It’s time to give the modern Blackified Celtics some love

Black people, it’s okay to like the Boston Celtics. It’s not the 80s anymore. They used to symbolize the whiteness of the NBA, but they aren’t any longer a white-on-white team. It’s okay to let go of hate. You are free.

I understand where the initial feeling of black hatred towards the Celts got here from. In the Nineteen Eighties, the Showtime Lakers, starring Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, were a particularly black team. Not only when it comes to personnel, but additionally the form of play. Their fast attack and Great passes from Magic it felt like they took a ball from the playground and raised it to the highest level. They looked like what improvised jazz might appear to be if it were in some way transformed into basketball. These guys were cool and the way they played was cool. In the Nineteen Eighties, their most important enemies were the Boston Celtics.

In the Nineteen Eighties, the Celtics were led by Larry Bird, certainly one of the best white players of all time and doubtless the best player of all time who couldn’t jump. Bird’s team played a more fundamental brand of basketball, so there was an obvious stylistic clash with the jazzy Lakers. I mean, Bird was proof that white people cannot jump, and he still burned teams. If you were black and you really liked basketball, you really liked the Lakers and also you hated the Celtics, regardless of where you lived.

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Well, not in every single place actually. I grew up in Boston. It’s not my fault – my parents decided to move there before I used to be born and didn’t ask if I agreed. I used to be not. Whatever. My dad grew up in New York and was an enormous Jackie Robinson fan, but after many years in Boston, he fell in love with the Celtics. Sometimes other black residents of Boston would ask him if he liked them. Dad reminded them that the Celtics were the first team in the NBA to draft a black player… Chuck Cooper in 1950. They were first NBA team to have an all-black starting five. And in 1966 they did Bill Russell the first African-American head coach in skilled sports. For much of the Nineteen Eighties, once they were led by Larry Bird and Kevin McHale, their coach was black Celtics legend KC Jones. Dad loved to say that the Celtics had black people taking good care of the white people, unlike other teams like the Lakers where the white man took care of the black people prefer it was a plantation. When he said this, people didn’t understand how to react.

I say all this to say that the Celtics’ popularity as an all-white team isn’t accurate. But that was an extended time ago too. The nature of teams changes over time, and the Celtics have been very black over the last 20 years – this was the team that gave you Paul Pierce, Antoine Walker and Kevin Garnett, three of the most fraternal brothers in the history of dribble.

The Celtics’ current core group could be very black. They are hosted by Jayson Tatum of St. Louis and Jaylen Brown of Atlanta. They have a black coach, Joe Mazzulla. If we actually need to root for all Black people, and the Celtics are truly Black, and the Lakers are in Cancun, then why not give some love to today’s Blackified Celtics?