OPINION

By Michael Wilbon

Columnist

updated 12:49 a.m. ET June 7, 2008

Michael Wilbon Columnist

BOSTON - The Boston Celtics have no white players. Yes, it's a news flash, at the very least an obvious talking point.

It wouldn't be if we were talking about the Knicks or 76ers or Lakers, but we're talking about the Celtics, the whitest team in the modern history of a decidedly black sport. Never mind the fact that the Celtics once upon a time had the blackest team in the NBA and the league's first black coach; everybody knows the Celtics are synonymous with whiteness, the team of white superstars and scrubs alike. When white players became an endangered species in the NBA in the late 1970s, the Celtics at times seemed to be the only team that could find any.

And it became, fairly or not, a big chunk of the team's identity, of why the Celtics were hated or beloved, depending on one's point of view. Their appearance was as noticeable as their athletic brilliance. And at a time when pop culture was telling us white men couldn't jump, the Celtics were a cultural curiosity and sometimes an obsession.

Yet, when the Celtics take the floor for Game 1 of the NBA Finals here Thursday night, chances are pretty good there won't be one white player in uniform. Brian Scalabrine and Scot Pollard are on the roster, but it's likely they'll be inactive and therefore not in uniform. Even if Scalabrine is active, chances are he won't actually play. It's not something that's discussed openly, just in whispers. Jon Barry, the former NBA guard who was drafted by the Celtics out of college and now works as an analyst for ABC/ESPN, said yesterday: "Did I notice they had no white players? Sure. Yes. I did notice, during warmups in the Detroit series. I thought, 'Man, there's not a white guy on the floor.' The Celtics were always known as 'the white team' . . . 'the white guys.' " They were described as being more fundamentally sound, able to outsmart the other teams, all that bogus, ludicrous stuff.

Barry, in case you don't know, is white. Jalen Rose, another former NBA player who works as an analyst for ESPN, is black. The question was asked: Notice anything special about the Celtics? "I know what you're talking about," Rose said. "I noticed right away. No white player on the floor. Can you imagine that? You know people who don't know any better are thinking, 'Red Auerbach must be rolling over in his grave!' "

Special feature Rivalry renewed The Lakers and Cetics are meeting for the 11th time in NBA Finals history. NBCSports.com

The last time the Celtics won a title, in 1986, eight of the team's 13 players were white: Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Bill Walton, Jerry Sichting, Danny Ainge, Scott Wedman, Rick Carlisle and Greg Kite.

Now? Could be the Celtics will go the entire series without a white player on the floor, with one of the aforementioned white players, Ainge, having assembled this team.

Scalabrine has done a little research on the Celtics since joining them in 2005 because, well, these things come up. "Not from the media," Scalabrine said. "Not a single person in the media has asked me about it. You know where it comes up? I'll be walking in downtown Boston and people will say, 'Hey, how about getting some more white guys on the Celtics?' "

Scalabrine is a politically aware, socially conscious, self-effacing 30-year-old. He knows it must be fascinating to look at the Celtics, historically, from the outside. But as a player he can't. "It would be different if I was looking in, observing," he said, pausing. Then Scalabrine stepped back, opened his arms and said, "But I'm the white guy! When it's about you, you're blind to it."

Scalabrine knows about the hatred Bill Russell, Mr. Celtic, faced in metropolitan Boston in the 1950s and '60s. He has strong feelings about the NBA's image, of having far less fighting than baseball with its bench-clearing brawls or hockey with its sanctioned fisticuffs, yet having to constantly battle the perception that he plays in a thug league. "How can that perception not be race-related?" he asked yesterday.

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