On December 22, 1949, 76 years ago today, the Boston Celtics beat the Minneapolis Lakers at Boston Garden behind a burst from a rookie who looked like he’d been dropped into the NBA from a different universe.
In what was only his 13th game as a Celtic, Tony Lavelli poured in 26 points as Boston defeated Minneapolis, a powerhouse led by George Mikan that was on its way toward another championship season.
The box score reads like early-pro-basketball history: a low-scoring era, a Garden crowd of 5,206, and a Celtics team still trying to convince a skeptical city that pro basketball belonged in Boston.
Then Lavelli did the thing no modern player could even attempt. At halftime, he stepped into the spotlight and treated the Garden to an accordion mini-concert, one of roughly two dozen he gave around the league. The NBA paid him $125 per performance, a quirky clause that turned an already unusual athlete into a traveling halftime show.
Lavelli wasn’t a novelty act who happened to play. He was a legitimate basketball talent; Yale scorer, smooth hook shot, and an early Celtics draft pick, who also took music seriously enough that he initially resisted signing because he wanted to study at Juilliard. According to accounts of his career, the accordion arrangement helped make the deal work: Boston got a player and a draw, and Lavelli got a way to keep his first love close while he played the sport that paid the bills.
That’s why this game endures as more than a stat line. It’s an accidental snapshot of the NBA’s early survival mode, when franchises needed creativity as much as they needed talent. The Celtics beat the league’s marquee team that night, and their rookie led the way with 26. But the part that made the evening feel like an event, maybe even a reason to come back, was that the same player who scored them out of trouble also entertained the crowd with a squeeze box before returning to finish the job.
Seventy-six years later, the NBA is bigger than anyone in that building could have imagined. Yet few “on this day” stories capture the league’s origins more perfectly than this one: a young Celtics scorer, a dynasty opponent, a Garden crowd, and a halftime concert folded into the same night.
