Me and KG

I first met this tall, skinny kid from South Carolina named Kevin when we were both still in high school. I got to show him around Inglewood, California, when he came out here for an AAU tournament.

Somehow it took 20 years for us to play together again.

In 2007, on our first day as teammates, Doc said to all of us, “We’re going to win the NBA championship … but we have to do it now.”

Other people were saying things like, It’s going to take a while to jell. You’re going to need a year to figure it out.

We knew we couldn’t wait. And we just hit the ground running, like we’d been playing together for years. I think the secret that first year was that we were all comfortable being ourselves. KG and I both came from losing teams. Us being in Boston was about what we were trying to achieve together. So we asked ourselves, Is it about numbers, or is it about winning?

By the end of the year, only one number mattered: 17.

The 17th title in Celtics history.