A History of the Celtics’ Greens
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Jeff Green, right, drove the ball against Tyson Chandler at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday.
By PETER MAY
Published: April 26, 2013
BOSTON — He holds the record for most games in a Boston Celticsuniform, for a player with the surname Green.
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Gerald Green in a 2007 game against Stephon Marbury and the Knicks.
Jeff Green passed Gerald Green on that fanciful career list this season (playoff games included). He also supplanted Gerald Green for most points scored in a game by a Celtic named Green (43.) Gerald’s Boston best was 33 points against Atlanta in April 2007.
Not that Jeff Green’s path to the Celtics was a simple one. A 6-foot-9 forward out of Georgetown, he was drafted in the first round by Boston in 2007 and traded the same day to Seattle in a multiple-player deal that brought Ray Allen to the Celtics. Nearly four years later, the Celtics reacquired Green, allowing him to become the fourth player named Green to play for a franchise known for its green uniforms and green mascot (a leprechaun) and occasionally known simply as the Green.
While Jeff Green is the most successful Green to wear Celtics green — this season he played in 81 games, averaging 27.8 minutes and 12.8 points — the most important Green in team history is probably Sihugo Green. It was not what he did in his 10 games with the Celtics at the end of his career in the 1965-66 season. It was the impact he had on the Celtics — and the N.B.A. — before he played a single game in the league.
Sihugo Green was a 6-2 guard out of Boys High in Brooklyn who played at Duquesne, where he was a two-time all-American. In 1956, the Rochester Royals had the No. 1 pick in the N.B.A. draft. Green was eligible. So, too, was Bill Russell, but he had an Olympic commitment that would delay his N.B.A. debut until December. He was also being pursued by the Harlem Globetrotters, who were said to be offering an outlandish sum: $25,000 a year.
Celtics Coach Red Auerbach craved Russell. He saw him as a transformative presence. He arranged for the team owner, Walter Brown, to promise the owner of the Royals that he could have Brown’s show, the Ice Capades, for two weeks if he bypassed Russell. The owner, Les Harrison, agreed; the ice shows, after all, were guaranteed money. Russell was not.
As a result, the Royals took Sihugo Green. He played two seasons for them, then bounced around, finishing up with the Celtics a decade later. He averaged 9.2 points a game in his professional career.
“He wasn’t much of an N.B.A. player,” recalled Tommy Heinsohn, who was also taken in the 1956 draft as the territorial choice of the Celtics. “He had all this hype because he came out of New York.”
Meanwhile, Auerbach swapped Ed Macauley, an All-Star, and the rights to Cliff Hagan to St. Louis for the No. 2 pick, which he used to select Russell. The Celtics won their first title that season and Russell won 10 more over the next 12 years.
In 1963, the Celtics, as the defending champions, had the eighth pick in the first round — it was then a nine-team league — and used it on a bruising, 6-6 forward from Colorado State named Bill Green. He was an all-American and had averaged 22.1 points and 9.6 rebounds in his three college seasons. But he had a phobia: flying.
He had flown on planes in his college days, but a couple of harrowing trips convinced him that he could no longer do it. After the Celtics drafted him, Green sought counseling, but to no avail. According to a 1986 article in Sports Illustrated, Auerbach agreed to allow Green to travel by train to an exhibition game in St. Louis. The catch was that Green had to fly back to Boston with the team. He could not do it.
“The fear had just built to a point where I couldn’t take it anymore,” Green told the magazine. “I wouldn’t do it.”
Bill Green never played for the Celtics or for any other N.B.A. team. He ended up in education, eventually taking a principal’s job in the Bronx, and died of a heart attack in 1994. He was 53. Two picks after the Celtics took Green in 1963, Baltimore drafted a future Hall of Famer, Gus Johnson.
Bill Green does not count as one of the four Celtic Greens. But Rickey Green does. He had a long N.B.A. career — 946 games — and started ahead of John Stockton in Utah in 1984-85, Stockton’s rookie season. But he was 37 when he joined the Celtics in 1991. They used him sparingly, and he reluctantly ended up on the team’s injured list in March with a phantom ailment so the team could activate Larry Bird.
The Celtics sent Green home to “recuperate” in his native Chicago. He soon received a call from N.B.A. security, wondering how his recovery was going. He did come off the injured list for a pair of games in March 1992, and was then waived. He never played in another N.B.A. game.
The fourth Green is Gerald Green, drafted out of high school by the Celtics in 2005. He was outrageously athletic, but had no idea how to play at the N.B.A. level. He won the dunking contest at the 2007 All-Star Game and was one of many chips used by Celtics General Manager Danny Ainge to acquire Kevin Garnett from the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2007.
Green has bounced around since then, including two years out of the league, but returned with the Nets last season and now plays for Indiana, his sixth N.B.A. team.
Finally, there is one more Green, or more accurately, a Greene, as in Orien Greene, who played 80 games for the Celtics in the 2005-6 season, averaging 3.2 points per game. But Greene isn’t Green. Or as Auerbach might have said: close, but no cigar.
