It’s been 16 years since the Celtics won the NBA title. What were current players up to back in 2008?
On average, the players on this year’s roster were around 11 years old the last time the Celtics won an NBA title.
For the most part, the NBA is a young man’s game.
According to the league’s annual survey of opening-night rosters, the Celtics were the 10th oldest team this season, with an average age of 26.7.
That means, on average, the players on this year’s roster were around 11 years old the last time the Celtics won an NBA title.
There are, of course, exceptions. The team’s youngest player, rookie forward Jordan Walsh, turned four that March. Al Horford was 21, helping the Hawks push the Celtics to seven games in the opening round of the playoffs. Jrue Holiday, who grew up in Los Angeles and rooted for the rival Lakers, had just finished high school.
Coach Joe Mazzulla was in college back then, having just wrapped up his second season at West Virginia.
So, where were these Celtics the last time the franchise won a title? We polled the locker room, and here are some of the stories we heard.
Al Horford
Horford was in Atlanta getting ready for a trip to visit family members in the Dominican Republic when the Celtics clinched the 2008 title. He averaged a double-double in the opening-round series against Boston, playing a team-high 39.6 minutes per game.
“The second half of my rookie year, making it to the playoffs, that was a really big deal for us in Atlanta at the time. Taking the champs to seven games, that was special,” said Horford.
Horford’s game was different back then. He did not attempt a 3-pointer the entire series. The work he put in to transform his skill-set helped give him the longevity to still be in the hunt for his first title at age 38.
If he could tell the 2008 version of himself one thing, it would be to not feel so discouraged after losing to the Celtics. It was the first of many playoff battles he would experience during his career.
“For me, it was very hard,” Horford said. “I’m such a competitor. I just felt terrible and I just think not to be so discouraged and continue to work and things will eventually work out for you.”
Jrue Holiday
Holiday was the fourth-highest ranked college basketball recruit in the nation by ESPN, ahead of future all-stars Demar Derozan, Kemba Walker, and Draymond Green.
He decided to stay close to home and play for UCLA.
“I remember one, graduating high school, which is an accomplishment,” Holiday said. “And then going to UCLA, which was like twenty-something minutes from my house. It was just like the start of college and all the things that come with it, so that was a cool time.”
Holiday met his wife, two-time Olympic gold medalist soccer star Lauren Holiday, at a women’s basketball game while at UCLA. He also made the Pac 12 All-Freshman team and was selected No. 17 by the 76ers the following year.
Payton Pritchard
The sight of Kevin Garnett screaming with joy after capturing the title made an impression on Payton Pritchard, who was 10.
“I just remember KG, after he won, doing the interview after where he was shouting out to his kids and stuff like that, going crazy,” Pritchard said.
Pritchard remembers playing a variety of sports in Oregon, where he grew up. He enjoyed football, basketball, and baseball equally, but eventually focused on basketball in high school.
Luke Kornet
Luke Kornet’s family had just moved to the Dallas area about a year-and-a-half before. He spent his middle and high school years there.
He was a few weeks away from turning 13 at the time of the championship parade.
“Honestly, probably in the summer it was just playing outside with my siblings,” Kornet said. “We would go around and play basketball and swim quite a bit, and doing summer reading. That’s what that looked like. Yeah, a lot of summer reading.”
At 5-foot-10, Kornet had yet to experience the growth spurt that would eventually turn him into a 7-footer.
“That wasn’t until like basically my senior year. I was late,” Kornet said. “So I definitely still had a beautiful high singing voice then and I had quite a few years before I was physically maturing. Nowhere close to dunking, that’s for sure.”
Kornet said returning to Dallas to play the Mavericks in the NBA Finals feels both cool and weird.
“I think, going back there, it’s always cool to go back and see some friends and stuff like that,” Kornet said. “But, obviously it’s a little different than coming around with just a regular season game. It’s definitely a weird moment in life where you look up and it’s pretty cool that you’re able to be in that situation.”
Sam Cassell
Assistant coach Sam Cassell is the only person on the Celtics coaching staff who played on the 2008 title team.
Being on that team made the final season of his 15-year NBA playing career a “hell of a ride,” he said.
“It was like a bunch of crazed animals,” Cassell said. “We were just a vicious team. We were a physical team. We didn’t take no [expletive] from no one.”
Cassell continued: “We were tough, man. We were just tough from Eddie House to [Kendrick Perkins] to Kev [Garnett], to [James] Posey to PJ Brown. I left Tony Allen off there and he might’ve been the toughest guy on our team, you know what I’m saying?
“It was a bunch of different characters that bonded together to have one main goal. If you were playing 20 minutes, or four minutes, the four minutes you got, you played to the fullest. When you came out the game, no matter who it was, if you look back at that team I think we cheered for each other more than any team I’ve been on in my life.”
The goal of bringing a championship to Boston remains the same in 2024, Cassell said.
“If they ask [about 2008], they ask. But this is their journey,” Cassell said. “I’m on board with their journey. My journey is in the record books. They’re trying to put their journey in the record books.”
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