In June 2023, the trade headline was simple enough: Kristaps Porziņģis to Boston, Marcus Smart to Memphis, Tyus Jones to Washington. Buried a line or two lower, almost as an accounting detail, was the name Danilo Gallinari, headed from the Celtics to the Wizards as part of the three-team deal.
On paper, Gallinari was just another veteran salary slot helping three front offices solve a puzzle. In reality, that transaction quietly closed the door on one of the most bittersweet “what ifs” of the last decade: the lifelong Celtics fan who finally signed with his dream franchise, only to never play a single minute in green.
The story starts long before Boston, before the NBA, before the sixth pick in the 2008 draft. It starts in Sant’Angelo Lodigiano, Italy, with another Gallinari. Danilo’s father, Vittorio, was a rugged, defensive-minded forward who spent much of his career with Olimpia Milano, winning multiple titles in the golden Dan Peterson era. He was also a Celtics diehard, enamored with Larry Bird and the mythology of Boston’s parquet.
That fandom became part of the family language. Danilo grew up on stories of Bird and the ’80s Celtics, watching games on television, sleeping under a Celtics bedspread, lugging a Celtics backpack to school. Long before he was an NBA prospect, he was just a tall Italian kid daydreaming about the Boston Garden.
When the New York Knicks called his name at No. 6 in 2008, Gallinari broke into the league he’d always chased. But as his career took him from New York to Denver, Los Angeles, Oklahoma City and Atlanta, that childhood dream remained frustratingly simple and specific: one day, wear Celtics green for real.
In the summer of 2022, the stars finally seemed to align. After a sign-and-trade from Atlanta to San Antonio, the Spurs waived Gallinari. On July 12, he signed a two-year deal with Boston. For a 34-year-old stretch forward still chasing a deep playoff run, joining a fresh-off-the-Finals contender with Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown was already appealing. For the lifelong Celtics fan inside him, it was something more than that. It was, in his own words at the time, a no-brainer.
Then, at the end of August, thousands of miles from Boston, everything unraveled. Playing for Italy in a FIBA World Cup qualifier against Georgia on August 27, Gallinari went down with a non-contact left knee injury. Initial tests in Europe offered cautious optimism, but days later the Celtics announced the worst-case scenario: a torn ACL in his left knee, the same ligament that had cost him the entire 2013-14 NBA season. The dream season was over before training camp began.
Gallinari would miss the entire 2022-23 campaign, rehabbing in Boston but never once checking in for an official game. The Celtics even received a disabled player exception as acknowledgement that his return before season’s end was unlikely. On the transaction line, his time in Boston is a blank: zero regular-season or playoff appearances, despite spending the full year on the roster.
Fast forward to December 2025. Gallinari has just announced his retirement after 16 professional seasons in the NBA, finishing with 11,607 points, the most ever by an Italian player in the league, before adding a championship and Finals MVP in Puerto Rico with the Vaqueros de Bayamón. In the wake of that announcement, he sat down for a media call to reflect on his career. When the subject turned to Boston, the emotions were still close to the surface.
Len Werle: “Danilo, first of all, congrats on a great career. My question is regarding your short stint with the Boston Celtics. You grew up as a Celtics fan um because of your dad. He was a Celtics fan. And you’ve been a Celtics fan throughout your entire childhood. Unfortunately, you tore your ACL before you could play a game for the Celtics. Is that something you look back with a little bit remorse that you could not play a game for your favorite franchise? Or are you still happy that you at least got to spend some time in Boston?”
Danilo Gallinari: “Yeah, I think about it. I try to not think about it too much, but of course it would have been the perfect situation at the perfect time to play for a championship for my uh favorite franchise. was just the perfect situation, ah but it didn’t work out as I wanted to. uh But I had a great time. I’m in Boston with the fans, with the city, especially with the people that helped me rehabbing from the ACL, the whole season. have an amazing staff. And, you know, working with them, you know, when you are injured and you need to recover, you actually spend more time than when you’re not injured. And so you spend a lot more time in the gym. And so I was able to build the relationships that I think that are very important, not just to build them for work when you work in basketball, but for your life. And those are people that, for example, when they come to play in Miami, I live here now, so when they come to play here, I always see them for lunch or dinner or coffee, ah which is great, I think.”
In the wake of Danilo Gallinari’s retirement, I had the chance to talk to him about his unfulfilled dream of playing an NBA Game for the Boston Celtics. pic.twitter.com/CJohTq8S4X
— Len Werle (@RealLennyCarlos) December 4, 2025
There’s a lot packed into that answer. He doesn’t hide the sting: “the perfect situation at the perfect time” and “my favorite franchise” are phrases that don’t come lightly from a veteran who’s seen almost everything. He’s talking about more than a roster fit. He’s talking about closure, a chance to finally live out the childhood dream with a team good enough to chase a title.
But he also refuses to let the injury define the year. What the public saw was a DNP season for a player who never suited up. What Gallinari lived was something else entirely: endless hours in the Auerbach Center, sweating through rehab sessions with a staff he still talks about with genuine affection.
“When you are injured and you need to recover, you actually spend more time than when you’re not injured,” he explained. “And so I was able to build the relationships that I think that are very important, not just to build them for work when you work in basketball, but for your life.”
That’s the part almost nobody sees: the bonds formed in an empty practice gym, a continent away from home, while your body heals and your future hangs in the balance.
On June 23, 2023, almost exactly one year after signing that “perfect” deal, the Celtics sent Gallinari and Mike Muscala, along with the No. 35 pick, to Washington as part of the three-team trade that landed Porziņģis in Boston and Marcus Smart in Memphis. From the team’s perspective, it was a logical move. Gallinari was approaching his mid-30s, coming off a second major ACL tear, and the Celtics were chasing a different kind of frontcourt answer in Porziņģis. From Gallinari’s perspective, it meant that the dream was over without ever really starting.
His Boston chapter will always be an oddity in the transaction pages: a contract, a jersey presentation, rehab videos, and then a line item in a blockbuster trade, no minutes, no box scores, no official highlights. And yet, as he tells it, what he took from that season can’t be measured in games played. The relationships forged with Boston’s medical and performance staff now stretch far beyond his time under contract. Living in Miami, he makes a point of seeing those same people whenever the Celtics are in town, grabbing lunch, dinner or a coffee on off-days. To him, that year wasn’t just a missed opportunity; it was a human investment that outlived the uniform.
Gallinari’s résumé is rich even without a Celtics chapter on the court. He was a central piece of the Carmelo Anthony trade, a go-to scorer in Denver, a key veteran in Atlanta’s surprise run to the 2021 Eastern Conference finals, a sharp-shooting stretch forward who helped drag NBA frontcourts further out toward the three-point line.
He finished as the all-time leading Italian scorer in NBA history, then went to Puerto Rico, finally got that elusive championship with Bayamón, and walked away from the game at 37 on his own terms.
In the end, Danilo Gallinari never played a minute for the team he loved as a kid. But for one long, grueling season in Boston, he was a Celtic in all the ways that don’t fit into a box score.
