bFor fans of the hit basketball documentary iThe Last Dancei, and from award-winning iBoston Globei columnist Dan Shaughnessy, a nostalgia-filled retelling of the Boston Celtics' 1980s dominance, which featured the sublime play of NBA legend Larry Bird.b pToday the NBA is a vast global franchise--a billion-dollar industry viewed by millions of fans in the United States and abroad. But it wasn't always this successful. Before primetime ESPN coverage, lucrative branding deals like Air Jordans, and 40 million annual player salaries, there was the NBA of the 1970s and 1980s--when basketball was still an up-and-coming sport featuring old school beat reporters and players wore Converse All-Stars. pEnter Dan Shaughnessy, then the beat reporter for iThei iBoston Globe iwho covered the Boston Celtics every day from 1982 to1986. It was a time when reporters travelled with professional teams--flying the same commercial airlines, riding the same buses, and staying in the same hotels. Shaughnessy k