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
Original Celtics fourth place, while first-half winner Cleveland slumped badly to fifth place. Cleveland’s fall was precipitated by the hasty mid-season departure of star Honey Russell, who was exiled to Chicago after a disagreement with team owner Max Rosenblum. The Celtics easily disposed of the weakened Cleveland team in three straight games to take the ABL championship. In 1926, the American Basketball League, developed by sports entrepreneur George Preston Marshall, effectively railroaded the team into joining its ranks by prohibiting member teams from playing against them. The Original Celtics responded by winning the next two ABL titles. During their first full season