Top Five Boston Celtics Teams of All-Time

The National Basketball Association’s most successful franchise, the Boston Celtics, has existed since the league’s founding.

Since 1946, the Celtics have missed the playoffs fewer times than they’ve won the NBA Finals. Seventeen championship banners hang from the TD Banknorth Garden’s rafters.

The history of this basketball organization is fitting for the team that hails from the sport’s founding state.

Boston is the only North American professional sports team that can boast eight consecutive championships, and the team also won 10 out of a possible 11 during one stretch.

From 1956-86, the Boston Celtics’ championship percentage was .533. For three decades, the Boston Celtics won more championships than the rest of the league’s teams combined.

These are statistics that even Tiger Woods cannot touch.

So how do you possibly rank the top five Celtics’ teams to ever walk onto the parquet?

First of all, it’s pretty clear you need to narrow things down a bit. If you eliminate the years where the Celtics failed to make the playoffs, there are still 47 candidates to choose from.

There aren’t many professional sports franchises where one can stipulate a championship as a requirement for a season ranking in the top five. This, however, is exactly what must be done to narrow the potential candidates down to a workable list of seventeen.

Although there were many impressive Celtics squads over the years that fell short of the game’s most prized award, the ultimate goal of any professional sports team is to win its league’s championship. So for that reason, the field has been narrowed to the aforementioned seventeen Boston teams.

Let’s begin the rankings:

#5: 1980-81 Season

Regular Season Record: 60-20
Finals Record: 4-2
Finals MVP: Cedric Maxwell

1980-81 marked the Celtics’ return to the top after a five-year hiatus. This matched the longest championship draught in the Celtics’ history (to that point) since Boston raised its first banner.

This team ushered in almost a decade of exciting basketball that reintroduced the NBA to America (and this time it stuck). Without teams like the ’80-’81 Boston Celtics, it could be argued that Magic, Michael, Shaq, and Kobe might have had it much harder than they ever did.

For Magic and the Los Angeles Lakers, the Boston Celtics offered the ideal foil at a time where a vicious rivalry was just what the nation thirsted for from professional basketball.

Jordan, O’Neal, and Bryant (as well as others) were able to continue to build off of the teams like this one that captured America’s interest during the rise of basketball’s wonder years before overexpansion and overspending watered down the league and player efforts.

#4: 1983-84 Season

Regular Season Record: 60-2
Finals Record: 4-3
Finals MVP: Larry Bird

Although this team has an identical regular season record to the ’80-’81 squad and took a game seven to defeat Magic’s Lakers, it is a slightly more mature and well-rounded team.

Larry Bird had fully come into his own, and this proved to be one of the essential battles versus Magic Johnson in the Celtics-Lakers’ increasingly heated rivalry.

#3: 1964-65 Season

Regular Season Record: 62-18
Finals Record: 4-1

The ‘64-‘65 Boston Celtics were arguably the greatest of the Russell-era squads. From starters through the last members of the bench, this was the best group that Red Auerbach ever had the opportunity to lead.

Statistically, this crew finished with the third best regular season win percentage. With a team featuring the game’s most successful team player in addition to John Havlicek, Tommy Heinsohn, and Sam Jones, it would be difficult to not name this team among the top three in Celtics’ history.

And who could ever forget one of the legendary calls in all of sports: Johnny Most's "Havlicek stole the ball!"?

#2: 2007-08 Season

Regular Season Record: 66-16
Finals Record: 4-2
Finals MVP: Paul Pierce

The greatest single season turnaround for any NBA franchise was achieved during the most recent championship year. The additions of Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, James Posey, and Eddie House helped transform Boston from the second-to-worst team in the league to possibly the greatest defensive team since the NBA-ABA merger.

The biggest difference between this group and the greatest Celtics team of all time was the difficulty the ’07-’08 team had in road games throughout the playoffs, which lead to an extraordinarily lengthy championship run.

#1: 1985-86 Season

Regular Season Record: 67-15
Finals Record: 4-2
Finals MVP: Larry Bird

The ’85-’86 Boston Celtics deserve their own wing in the Basketball Hall of Fame. Larry Bird, Robert Parish, Kevin McHale, Dennis Johnson, and Danny Ainge led the most talented starting five to ever step on a basketball court. Every night a different player would come up in the clutch offensively or defensively.

There was no single trick to defeating the Celtics. Hell, Bill Walton was the sixth man! Sporting a 40-1 home record during the regular season, it took a formidable Houston Rockets team to push the Finals to six games.

It is unlikely in the era of salary caps, overexpansion, and free agency that such a team will ever be reconstructed.