Its easier to to celebrate and market '08 than it is '65. Plus it gets Ray to show up.
When I think of great Celtic guards, and there are a lot of them, Ray isn't in my top 6
It's an interesting discussion regarding best Celtics guards, IMO (inactive players only).
Going in rough chronological order, for notable backcourt players you had Bill Sharman, Frank Ramsey, Bob Cousy, KC Jones, Sam Jones, Don Chaney, JoJo White, Chris Ford, Tiny Archibald, DJ, Danny Ainge, Ray Allen and Rajon Rondo. You cannot deny Cousy, White, Sam Jones, or Sharman a spot in the Top 15. DJ over KC Jones is a close call, IMO, but the '84 and '86 Celtics don't win titles w/o DJ, and I have no problem putting Johnson ahead of all the others remaining on that list.
I do think people here are underselling Ray Allen quite a bit. First, there is zero doubt that his overall career as a shooting guard matches up with the best on that list. The one black mark that I can see is that his time with the Celtics was relatively short (5 seasons), and he was the 3rd banana on those teams the entire time. But I don't think his topping Rondo (seriously?) or Ainge or forwards like Antoine Walker on that list is a mistake. Yes, Ainge was here for 8 seasons, but was basically a bench player for the first 3, and it was only his final 2 seasons that he became a deadly 3 point shooter (much to Bob Cousy's chagrin, IIRC). Yeah, Allen left as a free agent; seriously, who really cares at this point.
And any list of 15 Top Celtics players is going to have some difficult omissions. In no particular order, Ramsey, Maxwell, Walker, Ainge, Nelson, KC Jones, Rondo, Satch Sanders and Greg Kite are the most difficult ones to leave off, and there are probably others as well.