By Michael Letendre
After Monday, collegiate basketball will have concluded and that means the XL Center – the old Hartford Civic Center – won’t be seeing hardwood action by UCONN for quite some time.
But back in the day, the Civic Center used to be a hotbed of action for profession basketball action as well.
Starting in 1993-94, the city saw the Hartford Hellcats of the old Continental Basketball Association take the hardwood and did a good job filling up the Civic Center during its early years.
However, long before the Hellcats were created, the Boston Celtics made several visits to Hartford every year from 1974-1995.
And that meant fans, paying just $5 a ticket to start, saw the Cs play upwards of half-a-dozen games a season in Hartford as several NBA world championship squads competed in the Insurance Capital of the world.
The Celtics won titles in 1974, 1976, 1981, 1984 and 1986 and that meant a chance to see Dave Cowens, Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish, Dennis Johnson, the late Reggie Lewis and Eric Montross all compete under the banner of the green.
Overall, Boston played 66 regular season games in Hartford not including preseason showdowns.
The Celtics won its final two games in the city as the squad upended the Orlando Magic (119-117) on February 23, 1995, and then blew out the Detroit Pistons (129-104) on April 15 but never returned for another regular season contest again.
It cost the Cs $150,000 a game to play in Hartford and when the new Boston Garden – a.k.a. FleetCenter – was completed, it went rent free for the Celtics, making games in Hartford too expensive and impracticable.
Bird didn’t like the bus ride to Hartford either (he didn’t enjoy the sun in his eyes on the drive down from Boston).
Another reason for the Celtics leaving was that Hartford television market was opened up to the New York Knicks which drove Boston away from the city.
The only year the Celtics didn’t play games in Hartford during that stretch was in 1978-79 after the roof collapsed on the Civic Center due to a horrible blizzard.
The snow and ice from the storm over January 17-18 caused the cave in and Boston was forced to play those games in Springfield.
Only a rooftop failure drove the Cs away from Hartford back then.
Later on, the people that ran Madison Square Garden took over the Civic Center in the late 1990s and before the strike of 1998, the Celtics were going to play the Knicks in Hartford – with Boston as the away team in a weird quirk.
It would be 15 years before the Celtics came back to Hartford again, battling the Toronto Raptors in preseason action on October 13, 2009 (the Canadian National Anthem was played before the Star-Spangled Banner that night and I was able to sing along to both at the game).
Prices were a bit different than the $5 price tag from the late 1970s and 80s for the preseason game which started at $15 (and went up to $125).
For the record, Boston went 46-20 in Hartford over regular season action.
In the first ever Celtics’ regular season game in Hartford, Boston spun the Houston Rockets 123-101 on January 18, 1975.
In the victory for Celtics’ coach Tommy Heinsohn, Cowens went for 24 points, 17 rebounds and five assists to lead the guys in green.
Paul Westphal came off the bench for 17 points, four rebounds and six assists, Jo Jo White added 14 points, four rebounds and six assists, John Havlicek nabbed 14 points, five rebounds and three assists while Paul Silas came off the pine for 13 points and five rebounds.
Don Chaney and Don Nelson each added 12 points over the winning effort.
For the Rockets, Connecticut’s own Calvin Murphy nabbed 18 points, four rebounds and five assists before fouling out.
If you enjoyed the memories of the Celtics in Hartford, next week’s Sunday’s Sports edition will have more about the green team’s antics in Hartford with some more historical pictures.
