07-07-2025
The day the Boston Celtics became the Buffalo Braves, today's Los Angeles Clippers
On July 7, 1978, one of the weirder events in Boston Celtics and NBA history took place. The Celtics became the (then) Buffalo Braves, and the Braves became the Celtics. If you are confused, that is because it is a confusing event -- at least, that is, without the appropriate context to explain what that meant to the teams involved and the league that they played in.
It was on this day that the NBA granted the owners of the Celtics and the Braves permission to swap franchises as a potential solution to allow then-Boston owner Irv Levin to move his team to the West Coast without relocating one of the cornerstone franchises of the league.
It came about via the suggestion of former league lawyer and future commissioner David Stern, who pitched the concept to Buffalo owner John Y. Brown as a potential solution given Brown's dissatisfaction with his team's situation in upstate New York as well.
The unprecedented move was handily supported by the league, who voted 21-1 in favor of the franchise swap (the lone dissenting team has been lost to history), with the two teams trading franchising rights and much of the other club's roster in the process.
Strictly speaking, the franchise that won the bulk of Boston's titles from the founding of the organization up through the 1970s then moved to San Diego, California and later, Los Angeles, to become the Clippers. Keep that in mind the next time you want to rib the Los Angeles Lakers about their title accounting since leaving the state of Minnesota.
