In the history of the NBA, teams that don’t win titles rarely get remembered the way they should. No matter how electric, how improbable, how alive they felt, they get reduced to footnotes. Forgotten. Underestimated. Overlooked. When we think about those words, the 2017–18 Celtics are impossible to ignore. Early-season contenders shaken by unimaginable injuries. Too young, too unproven, too inexperienced. The season should have died with its stars on the sideline, but instead, we watched a flower bloom The future arrived before we were ready to let go of the past. Jaylen Brown leveling up before our eyes. A 19-year-old Jayson Tatum refusing to wait his turn. Nobody expected this team to be here. The 2017–18 Celtics didn’t win a championship. But they won something just as rare.