at city hall um but then at the same point that there's progressiveness and there's uh provincialism and there's pride and i thought that what was really interesting to me was just like the the voice in the platform that this documentary gave to black people in Boston who are completely erased from the national conversation when people think about Boston. And, you know, we don't have to have a huge Boston conversation, but I thought it was really interesting just how I feel like this doc will either reinforce how you feel about Boston going into it, or it will change your tune a little bit, and it'll make you come at it from a different

perspective. So I'm just curious, from that standpoint, did it reinforce your previous? views of the city's history or did it, did you come at it and see, oh, maybe something is pivoting a little? It's, if you, you didn't grow up there, if you didn't live through it, and especially, again, for me as a California native who was very distanced from it, there's an image and a discussion and there's things in the history books, right? Like, you have a vague sense of it. And Boston has the reputation that it has and very much earned at times. I think it's as more as a as an NBA beatwriter for the last 28 years that, you know,

you start to hear a little bit more of the personal tales that, of what players went through, especially players in the 60s and 70s. And from a Boston perspective, the moment you referenced of Ted Landsmark, like the with the flagpole in, it's a city hall plaza, it's called, right?

That's an iconic photo. Just as a journalist, I'm looking at that photo like, oh, I know that photo. Oh, my gosh, they've got him in the documentary. Mm-hmm. A really powerful stuff, too. A lot of people in this documentary had some just very poignant observations about the strange juxtaposition of a franchise that was the first to draft a black player, the first to have five black starters, the first to have a black head coach.

Mm-hmm. The juxtaposition of that with all the racial tensions and riots and desegregation busing fights. ugliness the things that bill russell had to go through had to live through even while leading them to championships it's really powerful and i think one of the things that i was really struck by literally from the first moments that i turned on the screeners for this uh this documentary was they didn't waste any time it's like in the first minute or two of episode one and it is it comes back to it these themes of racism and desegregation and racial tensions did i think what i really appreciated about this documentary. You know, you're talking about the iconic franchises in sports

with immense success. This could just be a celebration and in parts it is, but it told the whole story. And I think that's what I really appreciated about it from just a journalistic perspective. And as a viewer, as an NBA fan, as somebody who's been around a league a long time, these teams and these players exist in a context. And the context of Boston is fraught. It's complicated. and they did not shy away from any of that. In fact, this documentary, I think, very much embraced it. They got a lot of really great voices, both within the NBA and from media voices, everything else. And even to the point of having, you know, when Doc Rivers is talking in the documentary,

he says that when he took the job with the Celtics, other black coaches warned him, you're not going to be able to get black players there. You're not going to get top free agents and warn them that you should consider this. And so, like, this is unvarnished. There is nothing that's papered over here. And that's what I think makes it a much richer story. So I thought that was really well done. Well said.

I mean, I loved it from that perspective. I just, I'll say, like, I loved the documentary from the sense of, like, Like, it's like my personal OJ made in America. Like, it's something I will show my son and my daughter when they're old enough to understand this. It's like, uh, if anyone ever asks me why I love the Celtics or what it's like to be a Celtics fan, I can just be like, watch this. Watch Celtic City, which was, which is a tremendous, like, gift for me as a basketball fan and lover. Um, what beyond, you just touched on this a little bit, but what beyond what,

what you've already said about the documentary, did you like, let's be just broad? And what did you want to see more of? It's interesting. I did find myself, so somewhere in the middle of the documents, this is nine episodes, obviously, and they're an hour each. There's a lot to pack in. So by the way, like whoever had to do the editing, making the decisions and all this stuff, like what to whittle down on, like really difficult because you're talking about, you know, 70 plus years of of history.

And there are times where there's a bit of a jump and some stuff like you just kind have to skip past. So you can't get all of it in there. So it's not really a criticism as much as it is an observation about like there's just a ton of stuff to pack into this. I really enjoyed as somebody who I was still in the Bay Area, obviously in the 80s. So Lakers Celtics in the 80s is something that resonates across the country. Right.

But you know, this is a time before I didn't have cable TV even in San Jose. But, but there's. There's no league pass. There's no satellite. There's a handful of national games per week or whatever. I didn't see most of it. I've caught up over time during my career. I found myself wanting more of Magic and Bird, Lakers and Celtics. I found myself wanting more of that again when it became the Kobe Lakers and the Pierce Celtics. And you could do an entire series just on that, right? And that series have been done. Books have been done about the rivalry. And so there was there was some of that. There are a few people in particular, I thought, I would have liked to have seen her from this guy. And, you know, we both know, doing the jobs we do, like you make a zillion calls.

You don't get everybody you want. And also, you don't, we have no idea what was left on the cutting room floor for this, for this documentary. But I appreciate that it gave enough time to each of those eras that when you're showing it to your kids years from now, they're going to get a sense of what it was like to be a Celtic or a Celtics fan in the 60s and all that went with it. They're going to get a sense of what some of the, you know, lower moments were for the franchise, a sense of what the first big three were about, the second big three, the new big

three were about. The cultural importance of Peyton Pritcher thing, a half-court shot in Game 5th, to win the 2004 NBA championship. It's hard to really put that into words. It was the next thing I was going to say, literally the next thing I was going to say. Literally the next thing I was going to say. But it's also, you know, a couple people in the documentary say this, and I would say this as an outside observer, there's so few franchises in sports, any sports.

And in the NBA, it's really only the Lakers and Celtics, where you could go decade by decade. And again, like there was only, you know, 8 to 12 teams at any time in the 60s, I think. So, like, we don't, we literally don't have 30 teams to choose from to do this exercise with. But if you were trying to tell the story of sports in the U.S. in the 20th century, 20th to 21st, and you were trying to weave in everything about it, about, you know, issues of race and socioeconomics, and all the things that go with sports, too, just petty jealousies and fractured relationships and, you know, having to kind of like rebuild on the fly or go through these fallout. everything you could say about sports.

Every version of every theme you and I have ever touched on as sports writers is contained within the Celtics history in addition to a lot of the societal context. And so there are threads that go through the whole thing that I think are really interesting in that regard. And also like, yeah, there's a Celtics exceptionalism where Paul Pierce is talking about at the beginning and the end of this documentary about what it means to be a Celtic and about there's only one, there's only one acceptable outcome ever. And having covered the Lakers for seven,

years. I very much can appreciate that because it's probably the only other franchise in this league where you can say that, where it's always championship or bust. And there is no other happy outcome. Larry Bird has a quote where he's basically like, you don't, if you don't play for the Boston Celtics, you don't play professional basketball. Incredible quote. A bit overdone, Larry. Like, it's a bit much, a little disrespectful to like, you know. Honestly, hard to argue. I totally get what he's saying. But I think what I appreciated about it, again, having been immersed in Lakers exceptionalism, which great at times, that was the similar, that's the echoed version across the country of the other version of this where it's like, oh no, we're the only franchise that matters.

Come on, guys, settle down just a little bit. But like, the Bulls did win six championships in the 90s. You know, Michael Jordan, he was pretty good. Tim Duncan and the Spurs with their five. Like, there are other franchises where greatness is expected and where they have a rich tradition. It's just that none of the others can go that far back. But I appreciate that Larry Bird or Paul Pierce or any of them who lived this, they internalize it so deeply that he can say that with a straight face and absolutely mean it, and I respect it.

That's the best part about this whole thing going back and seeing Jerry West and the pain and the anguish on his face when he's doing an interview like 50 or 60 years later. Riley talking about his like hatred still to this day for like Kevin McHale. It's all a little unhealthy, I would say. I mean, one of the episodes is called Fuck the Celtics. And it's a quote from James Worthy. Yeah. And he actually, James Worthy had one of my favorite quotes in the whole thing where he says after talking about game two of the 84 finals when he throws this pass at the very end of the

game and it's intercepted by Gerald Henderson. It's a momentous moment in the series and it leads to the Lakers. never really recovering. And he says, it's a wound that doesn't bleed anymore. It's been stitched up, but it's a scar. It's there. And it's like, that is, I don't want to get too sanctimonious, but like, that's why we write about basketball for a living.

That's why we do what we do. It's part of what drew me to the NBA, like the passion and the emotional resonance. And it's like, this stuff doesn't matter, but it's also the only thing that matters. Do you what I mean? Yeah. For sure. I actually, something struck me at a certain point, and I'm curious if you picked up on this or if you saw this too, or if maybe, maybe I just didn't pick up on it as acutely. It seemed to me like the Lakers in particular, you mentioned, West, James Worthy, Riley, they have not gotten over. In Jerry's case, it's the 60s in particular, even though, you know, he's now presiding over them in the 80s when they, you know, the Lakers win a bunch of titles and they, they, they out, out, out.

You know, they beat the Celtics. They went five to the Celtics three. And that doesn't matter. Like that has not eased Jerry West Payne whatsoever. I did not pick up on the same level of, of just bitterness or enduring pain on the part of the Celtics who had to have their losses at the hands of the Lakers, too. But also just, you know, those rivalries were really intense. Like we've all grown up on hearing these legendary rivalries and the hatred and whatever. and people miss a lot of people who are old missed like the tension of the of the old NBA where guys actually hated each other.

They didn't go out for drinks afterward and all that stuff. It did seem to me like the Lakers had internalized a lot of that pain much more so than the Celtics of the same era. Am I missing that? And I'm not saying the Celtics weren't affected by losing or by the demise of their 80s dynasty. It just didn't seem like the bitterness was quite on the same level going the other direction. Well, I wonder if the Lakers were the subject of the documentary. And you interviewed some of the Celtics about that time that maybe you would see that type of that dissonance right there. But, you know, you touched on this a few minutes ago, but just the singularity of the Boston Celtics and them being, I mean, like, not every subject in our culture, in our country's history is worth nine-episode documentary series.

And you talked about how there's very few teams that even go back that far that still exists that have had success worth talking about. What is there any, the Lakers are obviously an example. Is there any other organization that you could see having such rich techs to go off from to do a project like this? I mean, when I start thinking about not just the basketball, right? Because, all right, we all watched the last dance. That was, what, 10 episodes? And it's not just about the last year of Michael Jordan. It's about the entire Bulls dynasty.

So clearly there was enough there. But that was, if I'm recalling correctly, a haze of COVID lockdown, everything notwithstanding. I think that was pretty like 95% basketball, right? Or 98% basketball and then 2% whatever Dennis Rodman was doing. but it's I don't think that too many other organizations could be a stand in for what's going on in society

in a given time either you could with the Lakers because there were race riots in L.A. Rodney King happened. There's a you know the games were moved. There's also so much drama with the Lakers right?

Forever and ever. Exactly but it's like some of it's contrived I'm saying this is a Celtics fan. Some of it's real and it's like historical, super important and pivotal points in the history of the league and there's like

off court stuff that we don't need to get into but all that stuff I think you could do a Lakers thing like this for sure. It would be very engaging. But I don't know how many others, right? Like there's not, there are some other teams that are worth the time on the basketball side but I don't know if you could have had the same

kind of interweaving of important issues of the day and the broader context. I mean, listen, I'm guessing Detroit. Detroit's been through some stuff as a major city in America. There's probably a Detroit version of this. There could be an Oakland version of this when the Warriors were still there, which was, you know, most of their time. And but not that many.

I don't think. And especially when, you know, it's the, it's the aura of the Celtics or the Lakers that draws you into the first place and gives you the operation. opportunity to then pull in these other things and say, okay, what was the context that these games and these championships were being won or lost in? So you have to start there. They have to be interesting enough on the sports side of it to delve into the rest of it. So I don't know that there's any too many other teams you could do that with. And a lot of this, when we talk about history, when I was a child, just looking back on the Celtics, and even in the present day,

I was obsessed with what if moments. It was a huge thing for me. If this shot doesn't go in or this ping pong ball doesn't come up this way, everything is different. And that's what is so engaging to me about Celtics history. And, you know, you could go from,

what if the St. Louis Hawks never trade Bill Russell? What if they don't spite themselves and trade Bill Russell to the Celtics? What if John Havillard? Check never injured a shoulder in 1973 and they lose game seven against the New York Knicks at home. There's so many different what ifs that are really fascinating. Well, what if Len Byas, Reggie Lewis? Len By, I mean, I had like a sick obsession with Len Byers because it was like, as a child, the team being terrible and everyone being like, this was the guy who was supposed to make your childhood good as a sports as a Celtics fan.

and to have him die as tragically as he did, it's like you can't even really verbalize it. It's monumental the amount of talent. Imagine if Michael Jordan never existed. What would the NBA be like today? You know what I mean? And they were talking about land bias in those kinds of tones. Absolutely. And who knows what his career could have been?

And obviously it's a tragedy on a human level much before. It's a tragedy on a basketball level, of course. but through the lens of a young Celtics fan like you or through that franchise, yeah, the sliding doors moments of things what could have been if Len Byes doesn't overdose, if Reggie Lewis doesn't die of a heart issue. You mentioned the ping pong balls. I mean, there's the Duncan one that you mentioned, but then there's also the year that they should have been, could have been in the running

for either Greg Oden, which wouldn't have turned out so well or Kevin Durant. Well, Danny, I just on record saying he would have selected Kevin. Durant. They're all on record as saying they would have selected Kevin Durant now. But there's things like that. Here's the other one that hit me as I'm watching this as a Bay Area native. The very first Warriors game I ever attended as a child, I went a drawing at a children's shoe store to be the honorary ballboy for a day. I was like nine.

Okay. The center for the Warriors at that time, Robert Parrish. Wow. So they mentioned the trade in there. Like, you talk about these sliding doors moments and also, you know, the Celtics being almost gifted some things. That trade is Robert Parrish and the pick that becomes Kevin McHale for the number one pick, which is Joe Barry Carroll. Or as he was called in the Bay Area, Joe barely cares. So I was not old enough or immersed in the NBA enough or attentive enough at that time in my childhood to have realized the tragedy that had just befallen my, you know, more or less hometown team.

That's something I learned much, much later in life. But holy moly, like talk about, you know, robbery. I mean, that's the, that's the Luca trade of its day. Yeah, for sure. And even more recently, and this is touched on in the dock, but it's like, I mean, this is one I literally think about like once a week because I'm a true sicko. But if Kevin Garnett doesn't hurt his knee in Utah in 2009, does Kobe Bryant ever win another championship post-Chekiel O'Neill? And then how do we look at Kobe Bryant? And how do we look at that big three era where they could have won three straight or four straight?

And then if you do that, then I don't think, who knows, but I don't think Danny Ane just probably trading them to the nets for Paul Pearson coming right to the nets for those picks. And then what are the Celtics today? So it's just like those things are just really, they're fascinating to me. They break my brain. And yeah. So, I mean, speaking of, you know, going back in time, you've been a beat writer for, you were a beat writer, I should say, for a very. very, very, very long time, not to age you. If I gave you a time machine average, which Celtic season would you most want to cover?

It's a really tough one. I mean, obviously there's a lot of, like covering championship seasons, it's enjoyable in a different way, right? You have no emotional investment in the team you're covering. So I cover three straight Shaq and Kobe championships. They're actually dull at times because they're winning so much. It's like as a lighter. Super dull.

Agree. No, as a writer, you need things to be changed up. They had like three separate double-digit win streaks. Their first championship season, Shaq and Kobe. And I'm like waiting for them to lose so we had something else to talk about. Like after a while, like the dominance gets boring. Not for Laker fans, but for me as a writer, I'm like, this is. Oh, then some stuff did happen.

And you had some stuff that right about. They provided more than enough material for us. Thank you, Shaq and Kobe and Phil. So when I'm looking at the Celtics, I actually, I got to say, I don't know which season in the 60s it would be. Oh, you went back to the 60s. Okay. Because, one, Bill Russell is just absolutely fascinating.

I never got the honor of meeting him. I was in the room with him a few times over the last 28 years or, you know, 26 before he died. But he's such a presence and a little bit of intimidating one. And I never had like, I just never felt right to just go. up and say hello hi mr russell howard beck from wherever i was working at the time um but he's he's fascinating as as a player as an activist as a presence as just one of the most important figures in mb a history um i think i would have gone back to the and also like not not for nothing 60s or 80 i would have wanted to be i would have wanted to cover one of those dynasty eras right

because that's when you get to see basketball at its best some of the most important players just getting to document history is part of the thrill of doing the jobs we do. But I think the 60s just because of the backdrop to it all. Civil rights era and Bill Russell's involvement in it all. I think, you know, you think about this selfishly, the stories you get to tell and the people you get to meet and the questions you get to ask them.

And like, again, as fraught as that era is and not to diminish it, But as, you know, we talk about being the, we write the first draft of history as reporters, man, that's a pretty damn good first draft to get to write. So you'd go back to 1969 and ask Brett Auerbach if he was satisfied with the coaching and then push Bill Russell into retirement. Was that? Were you going to be that guy? I don't think I would have been that guy. There are some moments, man.

Did you know that story, by the way, before you saw that in the dock? No. I didn't either. That was fascinating to me. And like super tragic and kind of it's a culmination of years of not being good enough

because of the color of your skin, frankly, for Bill Russell in Boston. And it's tragic. I mean, he was obviously like, past his prime as a player, but that's besides the point. What he was doing was he let outside voices kind of influence

one of the bigger decisions professionally of his life. And that's like super sad. I mean, in 1968 he's Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the year in one of the most consequential years in American history, to be honest, or that century.

So that was like super. That was a bummer. It's also just instructive for people who especially if you're younger and, you know, look, I mean, hopefully everybody gets the education that they need on these things. But there are

moments that just remind you of just how broken we were as a society in some ways. When you hear a reporter asking Bill Russell on the day that he's introduced as the Celtics new coach, can you, I'm paraphrasing because I don't remember exactly the wording of this terribly awkward, awful, insulting question. But it was basically, can you manage the roster and make decisions on players without having racism? reverse. But he said it racism in reverse or something, I think, was the way that the reporter constructed it. And Bill Russell, to his credit, just said no, meaning no, there won't be a problem. Or maybe it was, yes, I can. It was a yes or no answer. He could have given a much more pointed

and would have been justified in giving a much more pointed answer. But in the context of that time, probably had to restrain himself from really going at the guy. But it's an incredibly insulting question, but the very fact that somebody would ask it at a press conference back then just reminds you that back then, that that's how a overwhelmingly white media and white society saw these things, that the idea of a black head coach, like, well, how could they do, how can he possibly do a fair job? He won't play any by players. Yeah.

Oh, my God. And there are, there are various moments like that. There's a moment, again, this is what I appreciate about the documentary and how unvarnished it is. there's a report where they're talking about, and this is during the time, like in the late 70s, early 80s,

and David Stern has often talked about this, where we reviewed as being too black and all this. And there's literally like a news report, like one of the national networks, I think. Oh, my God. Yeah. And you know what I'm talking about. Oh, yeah.

The white fan who basically says like, yeah, you know, there's too many black players. And I can't, it's like, I can't root for them. Like, what? Holy shit. And again, it's instructive. Because you look at that now and you cringe and you think, oh, my, you allowed yourself to be filmed on TV saying this.

But the fact that that person would not think twice about it or that reporter back in the 60s would not think twice about asking Bill Russell that question is a very important reminder of where we've been and sometimes, unfortunately, where maybe sometimes we still are in various parts of our world. Yeah. The smile on Bill's face as he's answering the question, I like pause the screener because it's just like a smile that says I want to strangle this. person. Or at least read them the riot act. There was a tirade just simmering behind his one word answer. And he, again,

credit to him for not doing it. Yeah. Which leads me to my next question for you, Howard, which is who do you think the most important person in Boston Celtics history is? And why is it Rick Petino? I thought you say, why is it Peyton Pritchard?

Is this an obvious? Too obvious? No, I don't think it's obvious. I think it's almost a tie or it's hard to split hairs on this because it has to be Bill Russell, but there's so much of a case for Red Hourback. It's one or the other, if not both. There is no other answer, right? In my head, I was trying to come up with some other people.

and the only, I would say like a distant, distant, distant third is Larry, like, because he resurrected the franchise in the 80s and et cetera, et cetera. But, yeah, I think that it's between Bill and Red. And for me, it is somewhat obviously Bill. He's one of the most iconic figures in league history. Yeah. He's the NBA's first revolutionary superstar. the foundational, you know, you're always going to give credit to the player, right? Absolutely.

Foundational centerpiece of the league's first dynasty. And to take it a step further when I think about Bill Russell, and this was really touched on and reinforced watching it, is like his approach to his craft and his job was one that is so admirable in the sense that he was team first, he was selfless, cared about teamwork, cared about camaraderie, cared about chemistry, cared about the need to make everyone around you better, to play basketball the right way, to not care about statistics.

He talks about in The Duck, which is like really well verbalized, how he knew that he couldn't beat Wilts Chamberlain one-on-one. So he's not going to. He's going to elevate everyone around him. And his team will beat Wilts team. And that's what historically happened. almost every single time they played in a playoff series. And I just think that that's like,

like that mentality has kind of carried through to many superstars throughout NBA history, but also to usually whoever is like the prime person playing for the Boston Celtics, which I think is really, really fascinating. He set the template, right? And this is why he probably is the answer to your question, right? Without Bill Russell as the template as not just iconic because of the championships won

and everything that went with it, it's the value system behind it, right? If you're going to talk, because it's like, listen, it's a little bit of a stretch or a construct for us in the present to say, oh, Celtics tradition. It's about all these different things. And you can draw this line straight from Bill Russell to, you know, Bird to Pearson, Garnett, to now Tatum and Brown. It's convenient and it's neat to be able to say all that. But all those values and traditions weren't always upheld, right? There are moments where the franchise goes off track where it doesn't uphold these things,

where it has players who don't uphold those ideals. We can say that these are the values and the, you know, we always use culture now, the culture of the Celtics. Yeah, it's there at various stages and it's not there at other stages. So it's not embedded in the franchise. The franchise has had ownership changes. and obviously front office changes. But to the extent that there's something to live up to,

and you hear player after player and coach after coach in this documentary say it, that you walk in and you look up at those banners and you feel the weight of it. There's a scene late in the documentary where Pierce and Garnett are visiting, I think it's their first time visiting the hourback center, whatever they're calling the new practice facility, really nice facility. And there's these like floor to ceiling murals. And you've got like Bird, McHale, and Parrish staring down. at you and Bill Russell and Havlicek and Coozy staring down at you and Auerbach staring down at you and even Pearson Garnett who are also up there staring down at themselves are sitting there just like in awe of this. And again, it goes back to why this team is worth this team is worth a documentary like this.

Because how many would have an entryway to their facility where you would look up and go, holy shit, this is what we have to live up to. This is the tradition. And you could just sit there in awe or look up at the banners and know this. like there's an expectation, but that there are values behind that. The values that guided Bill Russell and made him the great player that he was, it wasn't just about like, oh, he's the best player by skill set or height or athleticism or whatever.

It's the way he approached the game and the selflessness and being about team. And that's why you then can, as a coach who was born long after that, you can still say, guys, look up there. Do you know how they got those? By playing for each other.

And like it's, that's important. And so the hourback case would be this, though. And I still think, I agree, it's Bill Russell. But my gosh, again, aside from Hourback and maybe Jerry West, pop to an extent in the modern era that you can bridge so many eras and still be around that Hourback is there to win all these championships with Bill Russell, to set the standard for what it means to be a champion in the NBA,

and then still be around years later, gone and then back, to usher in the Bird McHale Parish era to make the deals that made that happen and then to still be around for, you know, kind of inching into the next era, like, and being able to influence some of the people, put them in place, bring back Danny Aange. Also, like, trading, I mentioned Gerald Henderson before, trading Gerald Henderson, who's this hero coming off that finals, right, 84, and you trade him the next year to get a pick, and that pick is Len Bias. So it's like, that decision even, is like, I'm, it's always thinking ahead, always trying to set up the next era. And that's amazing.

The mere fact that you can trace so many of these pivotal moments through one person, right hour back, like, again, like that, that just doesn't happen. There's, again, a little bit of that with Jerry West and the Lakers because he goes from being, you know, a legendary player to being one of the greatest team executives of all time and putting his fingerprints on it all. and then handing off to Mitch Cupcheck, his designated successor. And so that spans decades. But my gosh, other than those two, I don't even know if there's another example of it.

Did your opinion of anyone in the dock or just affiliated with the Celtics or whatever, was your opinion altered or changed for better or worse after watching this? I don't think so, but I will say that a couple things stood out on that. note. I had no idea. I knew about Dennis Rodman basically saying Larry Byrd's only considered great because he's white. And then Isaiah Thomas chiming in and laughing, whatever. And then that being construed a certain way that Isaiah says was not what he meant.

I was joking. I didn't know that they had a joint press conference, Larry Bird and Isaiah Thomas in in L.A., the week of the finals or in the middle of the finals. Could you imagine that happening today? No. No. Holy. I thought I knew, I don't know everything. I thought I knew a lot about all of these things. I have no recollection either in real time, having been alive for it, or even in my years covering the NBA. I don't think I've ever seen the footage that is in this documentary of Larry Birded Isaiah Thomas sitting side by side at a table for a press conference. Shout out to Brian McIntyre, NBA, PR legend, who I spotted in that scene coordinating this. and they're talking about the quote. I guess it had gotten like,

it was that dicey in the moment and it had had become that big of a story beyond the NBA because of all the racial overtones that they actually had a joint press conference. So when you ask about like anything changed, magnanimous of them both to be there, like I don't unless it was one of those moments

where David Stern said, get your asses there, which is possible, by the way. But that they both sat there and very, I think, just professionally and respectfully said, we're cool. This is fine. And then moved on. That struck me a certain kind of way. My other answer to it would be before I throw this back to you.

But, man, Danny Aange, holy, I don't. He does not care. Danny Aange will tell you. And he does tell you, right, in the documentary, I don't care. I don't care about anybody thinks about me. I don't care about feelings. I respect it. Danny Age's cutthroat.

And you know this because Danny Ainge is the one who traded Isaiah Thomas after everything, the other Isaiah Thomas. Yes. He's the one who traded Pearson Garnett. I'd always heard the Danny Aange is wired the way he is as an executive because of what he lived through during the demise of the Celtics in the 80s and having seen Red hold on too long. I knew that theme. I knew that storyline.

What I did not know until I saw the doc was that Danny Aange literally said to Red, you should trade Burma McHale because they're breaking down. They were in his presence as he's saying it. And Red traded Danny instead to the Sacramento Kings. So the fact that it's not just Danny Angel, the executive who became cutthroat because of that, it's that even in that moment in the 80s, he was that. I would say pragmatic, cold-hearted, but pragmatic. So, yeah, what, anything changed for you? I mean, you knew so much going, so much going in. I can't imagine there's too much that would have surprised you or changed your opinion.

Yeah, I went from a neutral observer of Bill Plashky to him becoming my mortal enemy. No, I'm just kidding. Bill's feisty in this thing. I worked, like, I was in the LA Daily News, not the LA Times, but Bill and I were in a lot of press rooms for a lot of time over the course of seven years. I don't remember him being quite that partisan, Bill. But yeah. No, I thought he was great. I'm just kidding.

I think the obvious answer for me is Robert Parrish. This is something we've been communicating about via text. Just the best quotes in the whole thing. And this is someone who is famous for his stoicism. And his nickname is chief, famously nicknamed chief by Cedric Maxwell from one floor of the cuckoo's nest. And so I have a lot of it. some quotes here that I just think were so funny

that I wrote down. One of them talking about the team in the 80s. We were a white team, a few chips in the cookie. Phenomenal. Great stuff. On the 86 Celtics, which by the way, that would be the team. If I could go back and cover, I think it would be the 86 Celtics, which are

arguably the best team ever. You can, you know, whatever. You can argue about that until, I mean, the 2017 Warriors probably have a case. And, you know. The 72 wouldn't bowl. Sure. But his quote about the 86 Celtics was, we were fucking shit up. And if we played today, we'd be fucking shit up today. That was a great one too. Probably the best quote of the whole back. I was blown away by Parrish because in my time covering the NBA, and I've never met the man. But what I'd always gleaned from other people was that like, yeah, stoic, not maybe the most media available or media friendly. Not somebody you heard a lot from in general. This is this documentary is by far the most I've ever heard. Robert Parrish talk.

Yeah. And he's phenomenal. Like, please talk more. Like, this stuff was, was incredible. He also admits for the first time, I believe, to, like, explaining why he didn't help Larry Bird in a fight, a famous fight in the early 80s against the Philadelphia 76ers when Julius Irving grabs birds the road. And I think Moses Malone comes in from behind.

And I think Daryl Dawkins was in there. And Robert Parrish was just staying in there. watching his teammate it beat up and he literally says yeah i did that because larry didn't have my back with a contract dispute yeah that is that is fascinating i'm sorry like that is uh that's top notch right there's a bunch of that stuff right there's a lot of contract disputes and some you know bitter moments guys getting traded because of contracts and everything so you know again i this is what i appreciate about it amidst all these championships and all the glory and everything else like there's some shit that went on and that they had to work through.

What, like, what interview, what episode, what theme? We've talked about a lot of this stuff already. But just when you think about your experience watching this, what will stick with you like forever? Almost everything that we've already talked about. I don't want to diminish any of it because there's a lot of really poignant and important moments. But sports to me, all right, there's all right.

there's all the X's and O's and everything, but like I came to this career through the lens of wanting to cover sports as as a study of the human condition, right? My favorite stories that I have written or that I have been around, it's about the people and, you know, their joy and their anguish and their frustrations and everything they've got to work through. teammates bonding, teammates pulling apart. Obviously, I covered, you know, Shaq and Kobe for seven years of just, you know, know, winning or feuding and sometimes simultaneously. So I always think of those things. And so there's two things that really emotionally, I think, struck me. And even as I like turned off, you know, each episode and walked away for a bit. And it's the flip side of the Celtics coin. But Jerry West's anguish, like I obviously, I covered Jerry for a number of years. We care about sports because of all the, of all these emotions, right? And, and we, and we,

we care about the people in them, right? And watching, we were along for their ride. And we don't care if they don't. It's the passion that matters. And passion can take you in any number of directions in this life. I think it's to an extreme. And I feel for Jerry in the moment, like watching it, even though I've heard him talk about this before,

I don't think I ever felt his pain and bitterness as distinctly or as sharply as I did in watching him in this documentary talk about how he has just never gotten over that stuff. And on the one hand, I think it's, it's almost tragic because it's, it's too much. Like it shouldn't matter to you this much, this many decades later. And with all the success he's had in his life. And I know it's, that's colored by other things. Jerry's had a, had a really difficult childhood. And there's a lot of other things baked into it.

But it really affected me, just, just seeing that. And obviously, you know, we lost Jerry West last year. Bill Walton's in this documentary. and we lost him within the last year. I'm glad that these guys, you know, I'm glad we got to get their thoughts before they were gone. But it really hit me with Jerry. There's another one here, and I hesitate to say it,

because people are going to be weird about it, but I'm just going to say it anyway. Well, now you've got to say it. I know. Bill and his dad, Bill Simmons and his dad are woven throughout this. I don't know if it's the living room. I don't know where they are. Bill has an incredible bond with his dad through the Celtics.

And Bill and I are in the same age. I'm a little older. And I lost my dad six years ago, almost six years ago. We did not have this same bond through sports. But I'm the only, I'm middle of three boys in my family. I'm the only one who liked sports. I was the only one who was even remotely competent at sports. But my dad, at least, like, I could talk to Niners with him.

I grew up, like, that was my team growing up. You grew up on the Celtics. I grew up on the Niners. Shout out Joe Montana and Dwight Clark. My dad was the only one that I could talk to about that stuff at that level. And seeing Bill and his dad at certain points talking about moments, specifically, especially in the 80s, because Bill's of a certain age then. And again, we're about the same age.

And how much that matters to you at that time. And if you share that with, you know, whoever it is, your sibling, in this case his father, and you see the look on their faces. And it's like, listen, you know me well enough to know. Like, I'm pretty jaded at times. And I've been doing this a long time. And my emotional attachment to any team's sports players is long gone. Although if you turned on like, you know, the 1982 NFC championship game, I probably feel a certain kind of way.

But I don't have that emotional attachment to sports. anymore. I cover this as strictly as a journalist. And I do, I admittedly lose touch at times with how much this means to people, how much it means to fans. And it's those moments where I, where I'm at the finals and the championship is won and I'm looking up in the stands. And I can see just, just the pure human euphoria or what I'm standing out in a parking lot where LA Live now is built, watching, I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of people for the first Laker parade that I covered in 2000. Like that's,

that's what matters. That's like why we're here. That's why we do this. And so seeing, like I said, like just there's a look on Bill in his dad's face at certain moments, especially when they're talking about the 80s and these moments that they shared as season ticket holders in person. And it's not just about the fact that the Celtics won championships. It's about their, their connection to the team and, um, and to each other.

And I'm sorry, you can hear it in my voice, but like it, like that affected me in a, in a certain kind of way. So, um, yeah. it's it's the emotional resonance of the team and what it does for people that's that's that's that's kind of a lot of what I walk away with yeah I think that that was incredibly powerful and something that a lot of people can surely relate to um it's so funny that you said Jerry West though because that's what I wrote down for this answer as well and you know some of his quotes are like he has one talk about 1969 when his team lost and he had like 42 12 and 13 in game seven played all 48 minutes was the MVP of the finals the only time that's ever happened he says until the day i die they were not the better team they were not the better team that is amazing stuff that is you can you feel for him yeah i know this is not someone who played for the celtics he is one of the first rival figures of the organization and he's a central character that he's a in that way. But it's like, that's his pain, and it speaks to, like, the power of what he was up against and the greatness of the Celtics, in a sense. And so that quote, and he has a couple others like that, where he says, you know, one of them is about in 1963, I think,

Frank Selvey misses a jumper that would have won the Lakers, the championship, and he misses it. And he says, really all my life, this has haunted me. Why didn't that go in? It's a jump shot. Yeah. That's amazing stuff. And it's just like, I said this already. But that is why the tremble of his voice is like why we do this and why we care and why so many people are invested emotionally and why there's so much passion.

and engagement and love and hatred. And so that will always probably stick with me hearing him talk about those games because like if the people participating in the games don't feel that way, then why should anyone watching? So that's really like the best, that the most powerful part for me, for sure. Yeah.

Passion drives sports. it drives the entire thing and without fans there's there's no point to it all like this is a multi-billion dollar industry now and we can lose sight of the human element because it is so much about the business and the promotion and the corporate sponsorships and guys having like their own entire teams of PR people and managers and all these stuff and it all starts to detract from the sport at times and you and I see the back you know the background stuff we see all the other stuff but it's it's truth it's honesty and that's what we lack today we could go another hour on that subject well that's really what we like today and that's why i thought that was so special

when you were asking about like what team or what era i'd want to cover a lot of where my brain immediately goes is like oh my god the access they had and jacky mcmullen's talking about seeing bird like you know slamming a door or whatever as he's limping out of the gym you know toward the end or whatever and the stuff we just don't see anymore the access that we just don't have anymore and as it starts to get to be you know uh you know reporter grievance uh hour but it but it you can't tell a great story without being able to really get to know these guys and it is absolutely true as you and i both know that our predecessors in this industry got to know bird mckel parish west goodrich worthy magic kareem whatever got to know all them a lot

better and were able to tell their stories better and convey to the fans who care about this stuff in a much more meaningful way. So I miss that. But yeah, I mean, listen, I every day, you know, of covering this league, that's what I'm looking for, right? Like, it's, it's Anthony Edwards just being completely raw and like, all right, he's going to get fined like 50 times for saying improper stuff. But at least you're seeing the real him. And, and I appreciate that. And, but also, yeah, like you know what else was really cool in another human element piece of this i didn't know the story about um donnie walberg calling jalen brown when jalen brown gets drafted jalen brown had been booed at a season ticket holder event on the night of the draft and donnie walberg like reaches out and says hey man

i just want to let you know like you know we're thrilled to have you here whatever and then when they win the championship hope i'm not giving too much away in the dock but they win the championship and there's a moment that gets filmed of donnie this is the most important thing in celtics history so give it away if you must I didn't realize how big of a role Donnie Walberg actually played in any of this. It's the most I've ever heard him talk to. But Donnie and Jalen Brown having a moment when they won the title. And Brown wins the MVP last June. And so that was really cool too because, again, it's just, it's fan to player.

He's not the average fan, but just it's the connection. It's the connection and how much this matters to everybody. That's what drives this whole thing. And that's what keeps us coming back. Celtic City, March 3rd, on Max. Let's go out in a quote from Joe Missoula, Boston Celtics head coach, who pretty much summed up my top line first impressions when I first watched this whole thing. Everybody always remembers when things go well, but this shows the difficult parts. I think that's important to know that you have to take the good but the bad.

You have to take the journey. Howard, this was a wonderful journey. You and I. Phenomenal journey. Thank you. Good to be on it with you. Thank you so much. Thank you to everyone watching and listening at home.

We'll catch you next time. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to a very special edition of the Ringer NBA show. I'm your host for this one, Big Was, aka Wazney-Lambrae. And I have a very, very special guest on with us. She's Lawrence Stoll. She's the director of this new Celtics doc on HBO. So executive produced by the big guy, Bill Simmons, as well as Connor Shell. Welcome to the show, Lauren.

Thank you, Loz. Thanks for having me. I'm excited about this. I want to get right into it because I want to know how you got attached to this project. Like, how did you get interested in doing this? I know, like, you know, you have a sort of familiarity with Boston and the sports and all of that stuff via your background. but how did you get, you know, involved with this project specifically? Yeah, so I'm a Connecticut native.

I grew up in Connecticut. I went to Yukon. You know, I was big Yukon who was still in the 90s and the 2000s. That was kind of, you know, my lifeblood has always been that. I was at ESPN. I was there for 16 great years, you know, working primarily in storytelling features and documentaries there. And the opportunity came about, as Bill will tell you, it's really been five years in the making for him and Connor. You know, 2020, they started discussing this idea of why hasn't there

been a definitive Boston Celtics documentary. Yankees have their, you know, definitive documentary, the Lakers, you know, everyone, any of these Tiffany franchises have that definitive body of work. The Celtics, It's been told in pieces and parts, but never won full work. So that's kind of how I got pulled into it. A few years after they had been, Connor and Bill had been, you know, in development with it, talking with HBO. And then I got my hands on a preliminary treatment and was I was, I was blown away. I mean, I thought I knew the story of the Celtics.

I didn't realize how profound. connected they are to the fabric of, you know, American culture. Yeah. And just all of the larger than life characters that, you know, there's, I was like, this is reading like a Hollywood script, you know, this is unbelievable. What an opportunity. Yeah. And I do got to say just up front, right?

You know, I hear Bill and them we're doing a Celtics doc. Bill, you know, he's been doing this for so long. I know it's going to be good. then, you know, I get the email about talking to the director, and I'm like, hold up, this is a black lady doing this? And, you know, I think that's important because obviously, you know, you're, you know, whatever they click for you on the census is not predict what you're going to bring to the table.

But, like, you know, seeing that, I was like, man, these guys have my attention because just the fact that you're in the room and you're going to have, you know, your fingerprints all over. with this and you're going to be bringing your own perspectives to this. I was like, man, these guys have my attention with this. Oh, thank you. I mean, you know, Wise, you kind of, you touched on it. Like, I think what was interesting, again, why I said I was kind of like surprised when

I started to really dig into the layers of what this story, like the potential and the possibilities with it, what I quickly learned and I think our team was kind of compelled by was you can tell the story of America through the Boston Celtics. You can tell the story of the NBA through the Boston Celtics. And I think what I found really fascinating is you can tell the story of black empowerment in America through the Boston Celtics. You could take it from Bill Russell, Chuck Cooper being the first, you know, black player drafted in the NBA by the Boston Celtics,

from Bill all the way to from Kevin Garnett to Jalen Brown today, you know. And I think like that was really a. exciting for me because I think that there is, and we discovered, there is a perception of what the Celtics are, what they stand for, you know, what makes up the fabric of what that organization is. And I think, you know, these are black superstars who, you know, so many of them are ingrained in the fabric of what the Celtics are. And you can tell the story of that empowerment and that progress from 1950 to current. And that's really what we had the opportunity to do with nine hours and nine parts.

I want to start a little bit with Red Arabac because I think he's obviously a legendary figure in the NBA, but I think his story is such a fascinating one because his project was so radical. I know it's easy to kind of dismiss that now, but like here's this Jewish guy from Brooklyn, okay? I think folks got to kind of understand. In 2024, we think of Jewish Americans

especially in the terms of the racial whatever we want to call it as white people. In 1950 they were not. Okay. That's just not how American racial society worked, right? And so here's this Jewish guy from Brooklyn. And, you know, he gets to Boston, which obviously has this very long and fraught racial history. And he's like, look, man, I'm going to. to build the blackest team in the league.

And I'm going to win. It's not just like, oh, I'm doing, because folks got to understand, like, great things can happen for not the most altruistic reasons, right? His whole thing was like, I'm going to get the best players, and many times those players are going to be black. And so be it. I just think that's just a fascinating person to trailblaze this in this city having his background.

Oh, absolutely, was. I think, you know, what you're touching on, again, that early foundation of Red Hourback coming to Boston, you know, we had the privilege of meeting and interviewing, spending time with his two daughters, Nancy and Randy Hourback. And, you know, I thought it was important to kind of understand in the same way that we also spoke with Karen Russell, we spent time with her, understanding that Red and Russell, are the foundation. It all starts with them, right? And I understand Bob Coosie, and I don't want to take anything away from him as well, but they're the founding fathers. And I found it so fascinating the relationship that they have

and that they developed. You know, the fact that, like you said, there was no Red, everything that we understood about him in our research, speaking with Nancy and Randy, the way that Red raised them was about, the individual, about the character of the person. And that, you know, it sounds idealistic.

It sounds in some ways a little cheesy, but it's not. Like, it was real. And I felt that just in the time that I spent with Nancy and Randy, just how much, you know, these players are part of their family in a way. We had the opportunity to get Karen Russell and Randy Hourback. They're great friends. We shot a scene with them. Karen came to Randy's house.

They sat across from one another at the kitchen table just talking about how much respect their fathers had for each other, the relationship that they had. And it was really beautiful to see that that carried on today. And they helped each other after their fathers passed away. Like Karen talks about Randy helping her go through that grieving process. So, you know, I think you can't tell the story of the Celtics without red. You just, I mean, it was something we knew from the very beginning. We wanted to try to understand what was his moral character. What were the things that he instilled in his players and messages that you read about and hear about?

How true do those ring for the men that actually were coached by him? And with a resounding overwhelmingly, you know, that came through in the interviews that we conducted. and in the stories that, you know, were shared with us. Yeah. So obviously Red is the architect. And then there's Russell who, you know, for my money, even today, I still think he's probably one of the five greatest basketball players who's ever lived. Like, he's on the level of Jordan.

He's on the level of Kareem and Magic and LeBron. Like the resume kind of speaks for himself. And he is a kind of singular figure in NBA history in terms of like what this guy. is doing on the court, the people who he's associating himself with off the court, which are, you know, civil rights leaders and community leaders, et cetera, et cetera, and putting himself in like, man, this shit was dangerous to do. Like, you know, look, I got respect for people who do activists work now, but like, it's just not the same stakes in terms of losing your livelihood or even losing your life

to do this. I just think he's just such a singular figure in the story of the league and the story of the country for having married those two things in this specific city at this time. I just think that's, you know, it's just kind of a lot to try to explain that truth with some level of nuance and care. Yeah. And another thing that, you know, beyond his activism, that I do think, like even in our our research, we were able to, you know, get our hands on a lot of information, reading, research, things that about the work that he did in the communities in and around Boston, you know,

even after Medgar Evers' murder, he was in, you know, hosting camps in Mississippi. And these are things that are documented. What we found wasn't as widely known was his impact in the black neighborhoods in Boston, specifically Roxbury and Dorchester. I mean, we went back to Slade's Bar and Grill, which was a black-owned, still is to this day, a black-owned establishment in Roxbury. And this is a restaurant that Bill owned at a time in the 1960s. And we took Satch Sanders back to Slade's Bar and Grill. And Satch was talking about the significance of Bill owning a black-owned restaurant in Roxbury. what that meant to the community, to have him there, like, interacting, engaging.

He was hosting a jazz radio show every Sunday that, again, no one talks about this, you know, there's always this kind of like negative experience and kind of relationship. And I understand that is absolutely part of his experience in Boston was fraught with racism and, you know, barriers that he had to fight through and busts. through. But there was also a lot of black joy and, you know, excellence in what, so I just feel like

that is, that was fascinating to us as well that that part of Bill's relationship with the city of Boston is often not talked about. And that was really, that was cool for us. We got to talk about the city itself here too, because obviously

the fabric of the city, the sort of class politics, the power politics that gets so intertwined in a city like Boston. You know, just up front, like I have some Boston roots in the sense that I have family from there. You know, I'm a Haitian American myself. There's a pretty huge Haitian community in Boston. One of my closest friends in life has been living in Boston since after college, right?

So I've been going there pretty much since 2007 or eight. 2008 on and off all the time to visit to hang out, all of that stuff. And, you know, it's obviously different than the 1960s and 70s. But, you know, I'm talking to a buddy out there, and he's from Southie. He's from the projects. And he's like, yo, the reality is when people are talking about racist Boston, they're talking about Southie. They're talking about my neighborhood.

They're talking about a lot of the people that I grew up with when it comes to the busing, riots, and all of that kind of stuff. I just want to know, you know, how you sort of perceived how the many sides of Boston come together to embrace this team that's delivering so much joy. Yeah. I think from the outset, one of the key questions that we had, and it was a question on almost every interview list that we conducted, why does Boston have the perception of being a racist city?

It's just it's the elephant in the room. Like every interview that we did, it's like you're kind of, why skirt around it? Let's just ask the question and see what people say. And what we did discover is that the 1970s and the images from busing and what that did to the city, seeing black kids on buses and white parents throwing rocks at the windows. The violence that was ensuing and erupting everywhere in the city has left a stain that generations later it still stands. We were asking that question, and we had multiple people who were trying to describe

the image of a picture that they could remember of a white teenager with the American. can flag striking a black man in city hall plaza in Boston. That one image, which I'm sure you know, you're shaking your head, Dr. Ted Landsmark, who's the man in the image, the Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Stanley Foreman. We interviewed both of these individuals. We actually went through the photographs and talked to them about those experiences, you know, and how that has shaped the perception of this city. I think that was as much as I don't want it to be reductive, that busing is the only reason. There are obviously other comments,

LeBron James calling, you know, Boston racist as, you know, I don't know if this is censored, but, you know, Marcus Smart talked about after the game, you know, where a woman called him the N-word as she's crossing the road wearing his, her son's wearing his jersey. He talked about that in the player's tribune.

Those stories do carry. And even when you ask Jason Tatum, and I sat down with him and asked him of that same question. Why is there this perception? And he said, the only thing that I knew about Boston before I came here was the Celtics, Bill Russell, and racism. Like, those were the only kind of, just on a blanket, kind of, this is what is spoken about in circles. This is what is talked about. The experiences where black people don't feel welcome in the city. So I think really was we had to confront that question.

allow the interviewees, the people that we spoke to the characters of this film to actually speak to it and not kind of speak around it. Also not claimed to be the authority. I mean, this obviously was a documentary that is about the Boston Celtics, but you can't tell it without addressing, you know, what are the truths? Where is, where does perception meet reality? Is it fair? Is it unfair? Is it earned? Is it not earned? Those were the questions we grapple with. throughout the film that you'll see. Yeah, and, you know, I don't want to dwell on this, but I think it's important to say

because I'm a New York City native, and New York, obviously, has this reputation of this bastion of progressivism and artistry and blah, blah, blah, and the village and CBGB and all that. And all of these things are true. Like, all of these things actually happened. But so did, you know, Central Park Five. Like, so did the subway vigilante, right?

Like, if you go to neighborhoods in 1970-something, you tried to bus kids into Bensonhurst or Howard Beach, like, I promise you. It would have looked exactly like Boston. And I don't say that to put a cape on for Boston. It's just the reality of, you know, where the country's been and where it's going. And, you know, I'm somebody who thinks that progress has been made on the racial front in many ways. I think it's hard for a lot of black people to admit sometimes that things aren't as bad as 1965. I think things are better in terms of racial harmony and relations. And I think if you go to a city like Boston today,

I think you will see a lot of that, to be honest, not to get all kumbaya up in here. No, it's true. And I mean, even, you know, in 1976 when the Celtics won, you know, their championship and they were celebrating on City Hall Plaza. And you see everyone in the city coming out, black, white, everybody was together rallying and unified by this team the same thing happened in 1981 after bird got his first title like it unified you know again kumbaya it feels like

it's a little corny to say but we have to recognize that it did it united people i mean that's the reality of it ted landsmark had been attacked two months later they played in the 1976 finals, he was watching at home on TV with the bandages on his face, and it gave him a source of healing. It was uplift for him because as a Celtics fan, it was about unifying the city. And he was glad that the city had that moment after the images that we all saw of violence, protests, you know, segregation, just division in the city. So yeah, there are some examples that we were able to kind of show that, that healing, that unity that the Celtics were able to bring to the city.

I just had to say that, because, you know, there's going to be folks that's saying that we got, like, crystals on our desk and we burn in sage while we talk about racial harmony. But I think it's important to point stuff out when things get better. You mentioned Larry Bird, who, for me, is, like, he's just a fascinating figure. Just a couple of things on that. I know for a fact, he is a reclusive dude. very, very hard to get. The fact that you guys got him to be involved in this,

I think it's a bigger deal than people are going to realize. Some people are going to say, well, it's a Celtics documentary. Of course he participated. This dude doesn't talk to people. He doesn't do media. So I think it's really cool, one, that you guys got him. But two, I think like Russell,

I think his greatness sometimes gets lost to the time. To my mind, him and magic ushered in the modern NBA. Like the NBA that we know today, was birth under those guys's greatness and the stuff that they put on the court. What was it like getting to get together with Larry and him like sort of bridging that gap, you know, from the 70s and 60s? Oh, yeah. It was huge, like you said.

I mean, in the beginning, as we were setting out on this journey, like, we weren't sure we were, we didn't know how we were going to get Larry. We didn't know what it was going to look like. Would he even consider it? I have to give credit. Jackie McMullen is a consulting producer on this project. Jackie Mac is a homie. She's the best.

Yes, she's the best. She has a great relationship with Larry, as you know. And yeah, I mean, she is the reason we got Larry in the chair. And she conducted that interview with him. Obviously, I was there. And it was amazing. I mean, he was open. He was open with us.

he was excited about it. He was in good spirits that day, which was great. Love that. She hadn't spoken to him. He's a mercurial dude. Yeah, yeah. And you know what I thought that I walk away from that interview? And now it's mainly in episode six when we watched the series.

He was really open about, you know, the trials and kind of what he went through physically with his back, you know, being in traction. in just the physical breakdown. And I think Kevin McHale also was phenomenal. Robert Parrish, phenomenal, opening up about talking about watching Larry both at his peak and in his lowest moments, you know, and the moments that they saw him, you know, in horrific pain

and fighting through that. And it's really incredible because I have a new respect for Larry after spending time, you know, talking with Bill Walton, talking with Parrish, talking, you know, we were able to really get insight into what it was that he really endured throughout his incredible career. It was, we all see the highlights. We all know his greatness.

But greatness, it lies in how you deal with that, you know, adversity that was placed on him. A lot of it was out of his control. His body was failing. And I thought that was some of the most fascinating, you know, insights that we were able to get from Larry that Jackie, you know, I was. I credit Jackie with just an incredible job. And obviously you can't talk about Larry without talking about magic. And just the interest and excitement they brought to the game.

Again, folks got to understand this like, this tape delay stuff, it was real. A lot of NBA playoff games, finals games were not broadcast live. Like the idea that the NBA, if you told somebody to say 1978 that they would still be an NBA in the year two, many people would have laughed you out of the room. Like, I think people don't have an appreciation for the precarity of the league, the fragility of this existence, that this thing didn't have to work. Like, there were plenty of ways that this could have went so freaking sour. And by the grace of God, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson showed up and cultivated this rivalry. And I know we talked about Boston as a city itself,

but I love the kind of projection and the perception of L.A. and Boston when they're juxtaposed against each other. And you have Showtime and this idea of glitz and glam. And, you know, the blue collar Boston Celtics guys, right? Led by the Hick from French Lick. I, like, you know, I think that story is like, I know people like, oh, we tell it all the time.

Well, it's essential story. Like, you can't tell the story of the franchise of the league without talking about that rivalry. No, and we do go into depth, obviously, with that rivalry in episode four and five. And particularly in episode four thinking and presenting, you know, the league, like you said, the fragility of the league at that time in the early 70s was just, it was, you know,

it was essential. that they have stars like magic and birds. So it was, like you said, it's a critical part of the development and the evolution of the NBA. You know, and I misspoke. I said early 70s. I mean, the late 70s, early 80s was a very fragile time. And we document that. And we also talk about, you know, the, again, it dovetails right into the perception, right,

of the Celtics as a, quote, white team, you know, in the 80s. I mean, it was, like you said, led by. You have a black head coach, right? Casey Jones, Dennis Johnson, Cedric Maxwell, like you got Robert Parrish, but it was the Celtics were known as, you know, the white team. And we had some fun, I would say, with that. Like, because there were black Celtic fans that a lot of people don't know about. And we just explore just, again, how does that decade and that era shape, again, their perception, not only of the Celtics, but of the Celtics, but of the city of Boston and how, you know, Larry Bird was, you know, deemed the great white hope.

And that was something he never wanted, you know, and just exploring how he handled that. And what that really meant. And it's fascinating. It's really, it was a lot of fun. Guys, I love Larry Bird because he's real enough to be like, I found it offensive when they would put a white guy on me. You know, like, he's, and, you know, obviously this guy, he's, He doesn't come from money, right? Like, this guy is from a small town, you know, grew up hooping in his back.

This guy doesn't come from means. And there's something about him, man. It's like almost like a pool hall hustler vibe to him that he comes off as unassuming, but he wants to slip people's throats. It's like, I just think he's just an incredible figure. And, you know, in an honest moment, and I bet you every black basketball fan in the 80s would admit that Larry Bird was incredible. Like, you know, I know Isaiah had the thing where, oh, they're only giving it to him because he's a white boy.

And Isaiah likes to talk slick. But even in his honest moments, he knows that Larry Bird was incredible. Yeah. No, absolutely. And we do. We get into that as well in the film. And I just think, yeah, it's just such a fascinating study, like you said. It's more than just as, you know,

Bird as a figure. It's just, I think, the impact and where those ripples can be felt, I think are in places that you wouldn't expect them. You know, I'm not going to give too much away. But, yeah, we were very fortunate that, you know, to be able to tell the story with, you know, an icon like Larry Bird and everything that he represented to so many people. I mean, it was amazing, really. So, again, we're talking about, you know, first.

foundational NBA figures when it comes to Larry Bird, excuse me, Red Hourbag, Bill Russell, Cousy, Havlach, like these guys are foundational to the league actually being able to sustain itself and moving to, you know, now where, let's face it, the money is just ridiculous. I was talking to a buddy about All-Star Weekend and, you know, his company bought seats for clients. There were $5,000 a pop.

Like, who could even have? imagine something like that. But I'm getting off course. But I said all of that to say, like, these guys are legendary figures. And I think K.G. and Paul Pierce and, you know, Tatum and Brown and all these guys are legendary figures in their

own. But, like, you know, it could be easy to give them short shriffing compared to the people that we mentioned before. How did you guys ensure that these guys got their due for what they've done, you know, after the dark days of the 90s where, oh, Lord, have mercy.

Rest and peace. Reggie Lewis, like it was dark times for the Celtics. How did you make sure that the newer generation didn't get short shrift here? Yeah, they definitely didn't get shortchanged in this, this documentary at all. You know, what was unique that we knew going into this was that, you know, the decade of the 80s and 90s in the NBA has been documented. What really had never been told was the story of the 08 championship. team. Like the big three, the formation of the big three. Like, it's been told in bits and pieces,

but never fully, like, how did it come together? Why did it work so well? What was Ubuntu? How did Doc Rivers play into it? What did KG bring not only to the team, but to the city? What did he represent? There was so much that we explored, not to mention Paul Pierce's stabbing, coming back from near death. And playing every game of the season only a couple months after he had been inches of his life, you know, within inches of his life. That story had never been told. And so it was super, I mean, it was so important that Pierce got his due, that Garnett got to speak his truth,

that Ray Allen got to speak his truth on how everything went down. Oh, boy. And he did. Yeah, y'all better be ready for some spice, y'all, yep. There's some spice. Y'all better be ready for that. He got to speak his truth. And of course, like this new era, I mean, we were, we didn't know they were going to win

a bad 18, like going into this. I mean, you can hope. But no, I mean, and so it was just so ripe for us to be able to, even Joe Missoula, like sitting down and really just getting to the root of like what this means to him, what this job means to him, what the Celtics meant to him through his life. He grew up going to Red Hour, camp as a kid. I didn't know all that.

I knew he was, like, connected to the team. But I think we were able to, in episode eight and nine, and it's two solid hours of giving these guys their due. And really just, and again, stories that just haven't really been fully told. And I think we were hopefully able. I wish we had more real estate to do it. So KG, I want to definitely stay on KG a little bit because, like Larry Bird has a reputation

for being a bit of an icy dude. I think I've told this story before on the pot. I can't remember. But it was like Martin Luther King weekend. I'll never forget it was a Monday. And a friend of ours invited us to the Malibu Soho House, which is like, you know, you just can't get in. But this guy's a member, he was like,

yo, you guys can come spend the afternoon. we walk in and I make a leff and KG's just sitting there just chilling and he's talking to some lady and he gives me the meanest ice grill that you have ever seen in your life right? And I was just like, yo this is fucking crazy

KG is ice grilling me right now for no reason and then you know we gave him the head and on and he said yeah yeah what up and that was it but that's KG though right? Like he's an intense, he's an intense guy. And, you know, and I think if the sort of Boston Celtic self mythology or brand is to believe, KG as a person as a Hooper, pretty much embodies that shit through and through in terms of the insane dedication, the love of the game, the professionalism. Like, this guy would be willing to die to win.

Like, I'm not kidding. Like, willing to die to win. Just talk about putting him, like, getting his side of his Celtic story, man. Was, he was our very last interview. He was the last in the line. He was number 98. Yeah, we were trying for a long time. And just everything you said, we were like, I don't know.

I, you know, it was kind of like, is he on the fence? Are we going to get him? We finally got the. opportunity, went to his studio, went to his studio. I was, I would say I was probably the most nervous for that interview. I mean, it was that and I was like, I don't know about Danny Aange, maybe he's going to be, and Danny was amazing. KG is the most intense human being, intense, passionate, authentic. I mean, he walked in the room. He was larger than life. He was so ready. He was so prepared to talk about this time in his life.

all the emotions that came up for him during the interview. I mean, there were times was that he had his head down. He was, like, closing his eyes. He was, like, touching the figments of, like, the walls around him as he was remembering what this meant to him, this time, this journey with these guys that he played with that he loved and just how he embraced everything around him. It was palpable. Like, his intensity is so real.

and we were like at a point where we're like, okay, we only have like an hour and he was like, oh, no, no, no, we're going to keep going. And we went almost like three hours with Kate. I mean, he was telling every story. He was getting touched with every emotion. He's incredible. And I mean, just every person we interviewed,

whether it was Big Baby Davis, Ray, like, you know, Pierce, everybody got. Free my boy, big baby, man. Free my boy. They just gave, he's doing a bid right now. I know. I know. Free Glenn Davis, man. Glenn Davis, yeah, you will see Glenn Davis in episode eight.

But we were fortunate. He was a great interview. There's just so much heart and soul with that team, the chemistry. In a lot of ways, like the 86 championship team, when they added Bill Walton, it's like Jackie McMullen kind of likened it to, like, you know, you put like a vase of flowers on the table and it just brightens up the whole house. You know, everything feels different. That was Walton.

KG was like. that. I mean, it was, and nothing, I mean, Ray was incredible too, but it was, as we're talking about character and, like, what is the catalyst to kind of change something dynamically? It was KG. Every minute, whether it was, I mean, Doc was telling stories just about his intensity and practice. He'd be on the sidelines, pacing, going through the motions of everybody. Like, I mean, it's amazing. He's, I mean, what, what a gift it was to sit down with him. He was incredible. And I'm really excited for people to see him speak his truth, for him to tell these stories. You're going to laugh.

You're going to cry. He was great. He was great. He's the heartbeat. He really was. So, Lauren, I want to thank you for your time today. But before we get you out of here, and we're going to pretend that all the people who listen to ringer NBA aren't already locked into this and going to watch it anyway, like, we're going to

pretend like that's not the case. But why should, aside from everything we just mentioned, why should people, watch your movie. Was, I think I would say everything you think you know about the Celtics, you might not actually know. I think there is

truth in this film that I hope that we have shared. There is beauty. There is light. There is hope. There is tragedy. I mean, it is, you don't have to be a Celtics fan to watch this. That's the, I mean, it

really is, it's a human story about the heart and the character of, you know, men that for generations, you know, for decades, have created something that now we're seeing in the embodiment of what, you know, Jaylen and Jason

and Missoula and these guys have done bringing this 18th championship. It could all be tied back. And so, yeah, if you think you know, please watch. And I would love to see what people think after seeing and hearing the real story. Yeah. I mean, just to end it, you know, I live in Los Angeles now.

I move here like seven years. I kind of had an idea about who the Lakers are, what they mean to the community. But being here and actually sort of understanding that like these rich-ass enclaves of Brentwood and, you know, Bel Air and Beverly Hills and all of that don't really have. have a lot in common with something like East L.A. or South Central, but for the Lakers. And, like, that's kind of the magic of sports, like the ability to tie all of these disparate groups together into this unifying thing. And obviously, that's what the Celtics mean to Boston. And I'm so happy you guys are telling the story.

Like I said, on top of this, like billing them, they know what the hell they're doing. obviously if you've watched the previous stuff that they've produced, it's all excellent. And the way that you've poured yourself into this, I'm like really looking forward to watching this entire thing. I'm really excited. Thank you for being on with us today. Thank you so much, Was. I appreciate it.