Bill Simmons is synonymous with the Boston Celtics.
So it’s only natural that The Boston Sports Guy would be tabbed to oversee the upcoming docuseries telling the history of the franchise. The series, titled Celtics City and slated for release in early 2025 on Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max streaming platform, has a significant challenge telling the story of a legendary sports team in just nine parts.
Even a Celtics diehard and Boston historian like Simmons is challenged to pull that off.
But in a new interview with Chad Finn of The Boston Globe, Simmons opened up on how he solved some of those challenges — and gave details on what the audience can expect from the series.
“I think we felt a lot of pressure,” Simmons said. “How do you do this in an honest way, and not have it turn into an infomercial?”
In his podcast conversations about the modern sports documentary landscape, the 30 for 30 cofounder is critical of content that is coproduced by its subjects. While the Celtics were involved in Celtics City, Simmons hopes the series can turn out the way his Mr. McMahon doc on the WWE and its founder Vince McMahon did at Netflix.
“The Celtics, people like Wyc [Grousbeck] and Rich [Gotham], just wanted to make a great documentary,” Simmons said. “I don’t want to step on too much of the structure of it, but I think we figured out an awesome way to do it. There have been documentaries about a lot of this stuff that we’re covering. So we wanted to keep it fresh and we wanted it to really feel pretty special and unique.”
Did Simmons, coproducer Connor Schell (also formerly of ESPN) and director Lauren Stowell find a new format for Celtics City? In 2024, that’s hard to do. And as Simmons said, the story of the Celtics has been told plenty.
A 2017 30 for 30 doc, a Jackie MacMullan book, a Bill Russell memoir, and even the recent HBO series Winning Time have hashed and rehashed the Celtics’ history and their rivalry with the Los Angeles Lakers.
It sounds like Celtics City will instead focus more on the narrative of the franchise and the city of Boston, rather than simply basketball. At ESPN, Stowell worked on short and long-form docs covering sports and culture. Her most recent projects looked at racial narratives in sport through the lens of Tiger Woods and the WNBA. Stowell is the type of director you hire if you want to zoom out.
As examples, Finn reported that Celtics City will go deep on less-covered moments in Celtics history like the Rick Pitino era or the death of Celtics All-Star Reggie Lewis in 1993.
Simmons confirmed the filmmakers scored interviews with all of the biggest stars of the 1980s dynasty, including Larry Bird.
The 2024 championship team is not a focus of the series, but a fitting endpoint considering the similarities Simmons underscored between Russell and 2024 NBA Finals MVP Jaylen Brown.
“I really feel good with where we landed,” Simmons said.
