History Week roundtable: where were you on June 16th, 2008?

Where were you when the Celtics won the title in 2008?

Tim MacLean: I was in my living room watching it with my mom. She’s a huge basketball fan and it was one of the last times I watched a title game with her. Now she thinks all the Boston teams lose whenever she watches so she doesn’t want to jinx them. To be fair, she was with me watching the Super Bowl against the Falcons. She went to bed when it was 28-3 and, well, we all know what happened. Maybe she’s only meant to watch the Cs.

Greg Brueck-Cassoli: I was at my girlfriend at the time’s house. I’ve always said that my human adolescence mirrored Paul Pierce’s basketball adolescence, so I suppose it was fitting I was with the first person I had a real romantic relationship with when he finally won a title.

Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

Greg Dudek: I was at my house with all my family watching Boston bring home another title. The one thing that stands out from them winning a title on the parquet is Paul Pierce giving Doc Rivers a Gatorade shower. It happens all the time in football and other sports, but I had never seen it done on basketball court. I thought that was the coolest thing ever to set off the celebration.

Jeff Clark: At the time my wife was pregnant with our first child, and she was upstairs asleep. So I was doing everything I could to cheer without waking her up. At one point I had to go out onto the outside deck and flail around punching the air and pumping my fists in celebration. I must have looked like an insane person to anyone that might have been outside at the time.

Keith Smith: The 2008 team was very special to me. The previous summer, the Celtics completed the Kevin Garnett trade on my birthday! At the time, my wife and I were living in Southern California surrounded by Lakers fans who told us KG was going to be in LA. Then I heard over and over and over about how they didn’t have enough depth and wouldn’t come together. This group started to shut that up when they started the year 29-3. As much as we would have liked to see Boston close that title while living in Laker-land, our company moved us back to Orlando just before the playoffs started. We watched most of the first round in our family room sitting in camping chairs with just a TV. That’s how important that playoff run was. I went and bought a new TV, while we waited on our stuff to come cross-country. I wasn’t missing a game! When they won, we were in the family room going crazy. I remember how tense I would get and how our dog (RIP Doozer!) would jump up on the couch and paw at me to calm down. What a team!

Bobby Manning: Confession time. I didn’t. At least I can’t remember watching it live. The truth is, at 10 years old, some combination of baseball, Pokemon and Roblox interested me more than basketball. The 2008 title team changed that, hooking me for the 2009 and 2010 runs that had more devastating finishes. I’m wildly intrigued by the ‘08 title because of how unattached I was to June 16; how much the 2010 Game 7 hurt, I cried; how the Celtics haven’t approached the same echelon since. I can’t count how many times I’ve watched the Paul Pierce Game 1 wheelchair comeback, the ring ceremony and the confetti falling on what might as well have been a million-to-80 Game 6 victory. Any videos and documentaries that have come out since reeled me in, to try to grasp what that night felt like. I hope I can feel it soon.