Did this really exist?

February 5, 2011 10:33 AM

Does anyone remember a Boston Celtics poster from the 80's featuring only the white players?

I seem to remember this poster but can't find anything about it online. Was it as racist as it sounds?

posted by DTHEASH1 to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (3 answers total)

I kind of doubt that there was a poster featuring only the white players - it would have struck pretty much everyone short of a white supremacist as questionable at best if the poster included people like Greg Kite and Jerry Sichting but excluded Robert Parish and Dennis Johnson.

I don't find it terribly unlikely that there may have been a poster that included three and only three players, and those players were Bird, McHale, and Ainge. I wouldn't necessarily see such a poster as racist, as there are lots and lots of posters made, with different combinations of players, and those three were unquestionably three of the five who were considered stars, though obviously Ainge to a lesser degree than Bird and McHale.

In any case, all of the actual posters that I can find with three and only three of the classic mid-80s Celtics on them are the so-called "Big Three" - Bird, McHale, and Parish.

The only common combination other than that seems to be all five stars - Bird, McHale, Parish, Johnson, and Ainge.
posted by Flunkie at 11:15 AM on February 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

Maybe you're thinking of a photograph rather than an official poster. There's this photo of Danny Ainge, Rick Carlisle, Larry Bird, and Bill Walton, with the championship trophy in 1986.
posted by amyms at 1:41 PM on February 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I really think it was a poster. The reason I think this is because I grew up in New York, not Boston, and it was a popular poster in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. Perhaps for this reason. The poster proudly showed either 5 or 7 white guys from the Celtics and made a comment about how that was a lot if white guys for an NBA team. In any case, I don't know who the 7 may be. The 5 could be Ainge, Bird, Mchale, Jim Paxton (John from the Bull's brother), and I can't remember. But the point of the poster was "look at this team that still has a lot of white guys.
posted by DTHEASH1 at 6:35 PM on February 5, 2011