On this day in Boston Celtics history, champion shooting guard and penultimate team president of basketball operations Danny Ainge made his NBA debut for the franchise way back in 1981. A product of Brigham Young University, Ainge was a three-sport star in high school, where he was a first team All-American in football, basketball, and baseball, playing basketball with BYU and baseball professionally with the Toronto Blue Jays while still in college.
He would play for that team in Major League Baseball for three seasons before deciding to try his hand at basketball and was picked up with the 31st selection of the 1981 NBA draft by the Celtics.
Boston of course bought him out of his deal with the Blue Jays.
He would play his first game in the NBA on this date in a 109-100 win over the (then) New Jersey (now, Brooklyn) Nets.
It was far from indicative of how the Oregon native would fare later in his career with the team however, Ainge scored just 2 points, an assist, and a rebound in his inaugural game with the team.
Precisely seven years to the day of his debut, Ainge would score a career-high 45 points in a 121-107 blowout of the Philadelphia 76ers at the old Boston Garden.
The Oregon native scored 18 points in the fourth quarter alone.
It is also the birthday of former Celtic shooting guard Otis Birdsong, who happened to be on that Nets team Ainge helped beat in an odd coincidence.
The Houston product came into this world in Winter Haven, Florida in 1955, and would be selected from the Cougars by the (then) Kansas City (now, Sacramento) Kings with the second overall pick of the 1977 NBA draft.
Otis Birdsong was a player not mentioned much from his time in the NBA, but he was really good, averaging 18 points a game throughout his 13 year career spent with the Kings, the Nets and Celtics pic.twitter.com/3JZFj9Rxg4
— Sports Days Past (@SportsDaysPast) July 3, 2018
Birdsong would play for that team and the Nets (still in New Jersey in that era) before joining the Celtics for the last chapter of his 12-season career.
He would average 2.8 points and a board per game with the team.
On this day in 2011, Boston traded Albert Miralles to the Milwaukee Bucks for guard Keyon Dooling.
The Missouri product would play one season with the team, briefly serving as the organization’s player development coach before un-retiring to join the Memphis Grizzlies.
He averaged 4.0 points and 1.1 assists per game as a Celtic.
That same day is also the anniversary of when the team signed big man Greg Stiemsma as a free agent.
It was the former Wisconsin Badger’s first gig in the league that saw him take the court after going undrafted in 2008, playing for overseas teams in the interim.
Stiemsma played 55 games in the 2011-12 season for Boston, leaving in free agency the following summer to join the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Listen to the “Celtics Lab” podcast on:
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3zBKQY6
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3GfUPFi
YouTube: https://bit.ly/3F9DvjQ
