Ranking this century’s most beloved Boston champions | Matt Vautour

BOSTON — On media day before the start of the NBA finals, Jayson Tatum said he wasn’t thinking about his or his team’s legacy as he and the Celtics tried to win their first championship.

Maybe not, but everyone else was. That’s the nature of being a Celtic and playing in Boston at this point in history. Success doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s part of something bigger.

So where does the 2024 NBA Championship, that Tatum and the Celtics did win, rank among into Boston’s list of 13 championships so far this century? It’s probably too early to tell, but not too early to try.

Below are the rankings of the most beloved Boston champions since 2001.

How is belovedness ranked? I considered memorable moments, the sort of things immortalized in pictures in bars around New England. How long it had been since a team had won and other circumstances. Beloved teams have beloved players. Those factor in here too. So do other circumstances.

After that, well it’s my opinion. Feel free to disagree and send me your list.

But this is mine:

13. 2007 Red Sox

This team doesn’t get the love of the other World Series winners for a couple of reasons, but the biggest of those is – It felt like a sequel. A sequel that while fun wasn’t quite as good as the original.

It was just too close to 2004 with so many of the same characters in scenarios that weren’t quite as life-changing as 2004. When David Ortiz or Jason Varitek or Manny Ramirez encounters fans, those fans are asking them about 2004 not 2007. They ask Dustin Pedroia about 2013.

In 2004 the Red Sox ended an 86-year curse beating the Yankees and Cardinals. In 2007, they ended a three-year drought. They beat the Indians and the Rockies. It was great, but not nearly as momentous.

12. Super Bowl XXXIX-winning Patriots

If this had come after New England had lost to the Eagles in a Super Bowl, this is probably a bigger deal in our collective memories.

But as Patriots Super Bowls go, it wasn’t terribly dramatic. What most people remember is lousy clock management by Philly/Andy Reid/Donovan McNabb. It never really felt like the Patriots weren’t going to win.

11. Super Bowl LIII-winning Patriots

If this was one of the middle Super Bowls, this would be ranked No. 13. It was the most boring of the six by a long shot. But it was the last Tom Brady title, although nowhere close to one of his greatest Super Bowl performances. It was Rob Gronkowski’s last game as a Patriot and the only game that justified drafting Sony Michel as high as they did.

• Note: There’s a pretty sizable gap here between No. 11 and No. 10.

10. 2018 Red Sox

The fact that this World Series-winning team is 10th on this list is a pretty good indication of how great this list is. This team was one of the best teams in baseball history and probably on paper the best team in Red Sox history.

We look back at it with a little bit of melancholy because it truly represents the last season where the Fenway ownership group acted like a big market team where contending mattered. It’s full of beloved players who the Red Sox eventually traded for pennies on the dollar (Mookie Betts, Andrew Benintendi) or let go for nothing (Xander Bogaerts).

But in the moment they were terrific. They beat the Yankees in the Wild Card, defending champion Houston in the ALCS and the Dodgers in a fun World Series. Baseball hasn’t been as fun in Boston since.

9. Super Bowl-winning XXXVIII Patriots

This is truly the forgotten Super Bowl in a lot of ways because of how great some of the others were. Carolina led this game in the fourth quarter and tied the game with just over a minute left before Brady navigated a short field to set up another Adam Vinatieri game-winning field goal.

8. 2024 Celtics

It’s honestly too soon to know where this team belongs. Next year will affect how we feel about this year’s team for better or worse.

But I believe the love will keep and maybe even grow for this bunch. Like many Celtics legends, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown were homegrown stars. The region has been invested in their rise since they were shrewd draft choices. New England is paternal about players who started their rise right here.

They would have been helped if they’d beaten the 76ers, Knicks or even the Lakers along the way. But they not only defeated but demolished anyone that stood in front of them, including Kyrie Irving.

7. Super Bowl XLIX-winning Patriots

Most casual fans didn’t know who Malcolm Butler was before this game. Most casual fans don’t remember much of anything that happened before the last play. Neither of those things mattered.

The Patriots were about to lose. Down 4, Seattle had the ball on the 1-yard line with 26 seconds left. If they punched it in, not even Tom Brady was good enough to lead a comeback march that far in that little time.

But Seattle inexplicably threw the ball and Malcolm Butler intercepted it, giving the Patriots a stunning victory and one of the single greatest moments in Boston sports history.

6. 2008 Celtics

This team turned the Boston NBA franchise that happened to wear green back into the Boston Celtics. Before Danny Ainge’s masterful moves to land Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, the Celtics had missed the playoffs the previous two years and hadn’t made it out of the first round in the last five.

Since they’d last won a title, Boston had endured the Rick Pitino debacle, the M.L. Carr mess, missing out on Tim Duncan and the tragic deaths of two young stars.

Celtic mystique seemed dead. But that team not only hung Banner 17 but reset the standard of the franchise. The 2024 champions were built to reach the bar that the 2008 team set. It changed the opinion of the franchise among players in the NBA too.

And it sure didn’t hurt that they beat first LeBron James and the Cavaliers along the way and the Lakers in the finals.

For any Bruins fan under 40 (and realistically any under 45), this was almost as meaningful as the Red Sox winning in 2004. For them, it had been a lifetime – their lifetime – since the Bruins had won a Stanley Cup.

They started by beating the hated Canadiens in the first round and then avenged their prior collapse against the Flyers. The Canucks were a perfectly prickly opponent and the seven-game Final series produced terrific heroes and villains.

The Stanley Cup Finals solidified the legends of Patrice Bergeron and Zdeno Chara, started the legacy of Brad Marchand and turned Tim Thomas into a folk hero.

This was a great team who went from last place the year before to winning a championship. But more than that, this was the Boston Strong Red Sox.

In the days and months that followed the tragedy at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, this team became something to rally around as the city got back on its feet. The players, including memorably David Ortiz, turned out to be well-suited for the role as spokesmen for the city. They rose to the moment on and off the field and are loved accordingly.

3. The Super Bowl LI-winning Patriots

From now until forever, this will be the standard that all NFL comebacks are judged and all Boston rallies are judged against. It isthe most defining game in Tom Brady’s iconic career. Trailing 28-3, with 8:31 left in the third quarter, New England stormed back to tie the game in regulation before winning in overtime.

No championship was more exciting.

2. Super Bowl XXXVI-winning Patriots

This was the origin story. Not just for the Patriots, but the Golden Age of Boston sports.

It had been 15 years since Boston had won a championship in anything. The Celtics hadn’t been to the playoffs in five years. The Bruins hadn’t been to the postseason in the last two. The Red Sox hadn’t won a championship in 86 years and the Patriots never had.

Boston was desperate.

Somehow a coach, who’d been fired by the Browns, and a sixth-round draft pick at quarterback authored a fairy tale. They beat the heavily favored Rams and changed expectations forever in Boston.

1. 2004 Red Sox

After 86 years of heartache, the redemption in 2004 was perfect.

The 2003 Game 7 collapse against the Yankees provided the ideal prologue, the last breaths of the Curse of the Bambino. Grady Little left Pedro Martinez in for the tying runs opening the door for Aaron Boone to shatter New England’s hearts again. That set the stage perfectly for what was to come a year later.

In 2004, they not only won but they beat the Yankees along the way and became the first baseball team ever to come back from down 3-0 to do it.

After sweeping the Cardinals, we cried, we danced, we celebrated with old relatives, who’d hung on to see it and visited the graves of deceased ones who didn’t make it to the moment. It was as much a part of Boston history as Bunker Hill and the greatest sports moment ever in the region.

Follow MassLive sports columnist Matt Vautour on Twitter at @MattVautour424.

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