Original Celtics

The Original Celtics, no relation to the equally famous Boston Celtics, were an outstanding barnstorming professional basketball team in the 1920's.

The team's roots lay in the New York Celtics team which disbanded during World War One. In 1918, James Furey reassembled his own team around a nucleus of those truly "original" Celtics, added other players mostly from the West Side of New York City, and defiantly called his new squad the Original Celtics. They initially played in various struggling professional leagues, before becoming primarily a touring squad which traveled up to 150,000 miles a year while completing a 150-200 game schedule. They won some ninety percent of their games, finishing one year with the unbelievable record of 193-11-1.

The team's first dominant player was "Dutch" Dehnert, a 6'1" center who some credit with introducing the modern concept of pivot play. When ballhandling wizard Nat Holman (later to coach national championship teams at CCNY) was signed to play for then-coach John Whitty in 1922, the Original Celtics hit their stride. Another "big man", Joe Lapchick, John Beckman and speedy Davey Banks were other outstanding individual players on these squads.

In 1926, the American Basketball League, developed by sports entrepreneur George Preston Marshall, effectively railroaded the team into joining their ranks, by prohibiting member teams from playing against them. The Original Celtics responded by so dominating the league in their first two seasons there that the league forced them to break up, and apportioned their players to the other teams. This strategy backfired, game attendance plummeted and, further deflated by the Great Depression, the A.B.L. folded after the 1931 season.

The Original Celtics briefly reorganized as a barnstorming team in the 1930's, but never duplicated their initial glory. They are often credited with extending the reach of basketball across America, and for instituting the importance of aggressive defensive play. As a group, the team was enshrined into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1959.

References

National Basketball Hall of Fame

"Illustrated History of Basketball" (1973), by Larry Fox