Show notes
Dee Brown joins the show and opens up on a turbulent 90's decade in Boston. Brown is the lone Celtic that played Larry Bird and Reggie Lewis AND played for coach Rick Pitino.
In this episode, we begin in 1990, when a rookie Brown becomes a Celtic in the midst of a major transition for Boston. After winning three championships and making eight straight Conference Finals in the 80's, Boston lost in the first round in 1988 and 1989. Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish's championship window was closing, but a young phenom, Reggie Lewis, seemed ready to take the torch and define a new era. In 1991 and 1992, Lewis averaged 25 points per game in the playoffs and the Celtics won over 50 games each year.
But Boston's seemingly perfect bridge between the Bird and Lewis era suddenly collapsed in the summer of 1993. Lewis' 1993 season was cut short after he mysteriously collapsed in a playoff game. Shortly after the season, doctors cleared him, but as he was training at Brandeis University, he suffered cardiac arrest and died. He was just 27 years old.
In the years following Lewis' death, the Celtics tanked out. They failed to win over 35 games from 1994-1996, and in 1997, they went 15-67, by far the worst season in franchise history.
Enter Rick Pitino in the Spring of 1997, who was named the savior, but disaster would turn out to be the more accurate label. Midway through Pitino's first season as Head Coach and Team President, Brown was packaged in the infamous Chauncey Billups for Kenny Anderson trade.
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