Illustration by Maddison Bond.
The moment that will stay with me when thinking about Rajon Rondo’s season-ending ACL tear is watching Paul Pierce find out. After the Celtics pulled out a thrilling double-overtime victory over the Miami Heat in which Pierce’s triple-double was maybe the fifth-most notable thing that happened, he was given the bad news by Doris Burke. Everyone watching the game on TV, of course, already knew, and word of Rondo’s injury had traveled across the premises of the TD Garden (the great Jackie MacMullan has a must-read firsthand account of Rondo himself finding out). But it hadn’t worked its way to Pierce yet. So when Doris mentioned in her postgame interview that Rondo had suffered a torn ACL and would miss the remainder of the season, Pierce’s double-take was riveting television. He repeated the words “Oh my God” a couple of times and appeared completely at a loss for words. As anyone would be when given a piece of news like that on national TV.
For Pierce, it was heavier news than just the short-term implications of his Celtics losing their best and most important player. Boston’s playoff hopes are likely shot now, but not even Tommy Heinsohn had any illusions of this being a title team. With Ray Allen gone to Miami and trade talk swirling around Pierce for weeks, this season already had the feel of a final title push for old time’s sake. The Big Three era radically redefined Pierce’s place in history and shot the winningest franchise in NBA history back to relevance over a decade after Larry Bird’s retirement. And while their eccentric, inscrutable passing savant was not part of the Big Three in its original incarnation, it quickly became clear that Rondo was as key to the Celtics’ success as Pierce, Allen, or Kevin Garnett, if not more so. With Rondo’s injury, that period of history was over. It was a lot for Pierce to process with cameras shoved in his face, even if one could do a whole lot worse than being given this potentially career-altering news by Doris Burke.
Whether intentionally or not, the 2007-13 Celtics became the most important and influential team of the past decade. The concept of two or three superstars teaming up to gun for a title has been inescapable among the NBA’s upper class since that summer. The LeBron/Wade/Bosh Heat are the flashiest and most talented Big Three. The Melo/Amare Knicks are the most heavily scrutinized, simply by virtue of being the Knicks. Chris Paul and Blake Griffin teaming up with the Clippers was the most logical, because of the built-in, almost preordained Lob City firepower. This year’s Lakers pushed the concept past the breaking point and may wind up the most talented lottery team in NBA history.
But the Celtics were the first modern Big Three, and by most measurements the most successful. They were the least morally objectionable superteam because, unlike Pat Riley or Mitch Kupchak, Danny Ainge gave up actual value for the two superstars he brought in in 2007. Unlike Anthony and Stoudemire, Garnett, Allen, and Pierce had skillsets that fit together naturally. And unlike the Heat, there was no waiting period for the chemistry to develop. They won a title their first season together and came within a Garnett injury of contending again the following year. They pushed the Lakers to seven games in the 2010 Finals despite a Kendrick Perkins ACL tear. Two years after that, they were back in the Conference Finals. From day one, Garnett remade the team in his image through sheer force of personality. Since Ainge made the KG and Allen trades, the conversation about every roster, even non-contending ones, shifted towards identifying their Big Three. And after nearly six years, the run of the team that set the bar is ending the same way as two hopeful successors: with a devastating knee injury.
The Garnett and Allen trades came after the Celtics’ concerted effort to tank for one of the top two picks in the 2007 draft. The two teams ended up with those coveted picks both attempted to construct Big Threes of their own in an entirely different manner, using all homegrown talent. The then-Sonics took Kevin Durant second, and added Russell Westbrook, James Harden, and Serge Ibaka in subsequent drafts. Harden is gone, but the Thunder remain as good as any team in the league. The Blazers, meanwhile, had a potentially lethal, organically developed Big Three fall apart with repeated knee injuries to Brandon Roy and Greg Oden. Even setting aside the Oden-Durant what-ifs Blazers fans will never fully escape, the Roy/Aldridge/Oden core was supposed to be what Durant/Westbrook/Harden/Ibaka has become. They were done in by the same joint that has turned against Rondo and the Celtics.
The single most memorable playoff series the Big Three-era Celtics were involved in was the seven-game, overtime-packed first-round thriller with the Bulls in 2009. In part because of the hardening they underwent in that series, the Bulls developed into a legit contender over the following three years. Whether his 2011 MVP award was deserved or not, Derrick Rose, when healthy, is one of the best offensive players in the world, and certainly among the most exciting. Rose, Joakim Noah, Summer of LeBron consolation prize Carlos Boozer, and defensive workhorse Luol Deng became, under the guidance of basketball sociopath Tom Thibodeau, the East’s only serious challenger to the Heat. They, too, were halted by the devastating ACL tear to Rose that we’re all sick of seeing on that horrible Adidas commercial. Knee injuries suck.
The bad news about Rondo ended an illustrious period in Boston Celtics history, but it also brought an entire era full-circle and provided the worst possible kind of closure. Between the real-life Series of Unfortunate Events that is the 2012-13 Lakers and Rondo’s injury, the superteam as a concept feels at a crossroads. And the Celtics have been there at the beginning and the end.