Bill Simmons is a lifelong Boston Celtics fan who grew up going to games with his dad. A love of the Celtics, especially when he grew up rooting for the team through the hot-streak ’80s, planted seeds for his career as a sports journalist and founder of the Ringer media empire. But he was determined that the new Ringer doc Celtics City, which premieres today on HBO, wouldn’t be “an infomercial.”

Simmons said at the recent Boston premiere of the nine-part doc that he had wanted to do a documentary about his hometown team for a long time — but that he didn’t want to tell a hagiographic, neutered story. Countless documentaries have surrendered some creative control in exchange for access to people and archives, and Simmons said he wasn’t willing to do that.

“Once you get people involved, and people are involved in the IP, it can get screwed up and go sideways, and it can turn into an infomercial,” he told the audience. “And I think for us, a big challenge was, ‘Are the Celtics going to actually let us tell the story?’ Because it’s got to be warts and all.”

He credited Celtics lead owner Wycliffe “Wyc” Grousbeck credit for being hands-off.

“When we were pushing them initially to do this, other people were pushing the same idea. And we were just like, ‘We’re going to do it the best. This will work with us. You’ve just got to trust us.’”

Grousbeck told MovieMaker that while his team did see some advance footage, he didn’t meddle: “I did see some of it but the fact is, we let them go. I never vetoed anything. That’s the truth,” he said at the premiere.

The series, directed by Emmy winner Lauren Stowell (“SC Featured: Taquarius Wair — Unstoppable”), chronicles the history of the Celtics from the team’s founding in 1946 to its 2024 NBA Championship. It features interviews with Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, Larry Bird, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, among many others, and covers highs like the Bird era, as well as crushing lows like the 1986 death of draft pick Len Bias before he got to play for the Celtics.

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The fifth episode, shown at the premiere, addressed the complicated racial legacy of the city of Boston and the perception, during the ’80s Lakers-Celtics rivalry, that Boston was a white team — which was particularly frustrating to Black fans of the Celtics. Those interviewed include members of Boston’s own New Edition, and Lakers star James Worthy, who was no fan of Boston in the ’80s.

“I look at that little leprechaun,” Worthy says of the Celtics’ mascot, “and sometimes I just want to spit in his face.” (The line is in the trailer below.)

The title of the fifth episode, “F— the Celtics,” should give you a feel for the blunt honesty of the docuseries, which is executive produced by Simmons and Connor Schell (The Last Dance, OJ: Made in America), and co-executive produced and showrun by Gabe Honig (The Captain.)

Simmons, like the doc, is good at seeing things from all sides: He showed up at his hometown premiere wearing a jacket celebrating sports-rival Los Angeles — specifically Jackie Robinson’s legacy at UCLA. We talked with him about growing up a Celtics fan, moving to Los Angeles, and finding interviewees willing to be the bad guy for Celtics City.

MovieMaker: Why did you want to include your dad, Dr. Bill Simmons, in the film? I thought that was really moving.

Bill Simmons: We interviewed 100 people, and we were trying to get all kinds of perspectives, so we wanted a couple of season ticket holders, and we got Mike Rotondi, who’s been one since 1980, and my dad. We just felt like it’s a story about the team and the city, so it made sense to have fans in it, too.

MovieMaker: How do you navigate being from Boston and living in L.A.?

Bill Simmons: Terribly. [Laughs. ] My daughter’s here, going to college. My dad’s still here. So I come back a lot. I still feel like I live here and I’m just vacationing in L.A.

I’ve been in L.A. 23 years now. But this is always gonna be like home base.

Bill Simmons on Finding Bad Guys for Celtics City

MovieMaker: Was there a moment in the documentary where you really got a strong sense of nostalgia? The feeling of being 10 or 15 years old?

Bill Simmons: Yeah. The fourth episode, There’s always been a ton of Celtics-L.A. stuff, but the Boston-Philly rivalry — which was a real rivalry — I hadn’t really seen that in anything. So that one, especially the 1981 series, we blew that out and really had fun with it.

That was, for me, the most important series ever — coming back from three-one. So that was really cool.

MovieMaker: I like how you took the racial issues head on in the fifth episode. It’s one of the things that people think about with Boston, but don’t know how to address. Can you talk about the thought process behind how you did it?

Bill Simmons: We had an unbelievable director, and we had partners that knew this was going to be Boston, warts and all. To do the story correctly, you’ve got to talk about the perception of the city. What’s true, what’s not true… and how it’s kind of interwoven the with team, especially in the ’60s and ’70s. So there was no way you can tell the Celtics’ story without talking about it. We just had to be authentic.

MovieMaker: What was the biggest challenge in making this?

Bill Simmons: There’s been so many documentaries like this now, it’s really hard to get everybody to be in them, especially if they’re on the other team. And I think after The Last Dance with Isaiah [Thomas, who was pitted as a kind of antagonist to Michael Jordan], nobody wants to be the bad guy in the doc for the other team in the sports movie.

So we don’t have Magic [Johnson] or Michael Jordan and [Charles] Barkley. With 30 for 30, especially the first five years, everyone did everything. … Now it’s way harder. So you just have to figure out how to make the thing you want to make, but maybe knowing you’re not going to get all the interview subjects you want.

MovieMaker: James Worthy is a pretty great adversary in this.

Bill Simmons: He was great. Yeah, we got 95% of people we wanted. But we wanted 100. Fifteen years ago, you get everybody. Now you don’t.

Celtics City premieres today on Max, with new episodes debuting weekly.

Main image: Celtics City executive producer Bill Simmons in the third episode of the docuseries. Courtesy of HBO.