Tag: Red Auerbach

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!

It was Auerbach who nixed Parker and …

It was Auerbach who nixed Parker and insisted that North Carolina shooting guard Joe Forte be the team’s pick at No. 21, a fact confirmed in recent days by several league executives familiar with the Celtics decision on what would become a fateful night for the Spurs. Auerbach, one executive said, remained skeptical of European point guards. Plus, he had seen many of Forte’s games when Forte was a star for DeMatha Catholic High School, the famed hoops program in Hyattsville, Md., run by Auerbach’s friend, legendary prep coach Morgan Wootten.