Havlicek Stole the Pod NBA Basketball Podcast

The Boston Celtics have a new head coach in former Brooklyn Nets assistant Ime Udoka, and former Celtic big man Al Horford made his first appearance with the press after his trade back to the team from the Oklahoma City Thunder.

With all this in mind, we felt we needed to make an early podcast appearance to discuss some of the significant goings-on with the team, taking the temperature of the Udoka hire and talking through our excitement --and Al's -- for the return of Horford to the Celtics. In a week of significant change for the team, we just couldn't wait any longer to talk through some serious developments for Boston.

Listen to the podcast embedded below to get up to speed on the Celtics' new coach, Horford's fit in today's Boston roster and more with your usual hosts Justin Quinn, Alex Goldberg and Cameron Tabatabaie.

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While it might be an era many Boston Celtics fans would prefer to forget, the story of Kyrie Irving's exit to join a Brooklyn Nets superteam is a window into some uncomfortable truths about the city and a subset of the team's fans. And while certainly no stranger to self-created controversies through his communicative style and mercurial persona, there's still quite a lot of ties between the former Celtic and several contemporary Boston players. To simply focus on broken promises and over-the-top gestures in questionable taste misses much of a story about today's NBA and even the Celtics that should be told.

To that end, former Bleacher Report and Esquire editor Matt Sullivan wrote a new book detailing Irving's exit from Boston to form the Nets as we know them in the present, touching on how franchise icons like Bill Russell helped shape his decision to decamp. Sullivan's book, "Can't Knock The Hustle" also deals extensively with activism in light of the broader societal upheaval taking place as a backdrop to the so-called "Disney Bubble," which of course was inseparable from Jaylen Brown's activism and voice. Join us on a special episode of the Celtics Lab with your usual hosts Cam Tabatabaie, Justin Quinn, and Alex Goldberg. We take a deep dive into Sullivan's recently-released book, the stories behind it, and how it intersects with issues much bigger than basketball -- and be sure to stick around to the end of our conversation.

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Al Horford is a Boston Celtic again and Kemba Walker is now a member of the Oklahoma City Thunder, while Moses Brown -- the big from that team you probably hadn't heard of before he hung 21 points and 23 rebounds on the Celtics -- is also headed to Boston in a trade that took most by surprise in timing if not structure. Boston's first-round pick is headed to Sam Presti's ever-growing war chest while both teams swap second-rounders, and there's a host of things to discuss from cap implications to the fit of the players with plenty more in-between. To that end, we hosted an emergency Celtics Lab podcast with the editor of our sister site Thunder Wire, Logan Newman, along with our fellow USA TODAY family cap expert, Yossi Gozslan of HoopsHype. We talk all things Horford reunion, try to divine what our favorite UConn product will be doing in his new home, what this means for team-building in the short term and run the gamut of imminent concerns for the Celtics and the Thunder after this deal set the stage for the Brad Stevens era as Boston's team president. Listen to the podcast embedded above to get up to speed on the trade with your usual hosts Justin Quinn and Alex Goldberg -- and don't worry, Cameron Tabatabaie wasn't included in the trade, he just had the night off.

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Former NBA Finals MVP Cedric Maxwell helped bring two titles to the Boston Celtics, and played his career under a number of famed coaches of the storied franchise, so he knew a thing or two about the dynamics a coaching change can have on a team with title aspirations even before he tried his hand at the trade himself.

And now with the Celtics neck-deep in a coaching search, Maxwell has made a point to call for a person of color -- perhaps even a woman -- as the next head coach of the team he once carried on his back to win one of the 17 banners hanging in the rafters of TD Garden. We were lucky enough to have the Boston great join us on this most recent episode of the Celtics Lab, where we talk not only what sort of head coach Boston's front office ought to hire, but also the moves the team should make this critical offseason, the apparent lack of fight the team displayed at times last season, and a lot more.

 Join your usual hosts Justin Quinn, Alex Goldberg and Cameron Tabatabaie on this episode to get the low down on the Celtics shake-up from our special guest.

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With some time to have thought about both, it's time to reflect on the 2020-21 Boston Celtics and how the team's major front-office shakeup will affect its future. With longtime team president Danny Ainge stepping down from that role in favor of (then) head coach Brad Stevens, the Celtics have as much on their plate to work on as they have at any point in the last two decades. Head coaching searches, potential further moves in the front office, bringing back some players and perhaps shipping off others -- the list is truly ponderous when you get down to brass tacks. And we can't forget about the season that was given how much of an imprint it will have on everything moving forward! To that end we brought in two of our best experts on the landscape of the league and Boston's financial situation, Michael Scotto and Yossi Goszlan of HoopsHype. They join your usual hosts Alex Goldberg, Cameron Tabatabaie and Justin Quinn in sizing up the season past and how it shapes the needs of the Celtics in the present -- as well as what might be coming down the pike. There's a lot on this podcast to wrap your head around, and we'll go further in-depth on a lot of these topics as the offseason dictates, but let's all get our collective bearings after a tectonic shift of sorts within the wider Boston landscape.

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The Boston Celtics followed up a disappointing first-round exit at the hands of the Brooklyn Nets in the 2021 NBA playoffs with a truly major shake-up internally, easily the biggest set of changes the organization has seen in nearly two decades. The announcement of longtime Team President Danny Ainge's retirement and the elevation of Head Coach Brad Stevens to the position of Head of Basketball Operations not only radically transformed the Celtics organization at a critical moment for their aspirations of chasing an NBA-record 18th title. It also raised a host of questions about the future and direction of the storied franchise. Who will replace Stevens as head coach? Did Ainge make the right call? Is Stevens the right man to replace him, and who else might have been in the mix -- or perhaps should have been?

 In this episode of the Celtics Lab, we talk about the tumult currently in process within the organization and what we think about the future of the club under its new structure. Join hosts Cameron Tabatabaie, Alex Goldberg and Justin Quinn as they get down to brass tacks about the future of our favorite franchise in light of the earth-shaking news.

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Former Boston Celtics and current Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving poked the third rail of Boston sports ahead of his first appearance in front of fans since leaving the team in free agency by (rightly and justifiably) asking for a response from the fans coming to Games 3 and 4 free of casual racism. In asking the fans of his former team to 'keep it hoop,' he seemed to breach his own social contract by symbolically stepping on the Celtics logo at midcourt, which may or may not be in some way tied to a fan throwing a water bottle and (rightly and justifiably) getting arrested and banned from the arena for life. In this episode of the Celtics Lab, we take a quick look at those events and the general trend of terrible behavior around the league, and try and make sense of our thoughts on this complicated set of interrelated issues. However you feel about Irving's choice of symbolism after Game 4, the trend of how players in arenas are being treated is a problematic and highly visible phenomenon the NBA needs to find ways to address more effectively. We aren't sure if upping the ante with increasingly aggressive criminal charges is the answer, but ignoring the problem certainly isn't the answer either.

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When Boston Celtics fans were hoping for a distraction from the turd of a series their banged-up Celtics club was producing vs- the Brooklyn Nets in the East's first round, they probably weren't looking to get sucked into the city's sordid history of fraught race relations nor the reprehensible behavior sweeping the league at the moment.

But former Boston point guard Kyrie Irving said some things, and some well-respected Celtics said some things in response, and suddenly not just Boston but much of the NBA more generally is debating what ought to be done about fans acting like sociopaths in the league's recently reopened arenas. Joined by Off the Glass' head honcho and "Brooklyn Buzz" podcast co-host Nick Fay, we dive into some difficult but important basketball-adjacent issues on this episode of the Celtics Lab. With the NBA forging ahead in one of the most difficult years in modern history on a number of levels that affect fan engagement in live game action, it may be time to re-assess how the league and we as fans come together to enjoy sport. And things much bigger than it, while we're talking about it.

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prospects for winning even a single game of the matchup diminished, it would be easy to doom and gloom about the Boston Celtics' 104 - 93 loss to the Nets Saturday night. But despite the sting of defeat, there were a fair amount of positives to take from the contest -- and the potential for an upset win or two are still out there if with fewer chances to accomplish them. To take stock of what we saw and bring in an opposing view on the series, we invited the editor of our sister site Nets Wire to come on the Celtics Lab podcast, and to that end Ajayi Browne had plenty to say about the series so far. We get into Robert Williams III's big game, where the Celtics could have done better, and even take a look around the league's other postseason games to close things out. In a season of soured expectations and countless setbacks, there's been some real value in riding out the storm to see who has the chops to grow with the team moving forward.

Join your usual hosts Justin Quinn, Alex Goldberg and Cameron Tabatabaie for a deep dive into the positives -- really, there were some -- coming out of Game 1 against the Nets.

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Whether the Boston Celtics win or lose their play-in tournament game against the Washington Wizards, it's safe to say it won't affect the legacy of recently-inducted Hall of Fame Celtics legend Kevin Garnett. So in the spirit of sports positive inspired by friend of the pod the Riffs Man, we decided to take a break from focusing on the season at hand to pay homage to KG's career in the week of his induction to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. We are joined by special guest Sopan Deb of the New York Times, who talks all things The Big Ticket with us after penning an account of the start of Garnett's career. We even try and prognosticate what might be coming down the pike in the coming offseason for the Celtics. Join hosts Cameron Tabatabaie, Alex Goldberg, and Justin Quinn as we honor KG in this most recent episode of the Celtics Lab.

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