Tag: Dave Cowens

Dennis Rodman invited Dave Cowens on a road trip, and it ended badly

Boston Celtics legendary big man Dave Cowens went on a road trip with Dennis Rodman, and it ended in a serious accident.

Boston Celtics legend Dave Cowens is lucky he didn’t witness the end of Dennis Rodman in a motorcycle accident.

While Rodman didn’t exactly get along with Boston in his time with the Detroit Pistons, by the time he landed with the San Antonio Spurs, the NBA firebrand had mellowed enough to invite Celtics legend Cowens on a road trip with a fraught ending.

Cowens recently related the story of the trip to the Boston Herald’s Mark Murphy, which happened when Cowens was an assistant on one of Gregg Popovich’s early teams.

Rodman, a fan of motorcycles, planned to ride his with friends to a nearby town for a day trip, and invited Cowens to join them.

“I had a Harley-Davidson of my own,” said the Hall of Famer.

“We had a posse — all his friends, and a big-wheeled truck. There were four or five guys on motorcycles, and we were doing a whole trip up to Luckenbach, Texas, like the song — Willie [Nelson], Waylon [Jennings] and the boys going to Luckenbach.”

Rodman had already clashed with Popovich that season, and needed approval for the excursion, which Cowens tentatively secured.

“We were going up there in the high country, and I told Pop and Bob Hill that Rodman asked me to go with him,” he explained.

“I said ‘He’s going on a motorcycle, you going to let him go?'”, Cowens said, laughing. “They said, ‘Sure, go with him, and make sure nothing happens.'”

At one point, the group became separated between two traffic lights, the bulk of the posse at a four-way intersection at the top of the hill waiting for the stragglers, Rodman being one of the late pair.

Unaware of the stop at first, both flew past the main body of the group into the intersection.

“They didn’t know there was a stop sign up there. So when they hit the stop sign, all of a sudden both bikes, they just laid them down, and both guys were flying through the air,” related Cowens.

“[Rodman] flew right by me — did a somersault in the air, head over heels, hit down on his [posterior], went back, went back on his elbows, tore the [expletive] out of the white T-shirt he had on. When he got up his jeans were smoking, actually smoking from going along the hard top. His bike was laying down, and I’m going ‘Oh my God.’ He was in a lot of pain.”

“So they put him in the truck, I told them to take him to the hospital – ‘No, I don’t want to go to the hospital.’ I said ‘No, take him to the hospital, I’m going to call Pop and tell him what’s going on,'” he added.

“I had to wait for a tow truck to come along and pick up the two bikes, go down to the local police station because someone had seen the whole thing and called it in,” explained the assistant coach.

Then, after he’d cleaned up the mess for Rodman, he had to call Pop.

“I said I don’t know what’s going on, but we’re taking him to the hospital, and we’re keeping it all hush-hush for now,” Cowens said. “Tried to hush it up as much as possible. And this is in-season.”

It’s safe to say it went over like a ton of bricks, though Popovich would eventually forgive Cowens. “He came back after about a month. I was worried,” he said. “I thought I might be getting fired.”

Rodman would end up with a dislocated shoulder with a little scar tissue for good measure, and would be traded to the Bulls soon after for the season of the “Last Dance” of the eponymous ESPN Michael Jordan documentary.

But things could have gone very differently — luckily for Cowens and Rodman both, they did not.

[lawrence-related id=33525,31584,33126,33043]

Celtics legend Dave Cowens’ surprising take on modern big men

Boston Celtics big man luminary shared some surprising opinions about big men in the modern era on a rare and recent podcast appearance.

Boston Celtics big man luminary Dave Cowens recently made a rare appearance on the “Bob Ryan and Jeff Goodman Podcast” recently, and shared some observations on the evolution of the big man in the NAB since his era in ways which might surprise modern readers.

The tendency in any sport is to see it as you encountered it as if it was always that way, but basketball, like any sport, has continuously evolved — and the role of the big man evolving with it.

The tendency of bigs in the relatively recent past has been big and bruising post operators who use their sheer size to bully their way to a simply high-percentage shot.

As analytics has pushed the game away from that template towards more dynamic bigs able to use skill to outskill or outrun sheer muscle, in many ways the game has shifted back towards the type of basketball that made Cowens — just 6-foot-9 — such a lethal center despite his size.

“I think that they said you were the center because you’re in a middle everything,” he began. “And a lot of times the ball went inside, you’d make better passes from the post area, the elbow area in the top of the key.”

Centering — for lack of a better word — the five as a hub for the rest of the team to work off of offensively isn’t an abandoned approach in the modern game, but it’s also a much less common approach today even as teams adopt a more skilled big man approach than even in the mid-1980s.

The shift towards post-heavy play would reach its peak in the mid-1990s, ironically just as the dominance of Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls began to show the value of wing and guard play as a counter — and has been in steady decline ever since.

Cowens went on to elaborate just how central the big man was in the 1970s for the Celtics (and really, dating back to the Bill Russell era if not earlier).

“So, you know, in Red [Auerbach]’s plays, there’s six plays. The one, the center handled the ball, the two, the center-center pick, the three, the center handled the ball, [also] the four, the six — I don’t know if the five did — and then in our spread offenses center was out there all the time.”

“So that’s how centers were used differently then today, there was more of a skill set, because we all had hook shots, they all had little jumpers, you know, they had a backup game and stuff like that,” he added.

“[They] could protect the rim and all, but they could shoot as well. And most of them are pretty good free throw shooters,” offered Cowens. “Matter of fact, I recall no real clunkers like today with some of these guys.”

The Celtics legend isn’t the sort to brag about the hurt he’d inflict on some of the modern big man like the Shaquille O’Neals and Charles Barkleys who came after him — far from it in fact.

“You know, most I mean, I wouldn’t want to play against these guys today. They’re just too damn big and strong — I mean, the velocity!” he began.

“Now, they’re going so fast and there’s so much bigger and so much just well conditioned, because … they train like the guy in the Rocky film [presumably Ivan Drago], you know what I mean?  It’s like, it’s nuts. So, I mean, that’s a lot of contact, even though [it’s said] I was rough.”

“But nowadays, the two things that I think have been lost, and maybe not lost because some guys have them, but but number one is the skill. And number two, I don’t know that they’ll have a skill,” Cowens explained.

The Hall-of-Fame big man doesn’t put the blame on the players, however — that falls on the front office and how they’ve been developed as players before getting to the NBA.

“I’m not saying they don’t have the skill. The problem is, is that they don’t get a chance are not encouraged to do it,” he suggested.

“Because of the way they’ve made the game played is that the coach is telling them that it’s ingrained in their head now since forever. The best shot is a three point shot,” he said, invoking a popular distaste for an overused and often-misunderstood narrative in today’s NBA.

“So you’re just — your shot is a dispensable kind of a thing.”

Not so in Cowen’s era — and maybe the not-too-distant future, too.

[lawrence-related id=33503,33495,33468,33401]

On this day: Celtic legend John Havlicek born; coach Dave Cowens axed

On this day, legendary Boston forward John Havlicek was born, and Celtics luminary Dave Cowens was fired as head coach.

On this day, Boston Celtics luminary John Havlicek was born in Martins Ferry, Ohio in 1940.

The eight-time champion forward played his college ball at Ohio State where he would win an NCAA championship in 1960. He was drafted by Boston seventh overall in the 1962 NBA Draft, for whom he would play 16 seasons.

Besides the banners, Hondo — as he was called — would be elected Finals MVP in 1974, to 13 All-Star Games, 11 All-NBA teams, eight All-Defensive teams, and several other honors over his career.

Among the winningest of all Celtics — and especially so beyond the Bill-Russell-led dynasty of the 1960s — Havlicek elevated the importance of the “sixth man” role to new heights.

He retired in 1978 — upon which his his jersey number was immediately retired — and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1984.

It was also on this date that legendary Celtics big man Dave Cowens was fired as coach by the team after going just 27-41 in the 1978-79 NBA season.

While one of the more successful Celtics players, it would be nearly 20 years before he got another shot at an NBA head coaching gig.

That team was the 1996-97 Charlotte Hornets, with whom he registered a 54-28 record, saving face quite a bit after his first go-round.

It is also the anniversary of seven games since the season of Boston’s last championship in 2007-08.

The first was a 107-104 win over the Milwaukee Bucks in 2008 that nearly saw the Celtics drop a game to an inferior opponent while resting the Big Three of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen for much of the game.

“I just don’t want our guys playing big minutes down the stretch,” Rivers said at the time via the Associated Press.

It is also the date of another squeaker, this one a 106-104 victory over the then-New Jersey Nets in 2009.

Yet again some substandard play forced the Big Three off the bench, but a huge game from point guard Rajon Rondo — 31 points, nine rebounds and five assists — sealed the win for Boston.

On this date in 2011, Boston blew out the Washington Wizards 104-88 at home.

Powered by Garnett, Pierce and Rondo all scoring double-doubles, the Celtics put themselves in position to steal the East’s second seed from the Miami Heat with the victory.

“We’re trying to push for the second seed. It’s a good win,” Pierce offered via the AP. “We’ve kind of struggled in the second end of back-to-backs.”

A year later, Boston blew out the Philadelphia 76ers 103-79 in Rondo’s 17th-straight game with double-digit assists.

KG added 20 points as the Celtics closed in on a third seed for the playoffs, their effort on the defensive end of the court pleasing head coach Doc Rivers.

“I don’t care how well you play, your offense is going to fail you sometimes,” he noted. “But if you come with the right mind-set, your defense never should, and it’ll always give you a chance to win a game.”

On April 8, 2015 Boston beat the Detroit Pistons 113-103, and point guard Isaiah Thomas had a season-high 34 points, foreshadowing his future with the team in seasons to come.

The win eliminated the Pistons from playoff contention, and moved the Celtics moved into a tie for seventh place with the Brooklyn Nets in the East.

Boston blew out the Bucks 124-109 a year later in 2016 as center Tyler Zeller tied a career-high 26 points in the win.

Thomas chipped in 20 points, and guard Avery Bradley and big man Kelly Olynyk each had 16 as the Celtics tried to separate themselves in a tight scrum between the sixth and third seeds in the East.

Finally, in 2017 Boston beat the Charlotte Hornets 121-114 as IT (with 32 points) clashed with future Celtics point guard Kemba Walker, who had 23 points.

The UConn product’s team at the time was eliminated from playoff contention with the loss, while Boston remained in range for the top overall seed in the East going into the postseason.

[lawrence-related id=32283,32268,32270,32262]

Ranking the top five centers in Boston Celtics history

Who are the five greatest centers in Boston Celtics history? Join the Celtics Wire as we dive in and make our case.

While the center position isn’t what it once was in the classic era of the NBA, the Boston Celtics have had some true giants at the five in every sense of the word.

But who are the best to play for the storied franchise as they collected an NBA-best 17 banners over the last seven decades?

The Celtics Wire have assembled the best of the best from Boston’s past to see how they stack up against each other.

We went all the way back to the 1950s before the Celtics won their first banner right up to last season, and while there’s lots of faces to choose from, the man at the top stands alone.

We’re only counting what players did in their time with the team, so don’t be surprised to see great players like Shaquille O’Neal absent from this list.

We’ll begin in reverse order just to have a bit of drama, though astute fans of Boston’s history likely already know how this list will end.

Pages: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5, Page 6, Page 7

Ex-Celtic Dave Cowens, NBRPA work to shield retired players from virus

Former Boston Celtic big man Dave Cowens and other members of the National Basketball Retired Players Association are working to protect its members from the pandemic.

In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, many retired NBA players are turning to one another for help.

Older people are generally more at risk to the virus, and unlike in may industries, when NBA players retire from the game, many still maintain a close relationship with what was, for many years, their workplace.

Now, in the midst of the pandemic, the National Basketball Retired Players Association (NBRPA) has been working with members to ensure the safety of many who, on average are 55 or older, are among the highest-risk age groups of having severe adverse outcomes if they contract the virus, reports SB Nation’s Michael Pina.

Former Boston Celtic big man Dave Cowens (who helped found the organization in 1992 with Dave Bing, Archie Clark, Dave DeBusschere and Oscar Robertson) recently spoke with Pina about how the NBRPA has been helping its own during the pandemic — and how life has been for him as well.

Cowens has been in Fort Lauderdale, Florida since early January in a building he shares with many other older people — though many have been scarce in recent weeks for understandable reasons.

Thinking back to early-season exhibition games against the New York Knicks Boston played in upstate New York, the Hall of Fame center related he would have liked to see a game with no fans in the stands, the sounds of sneakers on parquet squeaking audibly as it did in those days.

With the state of the league and the world being what it is, he’s quite likely to get his wish if the 2019-20 season is resumed this summer.

But recognizing there’s much more to worry about than to serve as a platform for nostalgia, Cowens is deeply worried for his friends and former teammates and peers.

He recently contacted former Celtic Don Chaney, who, with a heart condition is probably at even greater risk than the Kentucky native is at age 71.

“There’s so much uncertainty. If you’re feeling fine, but all of a sudden you start feeling sick, you then say ‘Am I gonna die from this?’ And so you don’t know,” posited Cowens.

“Young people don’t care because they’re already immune to everything in the world anyway. They’re gonna live forever. But they’re young, that’s how they think, and for the most part they’re in pretty good shape for dealing with this … So I don’t hang out at the clubs anymore.”

“That’s not part of the schedule,” he laughed.

While the NBA is hopeful to resume play this summer, many experts believe the pandemic could linger well beyond that timeframe, whether the league can find a way to safely resume play or not.

“The thing that bothers me so bad is they don’t know when it’s gonna end,” observed Cowens. “Or is it?”

The scale of the disruption the world is currently seeing is unlike anything in living memory, wresting from our collective consciousness handfuls of air as we struggle to find a template to draw on to get through this global disaster.

Thinking back to roughly a century prior, Cowens considered how his grandfather and others survived not only the 1918 H1N1 pandemic (often wrongly called the “Spanish Flu”) that killed around 50-100 million globally, but World War I before it, perhaps responsible for as many deaths.

“People are going to survive,” Cowens offered. “That’s true. But the coronavirus will still crash into so many different lives, and so far the mortality rate for those it infects is substantially higher in seniors with underlying health issues.”

For that reason, Cowens and the NBRPA have worked hard to spread good information on physical distancing and self-quarantine to help protect members.

In this brave new world, scientifically-accurate information can literally be the difference between life and death, and it’s one of the few things the NBRPA is prepared to do about this novel coronavirus.

While the NBRPA was never designed to be a medium for pandemic preparedness, in truth, little in our society today is ready for such an event. In even the best-prepared nations on earth, the virus is everything their health care systems can handle.

And as the U.S. has struggled to prepare for the severity of the impact on its own healthcare infrastructure, the driving force protecting society’s most vulnerable in the NBRPA and society more generally has been that very society working together to take of itself.

[lawrence-related id=31541,31471,31516,31496]

Right now, in the face of a crippling …

Right now, in the face of a crippling global pandemic, its members also represent an increasingly vulnerable and shaken segment of society that needs all the security, support, and accurate information they can find. The average member is 55 years old and over 200 of them are at least 70. All are impacted by the coronavirus, stressed over their own future, from a physical, emotional, and financial perspective. In addition to Bailey — who previously served before he was termed out of the role due to appointment related rules — other recently elected directors include Shawn Marion, Sheryl Swoopes, and Dave Cowens. (Cowens helped found the association in 1992 with Oscar Robertson, Dave Bing, Archie Clark, and Dave DeBusschere.) Johnny Davis was named chairman of the board after spending 34 seasons as an NBA player and coach, while Jerome Williams and Grant Hill were elevated into different roles on the executive committee.

He reminisces about his childhood in …

He reminisces about his childhood in Newport, Kentucky. Cowens’ grandparents and aunt lived upstairs, in the same house as his parents and brother. His aunt would entertain with stories about getting to see Jim Thorpe (the only sports hero Cowens ever had) race with her own two eyes. Cowens thinks about that time; how his grandfather lived to see his 60s despite serving in World War I and then enduring the Spanish Flu, which killed as many as 50 million people across the world. “People are going to survive,” Cowens says. That’s true. But the coronavirus will still crash into so many different lives, and so far the mortality rate for those it infects is substantially higher in seniors with underlying health issues.