Firing Up the Crowd

While the Celtics Dancers used pom poms in many of their routines, they were not cheerleaders in the traditional sense of leading stand cheers or performing gymnastics. In fact, the Celtics have never used traditional cheerleaders – team patriarch Red Auerbach was opposed to the idea for years. But Boston eventually founded the Celtics Dancers in 2006, the final NBA team to field a dance squad. Today, the troupe performs scripted routines at specified times like pregame, timeouts and halftime.