DHL Dan CLVII - The Hunt For Number Eighteen

Shank asks three veteran Celtics on the chances for this year's team to win it all:

Three Celtics champs — Bob Cousy, Dave Cowens, and M.L. Carr — weigh in on the chances for Banner 18, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while monitoring the southbound Red Sox equipment truck with my GPS tracking device …

▪ The Celtics have played almost two-thirds of their regular season, have the best record in the NBA, and are consensus favorites to win the NBA championship. We just saw them beat Brooklyn by 43 points, and they have a “big” game with Joel Embiid and the 76ers Wednesday on Causeway Street.

What do members of the Celtic family see when they watch this team run toward a possible record-breaking 18th banner?

Paul Pierce was here last weekend for Celtics-Lakers (LeBron James just finished crying about not getting a call at the end of regulation) and casually told our Gary Washburn that Jayson Tatum “could be the greatest Celtic to ever play.”

Whoa.

Get back, Loretta.

With this in mind, we rounded up Bob Cousy, Dave Cowens, and M.L. Carr to discuss these Celtics. Cousy and Cowens are two of only four Celtics ever named NBA MVP (Bill Russell and Larry Bird, who combined for eight MVPS, are the others). Cooz, Cowens, and Carr won a combined 10 championships. Cowens and Carr both coached the team, and M.L. was the boss of basketball operations a decade before Danny Ainge built the team that delivered the most recent banner in 2008.