Wish It Lasted Forever

Life with the Larry Bird Celtics

By: Dan Shaughnessy

Narrated by: Dan Shaughnessy

From award-winning Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy, an “entertaining” (The Wall Street Journal) and nostalgia-filled retelling of the 1980s Boston Celtics’ glory years, which featured the sublime play of NBA legend Larry Bird.

Today the NBA is a vast global franchise—a billion-dollar industry seen by millions of fans in the United States and abroad. But it wasn’t always this successful. Before primetime ESPN coverage, lucrative branding deals like Air Jordans, and $40 million annual player salaries, there was the NBA of the 1970s and 1980s—when basketball was still an up-and-coming sport featuring old school beat reporters and players who wore Converse All-Stars.

Enter Dan Shaughnessy, then the beat reporter for The Boston Globe who covered the Boston Celtics every day from 1982 to 1986. It was a time when reporters travelled with professional teams—flying the same commercial airlines, riding the same buses, and staying in the same hotels. Shaughnessy knew the athletes as real people, losing free throw bets to Larry Bird, being gifted cheap cigars by the iconic coach Red Auerbach, and having his one-year-old daughter Sarah passed from player to player on a flight from Logan to Detroit Metro.

Drawing on unprecedented access and personal experiences that would not be possible for any reporter today, Shaughnessy takes us inside the legendary Larry Bird-led Celtics teams, capturing the camaraderie as they dominated the NBA. Fans can witness the cockiness of Larry Bird (who once walked into an All-Star Weekend locker room, announced that he was going to win the three-point contest, and did); the ageless athleticism of Robert Parish; the shooting skills of Kevin McHale; the fierce, self-sacrificing play of Bill Walton; and the playful humor of players like Danny Ainge, Cedric “Cornbread” Maxwell, and M.L. Carr.

For any fan who longs to return—for just a few hours—to those magical years when the Boston Garden rocked and the winner’s circle was mostly colored Boston Green, Wish It Lasted Forever is a masterful tribute to “the Celtics from 1982–1986 [that] is so good even fervent Celtics haters will have trouble putting it down” (New York Post).

Great story

Great insight on 1986 Celtics. Best team ever! Shaughnessy has a better relationship with the players today than he did then.

Wonderful story

This basketball ball goes into depth about what of the greatest teams ever. I loved it and I hate the Celtics.

Brings the Bird era back in high relief

I was the Celtics photographer for this period and Dan's book brings back rich memories.

He adds much that I was not aware of and fills in lots of details not commonly known.

It's an entertaining and informative narrative of a VERY special time with colorful characters and, arguably, the greatest team in NBA history.

THE Best

The Celtics during the Larry Bird eta was the Best and so is Dan’s book, thank you.

learning about the inner team dynamics was so interesting

Simply loved listening to this. It was great to learn more about the other players outside of Bird, McHale and Parish and hear about the inner world of the Celtics that the outside wasn't privy to know. I wished this book would never have ended!