During the 1999-2000 Los Angeles Lakers championship season, Kobe Bryant was always the first player in the practice gym, followed by rookie John Celestand.
The Lakers drafted Celestand (‘99) with the 30th pick in the second round of the 1999 NBA Draft out of Villanova. He packed his bags and moved out to Los Angeles to live on his own for the first time in his life.
Celestand, a Lakers fan growing up, was immediately surrounded by greatness in his first year as a professional basketball player.
“I’m watching Kobe Bryant get to practice hours before everybody else,” Celestand said. “I would always be the second person to practice. Watching him put that work in to see how great he was.”
The two knew each other before putting on the Laker purple and gold. Bryant, a Lower Merion graduate, would make trips to Villanova. Villanova players would play pickup with Bryant, and he would also come to watch games and join the team in the locker room.
Celestand received a bulk of playing time as a rookie to start the season after Bryant broke the fourth metacarpal bone in his right hand before the season. Celestand averaged around 10 minutes per game during Bryant’s 15-game absence. The Lakers went on to win the 2000 NBA title, whose roster was already filled with championship rings.
“Ron Hopper had won three championships already with the Chicago Bulls,” Celestand said. “I’m playing with a guy like Robert Horry. He had already won two championships with the Houston Rockets. A.C. Green was on that team. He had won [three] championships with the Los Angeles Lakers. So there was a lot of greatness around me that already knew how to win.”
The Lakers decided not to re-sign Celestand during that offseason. He decided to take his professional playing career overseas in Europe. Celestand made stops in Braunschweig, Germany, Bologna, Italy, Villeurbanne, France, Berlin, Germany and Kyiv, Ukraine.
He played his last international season in 2005 at Basketball Löwen Braunschweig in Braunschweig, Germany. It was the same team he began his overseas career with, effectively bookending his international playing career.
It was the same year Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, where Celestand is originally from. That, combined with other life matters, pushed Celestand to decide to take a year off from playing professional basketball.
“A lot of my family was kind of scattered all over the place,” Celestand said. “At that time, I just didn’t feel comfortable going back to play basketball. I had an injury, plus everything was happening with Hurricane Katrina. I was kind of like let me sit out a year, and then if I want to go back, I’ll go back.”
After his year off, he would never return to professional basketball.
“I think life hit me, and I saw how tough it was being in the real world,” Celestand said. “And I said, ‘You know what? Let me go ahead and get a start on the real world right now.’”
Celestand became a freelance sports announcer in radio and on television. He worked as an announcer for ESPN+ and ESPNU for nine years, covering college basketball games, including the Big East Conference. Every year, he would cover the men’s basketball Big East Tournament at Madison Square Garden. On top of that, he also had a stint as studio analyst on NBCSP “76ers Post Game Live” for Comcast Sportsnet Philadelphia.
“I think, as time went on, one of the things that got me to move away from [sports] was that it was so tough to move up the ladder, to get to ESPN, ESPN2, the big channels,” Celestand said. “Everybody wants to do this job. I had been doing it for 10 years, and I felt like I hit a glass ceiling. I just didn’t know how much longer I could do it, because I wasn’t making enough money where I could just do only that.”
After jobs at Rutgers University, Goodwill and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).
Now, Celestand, who resides in Silver Spring, MD, has been a program director at Local Media Association. The company helps sustain over 26 local news organizations and provides support to foster long-term sustainability and independence of the organizations.
“It was kind of the opportunity to work with black-owned news organizations,” Celestand said. “I thought it was hard, too hard for me to pass up. So that’s how I started working with them. And currently, I work with 25 black-owned news organizations all across the country. The Philadelphia Tribune is one of them.”
Other outlets he works with include the Baltimore Afro-American, The Washington Informer and The New York Amsterdam News.
Most of his jobs have come from the Villanova network, Celestand noted.
Celestand landed his current role at Local Media Association after connecting with its CEO, Nancy Lane, through the Villanova University Alumni Association (VUAA). Lane is a 1987 Villanova graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology.
“So for me, it’s been something that’s tangible evidence that connecting with people and connecting with the alumni association, alumni groups, the Villanova chapters, has worked for me.”
