Celtics City, which debuted Monday on HBO and Max, is a nine-part, nine-hour docuseries telling the entire history of the Boston Celtics franchise.
Produced by reuniting 30 for 30 co-creators Bill Simmons and Connor Schell, and directed by Lauren Stowell, the film is an ambitious project, exceptionally and professionally put together, with access to just about all of the crucial living people, all necessary archival footage of games and interviews, and no fear about delving into negative or uncomfortable subjects. And considering the nine-hour running time, space was no object either.
It’s a very good series, capably put together by its creators, although there’s not a ton of new information, and whether it will appeal to those who aren’t major Celtics fans, or a students of NBA history is a whole other question.
A lot of this stuff has been told in documentary form before. There have been multiple docs about the Lakers/Celtics rivalry, and Magic vs. Bird specifically, and about the life and death of Len Bias, and both Bill Russell and Bill Walton, who each had multi-part docs made specifically about them in the last couple of years, although there wasn’t much Celtics in The Last Dance, aside from Larry Bird being on the Dream Team.
In Celtics City, the Celtics’ story is told in nine parts, obviously spending more time on the successful teams than the unsuccessful ones. The first two episodes are taken up by the dominant Bill Russell/John Havlicek teams in the 1960s, while Larry Bird’s era takes up the middle three episodes. Most episodes have a framing device built around the Celtics’ Jayson Tatum/Jaylen Brown championship team last season.
The Elephant in the Room
But Celtics City doesn’t avoid the negative. There’s a lot about racism, and specifically Boston’s often-earned reputation as a racist city, Russell’s sometimes difficult experiences there, and the reluctance of Black players over the years to want to sign there. There’s even a part up against the backdrop of the city’s busing crisis in 1975. I’d say the film is about 20 percent about racism, though if it had been made 2 or 3 years ago, it would have been closer to 30 percent.
There are also decent examinations of some of the franchise’s lowest moments, including the deaths of Len Bias and Reggie Lewis, the Ime Udoka scandal, and also merely some periods when the team was bad for a few years in a row.
The docuseries treats the team’s late ‘70s swoon like a long dark night of the soul, when only three years passed between the team’s 1976 championship and the arrival of Larry Bird. Fans of, say, the Clippers or Timberwolves might be amused by that.
But having lived in Boston at the time, I enjoyed how the series told the story of Rick Pitino’s disastrous tenure in Boston, even if there’s no mention of that murky 1997 rape case.
Familiar Faces
Throughout, it’s clear that the organization’s twin suns are Bill Russell and Red Auerbach. Auerbach retired from coaching in 1966 but remained general manager for decades after that, while Russell retired as player/coach in 1969.
But both remained major figures in the franchise’s past and also their present, until their respective deaths in 2006 and 2022. We see tons of archival footage and old interviews with both men. Russell, in one series of interviews — from, I believe, the ESPN SportsCentury documentaries in 1999 — is lit with a sort of golden glow, while Auerbach is rarely shown without a cigar. So pay attention, kids; if you want to live to age 89, smoke lots of cigars every day.
So yes, there is a lot of glory. The franchise has won 18 championships, and we see footage of just about all of them, including the banners being raised in the Boston Garden and TD Garden. And there’s a great deal of sociology, including repeatedly pointing out how much more blue-collar sports crowds were in the ’70s and ‘80s, as opposed to today.
And these stories are told by a large Greek chorus of different participants, journalists, and experts. We hear from just about every major living Celtics figure, including the 93-year-old Bob Cousy, while everyone no longer with us is presented in older interviews, including coaches, executives and owners. The doc includes at least one interviewee (Bill Walton) who has since passed away and at least one other (Glen “Big Baby” Davis) who presumably sat down with the filmmakers before he headed to prison.
Also included is Donnie Wahlberg, but I could have done without him, especially since he already served the “voice of the fan” role, along with Lakers representative Ice Cube, in 2017’s Celtics/Lakers: Best of Enemies.
Per the press release, here’s a list of everyone interviewed in the film:
Simmons, the longtime Boston homer columnist-turned-mogul who co-produced Celtics City, is shown with his father, telling old stories and even showing old T-shirts; this is way more effective than it sounds. There’s also a whole who’s who of relevant Boston sportswriters, including both Jack McCallum and Jackie MacMullan, while we see the old Boston Globe sports section all-star team of Bob Ryan, Dan Shaughnessy and Leigh Montville, sitting around on a porch.
And sure, the current incarnation of the Celtics aren’t quite as personality-driven as some of the teams of the past. But the doc does make the astute point that while the Celtics completely blew the end of the Bird/McHale era — not helped by two of their star young players suddenly dying — they absolutely nailed the end of their next one, trading Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce for the draft picks who turned into Tatum and Brown.
If you’re a fan of the Lakers or Sixers, you’re likely not going to have a good time watching Celtics City. But rooting interests aside, it’s a well-put-together triumph.
Celtics City airs on HBO and Max, on Monday nights weekly through April 28.
