NBA champion Celtics prepare for banner night and opener against rival New York Knicks

BOSTON (AP) — The Boston Celtics are giving themselves one more chance to celebrate their latest NBA championship before they turn their attention to a repeat.

The league’s most decorated franchise will raise its 18th banner to the TD Garden rafters Tuesday night before the season opener against the New York Knicks. Players will also receive their championship rings in the pregame ceremony.

“This is a great accomplishment, that we get to do this. Be one hell of a night,” guard Payton Pritchard said after practice Monday. “But then again, we talked about we’ve got to do it again. We’ve got to reset that focus.

“We get the rings, and then we want to go out and prove that we’re ready to make another statement.”

The Celtics cruised through the NBA regular season last year — finishing with the best record in the Eastern Conference by 14 games — and then went 16-3 in the playoffs. Led by Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, they are bringing back their entire starting lineup and most of their bench, and are the favorites to win it all again.

Coach Joe Mazzulla has said he doesn’t feel any pressure to repeat.

“We’re all going to be dead soon, and it really doesn’t matter anymore. So there’s zero pressure," he said. "You have an opportunity to carry the organization forward, to double down on the tradition and history of what this organization has. And what else would you expect than someone expecting you to win all the time?

"It’s not pressure,” he told reporters at the team's practice facility. "There’s nothing anyone in this circle can do to me that’s gonna impact my identity and who I am as a person or a coach. We’re either gonna win or we’re not, and 40 years from now, none of you are invited to my funeral and that’s it.”

The Celtics won 16 NBA titles from 1957-86, with Bill Russell claiming 11 in 13 years. The 1970s teams of Dave Cowens and John Havlicek won a pair, and the Big Three of Larry Bird, Robert Parish and Kevin McHale won three more in the 1980s.

When Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen won it all in 2008, they ended the franchise’s longest-ever title drought. They made it back to the NBA Finals two years later, but lost to the Lakers. (The period from 2008-24 was the second-longest drought.)

Pritchard said that to be considered among the Celtics greats they will need to win another.

“A lot of people can do it once," Pritchard said. “I know a championship’s hard, but there’s a lot of people who have won one. But winning it multiple times, creating almost like a dynasty, that’s hard to do. So that’s greatness, and that’s something we’re trying to achieve.”

The quest begins against the Knicks, who have positioned themselves as Boston’s top competition in the East after acquiring Karl-Anthony Towns and Mikal Bridges over the summer.

Mazzulla said he thinks his team will be ready.

“I trust who they are. I think they have an understanding of both ‘This is what we accomplished’ and ‘This is what we’re trying to do’” the coach said. “All the intangibles that go into winning should carry over from one season to another season."

“You have to appreciate it," he said. "But you’ve got to know what got you there and if you forget what got you there, you’ll never get back.”

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Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla calls plays during the second half of a preseason NBA basketball game against the Toronto Raptors, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024, in Boston. (AP Photo/Mark Stockwell)

Boston Celtics forward Jayson Tatum (0) reacts to making a 3-point shot during the first half of an NBA preseason basketball game against the Toronto Raptors in Toronto on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press via AP)

FILE - Boston Celtics fans react following the Celtics victory over the Dallas Mavericks in Game 5 of the NBA basketball finals in Boston on Monday, June 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Josh Reynolds, File)

FILE - Boston Celtics basketball banners are seen in the rafters at TD Garden, Wednesday, March. 27, 2024, in Boston. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)

FILE - Boston Celtics guard Jaylen Brown, center, holds up the Larry O'Brien Championship Trophy as he celebrates with the team after they won the NBA basketball championship with a Game 5 victory over the Dallas Mavericks, Monday, June 17, 2024, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, FIle)

SAYLORSBURG, Pa. (AP) — Fethullah Gülen, a reclusive U.S.-based Islamic cleric who inspired a global social movement while facing unproven accusations that he masterminded a failed 2016 coup in his native Turkey, has died.

The Alliance for Shared Values, a New York-based group that promotes Gülen's work in the U.S., said that Gülen died Sunday night at a hospital near his home in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains. Monroe County Coroner Thomas Yanac Jr. said he was informed that Gülen, who was in his eighties and had long been in ill health, died of natural causes.

The group called him a “towering figure of faith, wisdom, intellectual and spiritual leadership" whose “impact will be felt for generations.”

Gülen spent the last decades of his life in self-exile, living in a gated compound and wielding influence among his millions of followers. He espoused a philosophy that blended Sufism — a mystical form of Islam — with staunch advocacy of democracy, education, science and interfaith dialogue.

Gülen had not played an active role in his movement in recent years. A group of close friends who have advised him for decades will carry on the work, according to the Alliance for Shared Values.

The religious leader began as an ally of Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan but became a foe. He called Erdogan an authoritarian bent on accumulating power and crushing dissent. Erdogan cast Gülen as a terrorist, accusing him of orchestrating the attempted military coup on July 15, 2016, when factions within the military used tanks, warplanes and helicopters to try to overthrow the government.

Heeding a call from the president, thousands took to the streets to oppose the takeover attempt. The coup plotters fired at crowds and bombed parliament and other government buildings. A total of 251 people were killed and around 2,200 others were wounded. Around 35 alleged coup plotters were killed.

Gülen adamantly denied involvement, and his supporters dismissed the charges as ridiculous and politically motivated. Turkey put Gülen on its most-wanted list and demanded his extradition, but the United States showed little inclination to send him back, saying it needed more evidence. He was never charged with a crime in the U.S., and he consistently denounced terrorism as well as the coup plotters.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Monday that Gülen’s death “will not make us complacent or relaxed. This organization has been a threat rarely seen in the history of our nation.” He called on Gülen’s followers to turn away from “this treasonous wrong path.”

In Turkey, Gülen’s movement — sometimes known as Hizmet, Turkish for “service” — has been subjected to a broad crackdown. The government arrested tens of thousands of people for their alleged link to the coup plot, sacked more than 130,000 suspected supporters from civil service jobs and more than 23,000 from the military, and closed hundreds of businesses, schools and media organizations tied to Gülen.

Gülen called the crackdown a witch hunt and denounced Turkey’s leaders as “tyrants.”

“The last year has taken a toll on me as hundreds of thousands of innocent Turkish citizens are being punished simply because the government decides they are somehow ‘connected’ to me or the Hizmet movement and treats that alleged connection as a crime,” he said on the first anniversary of the failed coup.

Ozgur Ozel, the leader of Turkey's main opposition Republican People's Party, said Gülen’s vast network remained a threat to Turkey.

“The founder is dead but the organization remains. No one should think that this danger has passed or is over. Everyone should be on guard against this organization," Ozel said.

On Monday, Turkey’s broadcasting regulator warned against content praising Gulen, saying no broadcaster can honor a “terrorist.” Meanwhile, prosecutors in the northwestern province of Bursa launched an investigation into a journalist on possible charges of engaging in terrorist propaganda, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported, after she said she hoped he would rest in heaven.

Abdulhamit Bilici, who was editor of the Gulen-affiliated Zaman newspaper when Erdogan shut it down in early 2016, said Monday that Gulen was subjected to decades of persecution in Turkey, and that Turkey is the only nation that claims Gülen’s peaceful Hizmet movement is a terror group.

“He was a source of inspiration for millions of people, not just in Turkey, but around the world,” Bilici said in an interview at the Pennsylvania retreat center where Gulen lived. "So this is a very sad day and a day of reflection, mourning and thinking and prayer.”

Fethullah Gülen was born in Erzurum, in eastern Turkey. His official birth date was April 27, 1941, but that has long been in dispute. Y. Alp Aslandogan, who leads a New York-based group that promotes Gülen’s ideas and work, said Gülen was actually born sometime in 1938.

Trained as an imam, or prayer leader, Gülen gained notice in Turkey some 50 years ago. He preached tolerance and dialogue between faiths — meeting with Pope John Paul II in 1998 — and he believed religion and science could go hand in hand. His belief in merging Islam with Western values and Turkish nationalism struck a chord with Turks, earning him millions of followers.

Gülen’s acolytes built a loosely affiliated global network of charitable foundations, professional associations, businesses and schools in more than 100 countries, including 150 taxpayer-funded charter schools throughout the United States. In Turkey, supporters ran universities, hospitals, charities, a bank and a large media empire with newspapers and radio and TV stations.

But Gülen was viewed with suspicion by some in his homeland, a deeply polarized country split between those loyal to its fiercely secular traditions and supporters of the Islamic-based party associated with Erdogan that came to power in 2002.

Gülen had long refrained from openly supporting any political party, but his movement forged a de facto alliance with Erdogan against the country’s old guard of staunch, military-backed secularists, and Gülen’s media empire threw its weight behind Erdogan’s Islamic-oriented government.

Gülenists helped the governing party win multiple elections. But the Erdogan-Gülen alliance began to crumble after the movement criticized government policy and exposed alleged corruption among Erdogan’s inner circle. Erdogan, who denied the allegations, grew weary of the growing influence of Gülen’s movement.

The Turkish leader accused Gülen’s followers of infiltrating the country’s police and judiciary and setting up a parallel state and began agitating for Gülen’s extradition to Turkey even before the failed 2016 coup.

The cleric had lived in the United States since 1999 when he came to seek medical treatment.

In 2000, with Gülen still in the U.S., Turkish authorities charged him with leading an Islamist plot to overthrow the country’s secular form of government and establish a religious state.

Some of the accusations against him were based on a tape recording on which Gülen was alleged to have told supporters of an Islamic state to bide their time: “If they come out too early, the world will quash their heads.” Gülen said his comments were taken out of context.

The cleric was tried in absentia and acquitted but never returned to his homeland. He won a lengthy legal battle against the administration of then-President George W. Bush to obtain permanent residency in the U.S.

Rarely seen in public, Gülen lived quietly on the grounds of an Islamic retreat center. He left mostly only to see doctors for ailments that included heart disease and diabetes, spending much of his time in prayer and meditation and receiving visitors from around the world.

Gülen never married and did not have children.

Associated Press writer Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report.

FILE - Turkish Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen meets members of the media at his compound in Saylorsburg, Pa. in July 2016. (AP Photo/Chris Post, File)

FILE - Turkish Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen meets members of the media at his compound in Saylorsburg, Pa. in July 2016. (AP Photo/Chris Post, File)

FILE - Turkish Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen meets members of the media at his compound in Saylorsburg, Pa. in July 2016. (AP Photo/Chris Post, File)

FILE - Turkish Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen speaks to members of the media at his compound in Saylorsburg, Pa. in July 2016. (AP Photo/Chris Post, File)