Celtics documentary a labor of love for executive producer Bill Simmons

Still, a mystery about the details remained. So I contacted someone who knows what’s going on better than anyone: Bill Simmons.

Simmons, along with Connor Schell (with whom he created the exceptional documentary series ’30 for 30′ during their time at ESPN), are the executive producers of ‘Celtics City’ in a joint venture between HBO Sports Documentaries, Ringer Films and Words + Images.

It’s obviously a passion project for Simmons, the former Boston Sports Guy whose knowledge and affection for the Celtics is well known. The project, which will debut in the first quarter of 2025, is something Simmons and the production team have been working on for almost four years.

“It took some real thinking to figure out, ‘How do you tell the definitive history of the Celtics, but also do it through the lens of a bigger story than just basketball?’ Simmons said during a recent phone conversation.

‘You’re talking about 77 years. You’re talking about a franchise that was the dominant franchise in any sport for the first 40 years. And then suddenly it was an arrow pointing down in the worst possible ways for 22 years, and then suddenly it was rejuvenated again. It has all the hallmarks of a great sports story.”

“And then you have some of the most important people to ever play professional sports, like Bill Russell. I think we felt a lot of pressure. How do you do that in nine episodes? And how do you do this correctly? How do you do that in an honest way, without it becoming an infomercial?”

Simmons said one of the most important aspects was the willingness of the Celtics’ brain trust to tell the authentic story of the franchise.

“You’ve seen some of the projects that people have done about franchises and you can see how committed the team was, and not always in a good way,” he said. “The Celtics, people like Wyc (Grousbeck) and Rich (Gotham), just wanted to make a great documentary.

“I don’t want to get too much into the structure of it, but I think we found a great way to do it. There have been documentaries made about a lot of these things that we cover. So we wanted to keep it fresh and we wanted it to feel really special and unique.”

The docuseries, Simmons said, is intended to appeal to Celtics fans and basketball fans in general. That was made easier because of the franchise’s connections to virtually every major issue in the league’s history. “Pick a scene from almost any era, and the Celtics were probably there,” he said. “But it was also important for us to explore how the team has evolved with the city as the city has evolved. Sometimes not in the best ways, and sometimes in the most wonderful ways.

The bad times – namely after the 1985-86 Championship until Kevin Garnett arrived in 2007 to form the New Big Three – are not pushed into the background. Another source, who was among the 80 or so people interviewed for the project, told me that the segment on Rick Pitino’s disastrous tenure is compelling.

“We wanted to shine a light on some of the stories that haven’t been told in a real way,” Simmons said, citing the death of Reggie Lewis in July 1993 as an example. “Reggie is still the saddest thing that happened. when I lived in Boston. I’ve never seen that captured quite properly. It’s really painful. It is painful now, all these years later.”

Of course, more than anything else, Celtic’s history has been marked by extraordinary success. Simmons said the portion of the docuseries covering the era of Larry Bird and the original Big Three will be “like red meat to people.”

“We invited Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish all for interviews,” Simmons said. “I have to say that Parish is in the running for Doctor’s MVP. His odds were 100 to 1 heading into the trial. He’s really great at it. Obviously, having Larry is huge. I’m so glad he did it. It would have been weird not to have him. He has some really great moments in this too.”

The 2023-24 Celtics are part of the story, he said, but not the center. Rather, their championship became a fitting coda.

“It was like, ‘Man, it would be so cool if something happened to them (winning the championship) before this came out,’” Simmons said. “And then winning the Bill Russell Finals MVP for Jaylen (Brown), who is no small part of the Doctor, meaningful, because he stands for many of the same things as Russell.

“The Celtics are an incredible story. They really are. Think of all the people and characters that have gone through this franchise, to try to do this in nine hours, it’s almost impossible. But I feel really good about where we’ve ended up.”

Chad Finn can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @GlobeChadFinn.