Sitting in a hotel lounge reminiscing with a reporter from the Boston Herald about the 1996-97 season, former Celtics head coach and director of basketball operations M.L. Carr called it “pure hell.”
It was the worst year in Boston Celtics history for a few reasons.
Unlucky Number 50
The NBA and by extension, the Celtic’s 50th anniversary season in 1996-97 started like a somber, but chill party.
One where you have a nice buzz going after a couple of drinks, but it quickly disintegrates into being shitface drunk, face-down on the pavement.
A 4-8 start to the season was the nice buzz and notching only 11 more wins over the remaining 70 games was the descent into the sunken place.
The one big difference is, the C’s downward spiral was not self-inflicted.
Three of the team’s top-five scorers from the previous season – Dino Rajda, Dana Barros, and Dee Brown, all played in less than 25 games due to injury. Team captain Rick Fox even commented that “they had like 9 guys who had surgery that year.”
This left a scoring void the size of Billy “The Whopper” Paultz’s dong needing to be filled.
Third-year point guard David Wesley and a rookie by the name of Antoine Walker did their best to take up the slack, but it wasn’t enough in most games. Where was Marty Conlon when you needed him?
Tanking for Timmy (Duncan)
M.L. Carr has publicly admitted that the 1996-97 season was a long-term play on the part of team management.
The play was being bad enough to hopefully land the first ping-pong ball in the draft lottery and select competitive swimmer turned basketball prodigy, Tim “Groundhog Day” Duncan with the first overall pick.
Unfortunately for the C’s, only one of these things happened.
Tim Duncan did get drafted first overall, but it wasn’t by the Celtics.
The Celtics are good again. Use code: COURT to get 15% off official leprechaun merch from the NBA Store.
Despite entering the draft with two first-round picks and thus, the best odds to win the lottery, the Celtics would end up with the 3rd and 6th overall picks.
The San Antonio Spurs, who finished just behind Boston with the third-worst record in the league in 1996-97 got the top pick…and drafted Duncan first overall.
Alas, all the cheap free-agent signings during the season to maintain the tank, after guys went down with injuries were for nothing.
To make matters even worse, the players the Celtics did draft – Chauncey Billups and Ron Mercer, they didn’t develop them and ended up trading both away over the next two seasons.
What would a big three of Chauncey Billups, Antoine Walker, and Paul Pierce have done if kept together?
The Death Threats
At one point, as the longest losing streak of the season reached thirteen games in March, the Southies in Boston started getting restless.
Coach Carr said he began receiving death threats in the mail…Celtics fans can read and write!? As well as the occasional racist call to his office that reduced his assistant to tears on one particular occasion.
Fortunately, Carr had developed a thick skin from playing nine seasons in the notoriously rowdy ABA and then the NBA in the 70s and 80s, where he heard a lot worse.
He also admittedly “never wanted to be a coach” and didn’t care about his reputation like someone who wanted to make a career out of it would.
It made a difficult season almost bearable.
The worst year in Boston Celtics history was followed by the hiring of Rick Pitino on one of the worst coaching contracts in NBA history and four straight years of missing the playoffs, the worst drought in franchise history.
At least they finished 1996-97 one game better than the Vancouver Grizzlies🏆
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