Recycled Columns

Shank's written variations of this column at least three times now...

Picking Paul Pierce first in an all-time Celtics draft is an easy second-guess

It was a great idea in the middle of our gameless, COVID-19 spring/summer. Globe Celtics beat guy Adam Himmelsbach suggested we produce an all-time Celtics draft. Choosing from 75 years of a franchise that produced 17 championships and more than two dozen Hall of Famers, five Globe scribes had a chance to assemble their own teams. Himmelsbach, NBA columnist Gary Washburn, self-described Celtics honk Chad Finn, de facto NBA commissioner Bob Ryan, and yours truly had a chance to build our own teams in a Zoom draft.

We Zoom-gathered on the evening of Monday, June 29. We’d had a week to study the rules and prepare our depth charts. But we did not yet know the draft order.

After our official Globe Draft Ping-Pong balls fell into place, our commissioner, deputy sports editor Scott Thurston, informed us that Wash would be picking first. Then me. Then Chad. Followed by Himmel and Ryan. It was a snake draft, so Ryan would get picks 5 and 6.

Swell.

Knowing I was going to pick second made it easy. Wash would of course select Bill Russell or Larry Bird, and then I would start my team with the one he didn’t take. I was hoping he’d go for Bird. Russell was clearly king of the hill, cream of the crop, top of the heap, and A-number one.

And then it happened. With the first pick in the Globe’s 2020 all-time Celtic draft, Gary Washburn selected . . . Paul Pierce.

You know the rest, don't you?