FOUR MONTHS before the season devolved unexpectedly into chaos, the extended Boston Celtics franchise gathered in a theater to celebrate yet another championship. I checked in at a small table and went inside, just a few blocks from the Brahmin church where Bob Cousy eulogized John Havlicek, and from the four-star hotel where Red Auerbach lived. I'd been immersed for months in the Boston basketball history lurking all around the city, no artifacts more wreathed in meaning than the living human beings who witnessed that history and, in a few cases, created it. Tonight's party was a high table meeting of those witnesses and high priests.
The Boston Celtics and the price of history
