Original Celtics Original Celtics The Original Celtics were a barnstorming professional American basketball team. At various times in their existence, the team played in the American Basketball League, the Eastern Basketball League and the Metropolitan Basketball League. The team has no relation to the modern Boston Celtics. The franchise as a whole was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1959. The team's roots lay in the New York Celtics team that disbanded during World War I. In 1918, James Furey assembled his own team around a nucleus of those truly "original" Celtics, adding other players mostly from the
History of the Boston Celtics The Celtics won two more titles in the 1970s under coach Tom Heinsohn, and three more in the 1980s under the leadership of forward Larry Bird. After a 22-year drought, the Celtics got their latest title in 2008. The Celtics were formed in 1946 as a team in the Basketball Association of America, and became part of the National Basketball Association after the merger of the BAA and the National Basketball League to form the NBA in the fall of 1949. In 1950, the Celtics became the first franchise to draft an African American player, signing Chuck Cooper. The Celtics