Imagine wiping away the last five years of Boston basketball, all of it no Big Three, no Banner No. 17, no Ubuntu, no Kevin Garnett pounding his chest and the boards, no Ray Allen raining 3-pointers, no resurgent runs to the 2010 NBA Finals and 2012 Eastern Conference finals.
In exchange for forfeiting all of that you get the joy of watching Durant, already a three-time NBA scoring champion at the tender age of 23, author unadulterated greatness and evoke the zeal and zeitgeist of the Bird Era.
Durant and the Big Three are inexorably linked. It was losing out on the possibility of picking Durant (or Greg Oden) that gave rise to the Big Three in the summer of 2007.
The Celtics were an ignominious outfit during the 2006-2007 season, dropping a franchise-record 18 straight games. Pierce was unhappy and hurt, withering on the vine with the Celtics mired in a combination of immaturity and futility.
These Celtics were green in every sense of the word. If you've blocked out these dark days I have four words for you: Sebastian Telfair, point guard.
The one saving grace for the Celtics was that they finished with the second-worst record in the league and .
Five years later, the choice is a no-brainer, and it's easy to lampoon Portland for picking Oden No. 1. But back then it was hotly-debated. (Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge has always been a bit nebulous on whether he would have selected Durant or Oden. I have it on good authority that it would have been Durant.)
No one knew that Oden was the Benjamin Button of NBA centers and a direct descendant of Sam Bowie. Durant was a frail, lithe, scoring machine from the University of Texas who couldn't bench 185 pounds.
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