Tag: Red Auerbach

Bill Russell: In December of 1956, …

Bill Russell: In December of 1956, already two months into the season because I was competing in the Olympics, I began my career as a Boston Celtic. The team had had a Black player before me, Chuck Cooper, but when I arrived, I was the only Black person on a team of white guys. The Boston Celtics proved to be an organization of good people––from Walter Brown to Red Auerbach, to most of my teammates. I cannot say the same about the fans or the city. During games people yelled hateful, indecent things: “Go back to Africa,” “Baboon,” “Coon,” “Nigger.” I used their unkindness as energy to fuel me, to work myself into a rage, a rage I used to win.

As racial unrest exploded in cities …

As racial unrest exploded in cities across the U.S., Celtics general manager Red Auerbach believed playing would keep people off the streets. “So, of course we had to go out compete, but in the back of our minds, the Sixers and Celtics players shared grief and were visibly upset and disturbed about what had happened. But we still went out and played,” said Embry, who is now the Toronto Raptors’ senior basketball adviser. The mood was eerie that night The Spectrum as the Celtics beat Philly 127-118.

On this day: Red Auerbach retires as coach, 1966 championship won

On this day, renowned Boston Celtics head coach and GM red Auerbach retired as coach of the team after winning the franchise’s 9th championship.

On this day in 1966, Boston Celtics head coach Red Auerbach retired after taking the Celtics their ninth championship with a 95-93 victory over the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 7 of the NBA Finals.

Auerbach coached Boston for all nine of its championships up to that point — eight of them consecutive between 1959-66 — before passing the baton to player-coach Bill Russell.

His 16 seasons as head coach produced a 795-397 regular season record (a .667 winning percentage) and a 90-58 postseason record (.608), the winningest in league history to that point, a record that would hold for many years.

It is also the anniversary of Boston setting an NBA single-game playoff scoring record after beating the New York Knicks 157-128 in Game 2 of the first round of the 1990 Eastern Conference Playoffs.

The Celtics shot .670 (63-of-94 from the field overall), also a playoff record at that time. Kevin McHale led Boston with 31 points and 10 rebounds.

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On this day: Red Auerbach hired as coach; Heat eliminated in 2010

On this day in 1950, the Boston Celtics hired Red Auerbach as head coach, and 60 years later, Boston would eliminate the Miami Heat.

On this day in 1950, Arnold “Red” Auerbach, former head coach of the Washington Capitols and Tri-Cities Blackhawks, was hired as head coach of the Boston Celtics.

Auerbach would go on to coach the Celtics for 16 seasons. He amassed nine championships over that run with a 795-397 record in the regular season and a 90-58 postseason record, good for .667 and .608 respective winning percentages — the winningest coach in NBA history.

Red would step down as head coach in 1966 in favor of player-coach Bill Russell, but would remain general manager of the team well into the 1980s.

He would be awarded the Coach of the Year award for the 1964-65 NBA season, was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame as a coach in 1969, and was named a top-10 coach in league history in the 1996-97 season.

It is also the anniversary of a 96-86 closeout playoff win against the Miami Heat in 2010.

Boston won the series four games to one, and the Celtics secured the win with a 24-point performance from Ray Allen, with Paul Pierce adding 21 points, 7 rebounds and 6 assists.

Kevin Garnett chipped in 14 points and 7 rebounds, and Boston put themselves in position to face the LeBron James-led Cleveland Cavaliers in the second round.

“I think it’s a great matchup. It’s great for basketball — such a classic series,” said Pierce via the Associated Press. “They’re the team to beat right now. They showed it through the course of the season the way they played. We know this is going to be a tough series, another really, really tough series.”

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How Bill Russell became the Celtics’ head coach 54 years ago today

Boston Celtics legend Bill Russell became the first African American head coach in modern US history 54 years ago today.

54 years ago today, Boston Celtics legendary big man Bill Russell accepted the position offered him by the man who’d been the only coach he’d ever had as a pro — Red Auerbach — to become the first African American coach in modern sports history.

The offer, which was made midway through the season, seemed too good to be true to the Celtics center luminary despite nearly a decade of friendship between Auerbach and Russell.

The two conferred privately about having the Louisiana native succeed Red in the role, with Russell putting his initial skepticism on the table at the outset.

In an article by Russell in the Record-American Sunday Advertiser chronicling the eventful changing of the guard, the San Francisco product asked Auerbach, “Do you really want me [as head coach of the Celtics], Red, or is this a token gesture?”

The larger-than-life basketball figure responded bluntly as he was known to do, “I never made a token gesture in my life. I asked you, didn’t I?”

“I’ll think about it,” came Russell’s reply.

But the truth was that there was trepidation among the team about what might next; whether the franchise would be successful under a new mind with new plans and new ideas. When word got out that there might not, in fact, be a new mind at the helm after all, his teammates began to pressure Russell to take the position.

But the Monroe native bided his time, carefully considering the offer.

It was, after all, a different time — segregation was still a hot-button issue, and the tumult of the civil rights era in full swing. Would he be used as — or turned into — a scapegoat if things went wrong?

The architect of the Celtics 1960s dynasty must have gotten a sense his friend and player would not take the job, and began scheduling a search, even while preferring Russell for the job.

The Hall-of-Fame center was having lunch with a popular sportswriter of that era, Bill McSweeny, and the topic of Red’s successor as coach came up.

“Are you sure you don’t want to coach?” McSweeny asked him.

“I don’t think they need me, to tell you the truth,” he answered. “I think they have a good coach coming in [Alex] Hannum. So, I’ve dropped the whole idea. I’d have to really be wanted to take this job, and you know me — I don’t go anywhere I’m not wanted.”

Taken aback, McSweeny replied to Russell, “Listen — they want you. They think you don’t want the job, and they’re taking Hannum as a second choice.”

The rest, of course, is history — and some of the most important of the franchise. Russell’s acceptance would be announced  after a Game 1 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, and while the deal had already been ironed out, helped catalyze Boston to come back and win the series.

Auerbach would stay on as general manager, but did not meddle much in the day-to-day affairs of Russell’s tenure, and the trust that built the second act of the Celtics 1960s dynasty was built on the bedrock of their relationship.

Two more championships would come to the team under Russell’s tenure before his abrupt departure from the team and the wider Celtics community for some years, cementing Russell’s — and Red’s — legacies as all-time greats in multiple roles.

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On this day, Red names Bill Russell head coach; Sam Jones drafted

On this day in 1966, Boston Celtics legend Red Auerbach named Bill Russell his successor as head coach, nine years after they drafted shooting guard luminary Sam Jones.

On this day in 1966, Boston Celtics legendary coach and GM Red Auerbach announced big man Bill Russell would replace him as head coach.

Earlier in the season, Auerbach revealed the 1965-66 NBA season would be his last as head coach, and after losing Game 1 of the 1966 Finals, the Celtics luminary revealed Russell would succeed him.

The Louisiana native would become the first African American head coach of any major professional sports team in North America — never mind basketball — and Boston would go on to win the 1966 NBA championship.

Auerbach would stay on as the team’s general manager until late in the 1980s.

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Celtics coach Brad Stevens earned win No. 300 against Orlando Magic

Celtics coach Brad Stevens is one of the top coaches in the NBA because of how he’s created a culture of consistency.

With his calm and poised demeanor, Brad Stevens has established the Boston Celtics as one of the most consistent teams in the NBA the past few seasons.

Stevens, who began coaching the Celtics in the 2013-14 season, achieved a career milestone Friday night that put him with some of the best coaches in franchise history.

With the Celtics’ win over the Orlando Magic, Stevens earned his 300th win, per NBC Sports Boston’s A. Sherrod Blakely. Stevens is now the fifth coach in team history to have 300 wins, joining Red Auerbach, Tommy Heinsohn, Doc Rivers and K.C. Jones. Stevens is nine wins from passing Jones for fourth on the list.

Stevens is in his seventh season coaching the Celtics, which currently rank fourth in the Eastern Conference. He has only missed the playoffs once in his tenure with the Celtics, and that was his first season coaching the team.

Since that first season, Stevens has helped lead the Celtics to as far as the Eastern Conference Finals in 2017 and 2018. In 2018, the Celtics lost in Game 7 to the Cleveland Cavaliers.

The Celtics will play the New Orleans Pelicans in New Orleans on Sunday at 6 p.m. EST.

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Red Auerbach once fired a Celtics ballboy for being a Knicks fan

Former Boston Celtics head coach, general manager and president Red Auerbach took Celtics Pride seriously.

In a story by the New York Daily News’ Stefan Bondy, Gerald Brown — who now hosts a weekly SiriusXM radio show, “The Bottom Line Sports Show,” with Rick Mahorn and a podcast named “In the Key” with BJ Armstrong — took a walk down memory lane as he relayed an interesting tale about Boston Celtics legends Red Auerbach and Larry Bird.

Brown is a Harlem native who was once a ballboy for the New York Knicks thanks to a chance meeting with a team staffer. The adolescent career continued when he went to a college in Newton, MA. (just outside of a Boston) but this time, rather than working for the Knicks, Brown would work for their division rival after earning the trust of the team by fetching a new uniform for Bird.

At first, the relationship — though unexpected — went well for Brown.

When the young man had a jacket stolen, Celtics point guard Dennis Johnson gave him $200 in cash to replace it. Bird would even pick up Brown from Mount Ida in his blue pickup truck, which almost seems unfathomable in today’s day and age.

But in the 1989-90 season, Brown would find himself caught in between more than a division rivalry, as Boston and New York would meet in the first round of the 1990 NBA Playoffs. After Bird took over in Game 1 with 24 points, 18 rebounds and 10 assists in a win for the Celtics, the tides turned for both he and Boston.

In a bathroom at Boston Garden, just before Game 2, Brown would be by the team’s head ballboy on the orders of Auerbach (the Celtics’ cigar-toting president at that point of his storied career) for cheering for his hometown team during Game 1. Cheers that Bird noted while watching film and (perhaps jokingly) would then tell Auerbach:

“Red Auerbach happens to be in there. Evidently, he took what Larry said as Larry being upset, like I was not a true Celtic,” Brown says. “He tells the equipment manager Wayne Lebeaux to get rid of me, not realizing that Larry was playing.”

Brown was handed and envelope with cash and sent on his way. However, when a teary-eyed Brown went into the New York’s locker room (“to find some friendly and familiar faces”), Knicks big men Charles Oakley and Patrick Ewing noticed their former ballboy and asked him what happened.
His story so upset the duo that the team allowed him to sit on the bench for the rest of the series. The Celtics lost three straight games to the Knicks after taking Game 2.
Call it a coincidence or divine intervention but it appears that Boston reaped what they had sown; rather than advising or instructing Brown to not express his allegiances on the floor, they fired him for being a fan (albeit a fan of the wrong team).
The Celtics did not win a title for the rest of Bird’s career.

More than 4 decades later, Bill Russell finally accepts his Hall of Fame ring

Perhaps the best player in Boston Celtics history, the legendary Bill Russell has finally accepted his Hall of Fame honor.

44 years later, it was finally time.

It might never have happened. People leave the mortal coil younger than Bill Russell’s 85 years quite often — statistically speaking, more often than not — given average life expectancy in the United States is nearly a decade shorter.

But the world has caught up to the former Boston Celtics’ star (and coach) and his way of seeing things, allowing those among us who value his on-court work as much as we appreciate what he did off it.

I am of course speaking of news that Russell has relented and — over four decades later — accepted the ring proffered for his induction into the Naismith Hall of Fame so many years ago, the not-young author of this article wasn’t even a twinkle in his father’s eye.

At the time, the rejection caused confusion, even consternation. All the legendary big man said was, “For my own personal reasons, which I don’t want to discuss, I don’t want to be a part of it. [I’]m not going. They know that. I’ve felt this way for many years (via the New York Times).”

The cryptic message seemed at best off-putting. Who would turn down such an honor? What could possibly motivate one of the greatest to play the game to reject one of its greatest honors?

This very question came even from the lips of friend and longtime boss, Celtics then- president Red Auerbach.

“Yes, I’m a little disappointed,” he offered. “It’s the biggest honor you can get in the National Basketball Association, and besides, how many other people have been nominated for the Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility?”

Even now, a near-lifetime later, that’s a rare honor.

However, to his credit, Auerbach was still supportive of Russell’s choice. “[H]e’s his own man. Let him do what he wants.”

At the time, there were rumors the Louisianian’s decision was tied to Russell’s feeling that the Hall was discriminatory (which turned out to be true), a position unsurprisingly rejected by his peers at the time. Missing the point, then-executive director of the Hall of Fame Lee Williams said, “If that’s so, then he [Russell] is wrong.”

“We have the original Rens in our honors court. They were elected in 1961 and consist of seven black players. Also, Robert O. Douglas, owner and manager of the Rens, is in the Hall of Fame,” added the director.

Sweetwater Clifton, Chuck Cooper and Earl Lloyd all came before Russell and, while not perhaps on the level of the 11-time champion, few were of any race or creed. They pioneered the simple act of existing in the sport as a person of color that made the big man’s prodigious contributions even possible.

Moreover, the league (and sport) was littered with comparatively mediocre players from earlier decades who got in by virtue of being there in the early days of the sport in the first place as much their modest stat lines did. How was this not at least on par with such a scenario?

While many in the press and bleachers alike pretended to not understand what Russell was too classy to rub in their faces, it helped push Russell away from the sport, departing from the NBA in a coaching capacity until a short return in the late 1980s to head the Sacramento Kings.

Fast-forward to the present and, after a long-overdue induction of Chuck Cooper, longtime civil rights activist Russell has finally accepted an honor bestowed on him many years in a past in some ways still closer than some would like to believe.

No fanfare, no speeches, no media events — just closure. For those able to read between the lines, everything is as clear as it ever was.

Congratulations, Russ!