The Boston Celtics are running out of good jersey numbers

The Boston Celtics have as long and as storied a franchise history as any team in the NBA, and as a result they’ve retired their fair share of jersey numbers through the years. On Monday, the Celts introduced five of their offseason signings for the first time, as Jonas Jerebko, Amir Johnson, David Lee, Perry Jones III and Jae Crowder all met with the local media. Here’s a nice photo from the proceeding:

So…those are some pretty weird numbers!

Let’s start on the right. Jerebko wore No. 8 after being acquired by the Celts at the trade deadline last year, so he was luckily able to retain his solid numeral. It was vacated once Jeff Green was shipped off to Memphis earlier in the season.

Crowder, after wearing No. 9 for his first few NBA seasons with Dallas, switched to 99 after going to Boston as a part of the Rajon Rondo trade last December. One would imagine he would’ve liked to keep wearing No. 9 with the Celtics, but that was Rondo’s old number. Perhaps Boston told Jae they had plans on retiring it for Rondo one day?

Moving to the middle of the photo, we see Amir Johnson holding the No. 90 jersey. Johnson most recently wore No. 15 with the Raptors, and reportedly wanted the No. 5 shirt with Boston. Johnson had this (via NESN) to say about his number choice:  

"“Every number 1 through 34 is basically retired,” Johnson said. “My first initial number, I picked No. 5, but I know there was going to kind of be some controversy with that because Kevin Garnett won a championship. So I knew that was pretty much out of the water. My number (15), of course, was retired. And I recently posted a picture on my social network, I don’t know if you guys checked it out, it was a team back in the ’90s — like ’97, ’96 — I played for my first organized basketball team, which was the Burbank Celtics. It was a Celtics team. So I just kind of just put that together. The ’90s were good. I was born in ’87, but the ’90s were good.”"

“I was born in ’87, but the ’90s were good” is an awesome sentence. Also, based on this list compiled by the great Basketball Reference, the best player in NBA history to ever wear the #90 is Drew Gooden. So it’s unique, at least!

Further left, Lee chose the No. 42 he originally sported during his days with the Knicks. Nothing to see here.

And, finally, we have Perry Jones III donning that ever-so-rare No. 38. Jones wore the No. 3 shirt in OKC. Of course, Boston’s No. 3 is and forever will be that of the late, great Dennis Johnson. In case you were wondering, that same B-R list names Viktor Khryapa, Ron Knight and Kwame Brown as the best No. 38-wearers the league has ever seen. We’ve hardly even seen PJ3 play meaningful NBA minutes, yet already I feel fairly comfortable saying he’s probably better than all three of those guys.

In all, the Celtics have retired the following numbers already: 00, 1, 2, 3, 6, 10, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 31, 32, 33 and 35. No. 34 will surely be added to that list whenever Paul Pierce decides to hang ’em. up.

You’re not wrong, Amir. The Celtics are kinda running out of numbers. The good ones, at least. In, like, 20 years the Celts are gonna be running five guys out there wearing offensive lineman numbers.