Losing Reggie Lewis - on his career with the Boston Celtics, and his untimely death
The Boston Celtics were poised to continue into a new era of dynastic NBA basketball in the 1980s as the careers of then-future Hall of Famers Robert Parish, Larry Bird, and Kevin McHale began to wind down with the Celtics' drafting of elite prospect Reggie Lewis. The Northeastern alum fit right in, could go toe-to-toe with the best players in the league, and oozed potential as he started to come into his prime.
But tragedy struck and took Lewis away from his family, the team, and its fans too soon, a health issue causing the promising young talent to pass away from doing the one thing that made him a household name.
The folks behind the "NBC Sports Boston" YouTube channel put together a clip recalling the tragic loss of Lewis to the wider Boston community - check it out below for a window into how this impacted the Celtics and their fans for decades to come.
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Chris Paul calls return to Clippers a 'no-brainer' and doesn't know if this will be his last season
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It was a no-brainer,' Paul said Monday at Intuit Dome in Inglewood, Calif. — the new home of the Los Angeles Clippers, the team for whom he starred from 2011 through 2017 and to whom he'll return next season — during a press conference reintroducing him to the franchise and its faithful. 'The easiest decision in this is sitting right up here,' he said, indicating his wife, children and mother, all seated in the front rows at his press conference. 'Right here. It's my family.' It's easy to forget, given how fast life moves in the world of the NBA, but Paul has now spent more time away from the Clippers than he spent with them. [Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Football league for the 2025 NFL season] Paul's six seasons in L.A. featured plenty of individual and team success — five All-Star selections, five All-NBA nods, six All-Defensive Team berths, five 50-win seasons and three playoff series victories, more than the Clippers had totaled in the previous 35 years. But they were also marked by numerous brutally timed injuries, a historic ownership scandal and a persistent inability to advance past the second round of the postseason — a staggering amount of baggage that, come the summer of 2017, left Paul feeling like the time had come for a fresh start elsewhere. In the eight years since he secured his exit from L.A., Paul has accomplished plenty. He finally got out of Round 2, partnering with past-and-future teammate James Harden on an incredible Rockets team that pushed the Kevin Durant-era Warriors to the absolute limit (and might well have toppled Golden State if not for yet another brutally timed injury). When the Houston experiment ran its course, he briefly brought the basketball gospel to Oklahoma City, producing a completely unpredicted and extremely fun playoff berth while helping shepherd the development of a gifted but green young guard named Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Then came Phoenix, where he helped Devin Booker achieve superstardom, got Deandre Ayton a max contract, finally reached the Finals (before Giannis Antetokounmpo put an end to all that) and steered the Suns to a franchise-record 64 wins (before Luka Dončić put an end to all that). When new owner Mat Ishbia decided that trading for Bradley Beal gave Phoenix a better chance to win a title — which, you know, hindsight is 20/20 and all — Paul was on the move again, with one-year stops alongside Stephen Curry in Golden State and Victor Wembanyama in San Antonio. [Get more Clippers news: Clippers team feed] That's five stops in eight years — a prolonged sojourn for the greatest point guard of his generation, with his young family remaining in L.A. as he journeyed across the NBA landscape. And that, he decided this summer, was enough time away. 'This is one of those things I kind of manifested for a long time, sort of tried to speak it into existence,' Paul said Monday. 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