I had a theory back when I was starting out, and what it came down to was this: Basketball is like a war. When you go into a war, you go in to win it, because you don't know what's going to happen to you if you lose. You could become a slave. Or a POW. You might even get killed.
It's the same when you're a coach in sports. What happens to you if you lose? As far as your career goes, you're dead.
So I'd spend hours asking myself: What will it take for us to win? They're coming at me with all of their offensive weapons, shooting from every direction. What will it take to stop them? How are we going to win this war?
One answer, I decided was defense. You see, defense is just hard work. There'll be nights when the ball won't fall in, no matter how well you execute your plays. Your touch will fall off just a bit and there won't be anything you can do about that. It happens. I't something you can't always control. But you can play good defense if you put your mind to it; that's something you can do every
night.
So I made up my mind that any team of mine was going to be a team that played tough defense. That was one way to win the war. But even that would be dependent on another factor: Motivation.
Motivation! Getting your people to give you their best efforts. Night in and night out. Game in and game out. Motivation, that was the key. Looking for reasons to win. You have to do that when you play as many games as pro teams do, particularly against a weaker opponent. Sounds like that should be a cinch, right? Far from it.
I've told this to many college coaches. You have to motivate your players for the so-called easy games. The big games take care of themselve; they're self motivating to a large extent. It's the game which catches you off balance in which you've got to bust your humps.
So you have to treat every game as a separate entity, and then come up with a logical reason why we must win this one tonight. If there was a secret to the success I enjoyed as a coach, that might have been it right there. I'll bet I came up with 2,000 reasons why we had to win.
But sometimes outside factors did the job for me. Like the night in Cincinnati when the management there handed out 5,000 cigars to customers as they filed to their seats. It was a key game, and the Royals were one of our big rivals at the time, so the idea was to have everyone light up and blow smoke in our faces after we'd gone down to defeat. It was a takeoff on my cigar bit, you know? And I'll admit, it was a pretty cute idea, but it backfired on them. Talk about motivating speeches! I might have given the best one of my life that night. There was no damn way we were going to lose that one. I had the team so hopped up we went out and kicked the hell out of them.
Some nights, though, I'd just try to appeal to everyone's common sense. "Look, you guys are already chalking this one up as a win, right? But, remember, no one's ever won a damn thing on paper. You still have to go out and get the job done. Now there are two ways you can go about this. If you really bust your balls at the start, we might win this thing by the third period and then you can sort of take it easy and have some fun going down the stretch. If you don't do that, you're going to end up having to play 48 hard minutes and try to eke it out at the buzzer. I don't have to tell you, a win over these guys counts just as much as a win over LA, but you can make it an easy win or you can sweat your fannies off. It's your choice."
See, part of motivation is putting ideas into people's heads, getting them to see things a certain positive way. There was the night, for example, when we were getting ready to play Philadelphia in one of those Game 7 showdowns at the Garden. The minute I walked into our dressing room I could sense something was wrong. It was too quiet. Everyone was too serious. We had been champions for a long, long time, but now everyone was starting to wonder: Is this the year it ends? Is it finally someone else's turn?
I stood there for a moment, looking around, trying to spot some life, some enthusiasm, some reaction. Nothing. Just silence. So what did I do? I started to laugh, right out loud. Everyone looked at me like I was nuts - but now I had their attention.
"You guys have to be kidding me," I said. "If you're worried about playing them, how do you think they feel having to play us?" Then I walked out.
Satch Sanders later told me everyone began looking at one another, and they all started laughing, too. By the time the knock on the door came, they were having a party. Then they went out and kicked Philadelphia's ass.
You have to be careful. You can motivate too much. It's a hard thing to guage. There are inner forces you can appeal to, giving a guy something to think about, and there are outer forces. But what you don't want is a guy who becomes too hyped up. After all, we're talking about a game of touch here. It's like a tennis player. He can get sky high. That means he's mentally in shape and has a strong desire to win, but it doesn't mean the ball's going to land where he wants it to. If he gets himself psyched up too much, he'll be hitting the balls all over the place.
You can outsmart yourself, too. I did that once in Detroit and some of our old guys still kid me about it. It was New Year's Eve. We'd won 17 in a row, tying the league record my Caps set back in 1946-47. The next day we were facing Cincinnati, one of the worst teams in the league at that time, in the first game of a double header. If we won, we'd make history. So instead of letting the guys go out to a movie or do whateve they'd normally do, I had them all come up to my room. No celebrating whatsoever, I ordered sandwiches and Cokes and we played cards for awhile, then we just stood around looking at each other until I sent them all to bed.
The next day Cincinnati blew us off the court. It wasn't even close."

In other Celtics news, the long-awaited Marquis Daniels trade still isn’t official, as the C’s and Pacers search for a third team to facilitate the process.

Danny Ainge expects things to be resolved by next week, when Grizzlies GM Chris Wallace gets back from vacation.

How do we keep ourselves out of temptuous situations. Surround yourselves with good people. Those that want great things for you

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When you're in the public eye a lot of people regard you as little more than a piece of meat. They presume they can say what they want to you, do what they want to you, and ask what they want from you, and that you have to stand there and oblige their every wish because that's what you get paid to do.
Well, that's not what you get paid to do. Not at all. I've heard people say: "Someday when no one asks for your autograph, you'll look back and miss all that attention."
Oh yeah? Bull. Sure, it's exciting and flattering when you're first starting out and you're not used to it, but after a while you get to be like the guy who works in the chocolate factory. For the first few days he loves the stuff, he can't get enough of it, in fact. But then after he's been there awhile it doesn't mean that much to him anymore, and by the time he retires he couldn't care less if he never saw a piece of it again.
That's how it is for a lot of people who live in the fishbowl. They can't wait to climb out.
Personally, I do sign autographs, because it eliminates talk. Russell won't sign them. Jack Benny never did. Dave Cowens, on the other hand, felt autographs were a copout, that people who were too self conscious or insecure to strike up a conversation found it easier and safer to thrust a piece of paper at someone. He used to make a game of it, ignoring the paper and reaching out to shake their hand and ask them what their name was. His idea was that a brief personal interaction meant much more than a scrap of paper which would most likely wind up being tossed out with the rubbish.
Dave was at an airport one day when a young kid, maybe 10 or 12, walked up and asked for an autograph. "I'll tell you what," he said. "I'll give you a choice. I'll sign my name if you want me to. Or, if you'd rather, we can go over there and have a hot dog and a Coke before my flight takes off."
Naturally, the kid goes for the hot dog and Coke, but while they're standing there talking about it, the kid's mother - not knowing what's going on - comes charging up onto the scene and starts giving Dave holy hell: "You big shots have a lot of nerve saying no to autographs. Who do you think pays your salary...?"
Dave didn't say a word. He just turned and walked away, leaving the kid to tell the mother what had really happened.

There's a tendency, once you become a so called success or a so called celebrity, to become a little bit of a faker, too. You have two personalities now: One for when you're with the public and another for when you're at home or with friends.
Sometimes you can't avoid that, like when you're out making a speech. But I'm talking about day to day living, day to day dealings with people. I try to avoid it as much as I can. I try to be the way I am, wherever I am, all the time.
I became very angry with Chuck Connors one time. Chuck played college ball at Seton Hall, then spent two seasons playing for the Celtics when the league was just getting off the ground. He was 6-7 and a good athlete, but he was smart enough to realize his brightest future was going to be in movies and TV, and of course he went on to have a great success as an actor. We became good friends. I love the guy; I really do. And he was coming to Boston to shoot a commercial this one time, so he called me up and asked me to join him for dinner later that night after our game. So we met and went over to Jimmy's, a famous restaurant on the Boston waterfront.
This was when his TV series, The Rifleman, was really big. Well, sure enough, someone recognized him, wearing his cowboy hat and all. He could have simply said, "Thank you." Instead, he made this big Hollywood production out of signing an autograph, turning it into a tremendous scene.
I was embarrassed by it all, and I told him so when we got to our table. "Chuck," I said, "I go out to dinner to be calm and quiet. I don't go out to embrace the public so that everyone will know that I'm here and some joker will write in his column that I was at Jimmy's with Chuck Connors. That's not my bag. I'm with the public all the time, just like you are. But when I'm out like this, trying to enjoy a meal and some friendly conversaton, all I'm looking for is a peaceful evening. Don't you ever want some peaceful time for yourself, too?
I chewed him out, and we talked about it for quite a while.

John Y. was one of those guys who fancied himself as a real slick wheeler dealer. He was also the best example I've ever seen of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing.
Take the Earl Tatum deal. I said, "John, you're active on the phone," I'm figuring maybe I can get him off my back here. "Why don't you see if you can find us a backcourtman?" He asked, "Who's available?" I said, "I hear Indiana's trying to get rid of Earl Tatum. Maybe we could pick him up for a late draft choice. If we move before they put him on waivers, anything they get is a plus, so maybe they'll go along with it."
I get a call from him later: "I think I can get Tatum for a second round pick. How's that sound?"
I said is sounded pretty good but that I wanted to blow it by Satch Sanders - he was coaching for us then - to see what he thought. Satch liked the idea, too, so I told John to go ahead and make the deal.
He came back later on, laughing.
"Well I did it."
"Did what?"
"Made the Tatum deal."
"What'd you give them?"
"I gave them $50,000."
I just looked at him. I couldn't believe it. There wasn't any mention of money in our discussion.
Then he says, "we worked out something on a draft choice too."
No, I'm figuring maybe because of the dough, they agreed to a late round choice like third, fourth, or even fifth.
"Yep," he says, "I gave 'em a first round choice!"
I was horrified. "You didn't. You couldn't have done something like that."
"Yes, I did."
I wanted to hit him. "Look," I told him, "it's your ballclub so you can do anything you want with it. I can't stop you. But I want you to know, I don't like it. I don't like it at all."
I think that was the moment when I made up my mind that if he was going to own the team, I didn't want anything to do with it. That was July 1978. He'd been with us only a couple of months, but I'd seen all I wanted to see.
When you give your life to something - and I'd given mine to the Celtics - you just don't get up and walk away from it lightly. Oh, there were times when I could have left. Lots of them. Back when I retired from coaching, before Ted Turner bought the Hawks, Ted Cousins, the owner in Atlanta, offered me a five year deal that included a piece of the franchise if I'd coach for him and become his GM. And there were plenty of other flattering offers. But before most of them were even on the table I'd say, "Look. Forget it. I'm not interested. There's no sense even discussing it."
The thought of leaving never really entered my mind, not even in the worst of times when some of our ownersips bled us dry. We were winning championships without a nickel in the bank. No one would ever believe how bad things got at times. We had airline companies shutting off our credit. One time I had to put up $9,000 of my own money in order to get the club onto a flight. When the phone company threatened to shut us down I personally visited the business office to ask for an extension of our credit. Embarrassing? You bet it was. It was an indignity whe didn't deserve. But what could we do about it? There were times when we didn't even know who our owners were; all we knew was that we'd been purchased by some faceless corporation. Again. There are names on our payroll that I'd never heard of; everything was handled out of New York. During one of those ownerships a messenger arrived on the shuttle every Monday morning to pick up the gate receipts and bring them back to New York with him on the next shuttle. They took the money and never paid the bills. Believe me, we had some hard times, even while we were hanging all those flags.
Yet I never really thought of leaving. There was just something about the name Celtics that wouldn't let me go. And money had nothing to do with it. You simply can't buy what this team has given me over the years. It's like I've often pointed out, there are owners in sports today who'd gladly fork over millions of dollars to be able to wear a championship ring, but those rings aren't for sale. You can't buy them. You've got to earn them.
But John Y. Brown was more than I could take.
Sonny Werblin's a good friend of mine, and he'd always told me I could have a job with his organization any time I wanted one. Now I wanted one. Or so I kept telling myself.
Mike Burke was retiring as president of basketball for he Madison Square Garden Corporation, and Sonny told me he wanted me to take the job. I was more than intrigued. New York and me? It would have been interesting. He said, "Red, I'll give you anything you want: Apartments, whatever." He was just super to me. I told him I wanted to think about it.
And I did think about it. My wife Dot was the first to get to me. "Arnold," she said, "if you're going to quit, then come home. Don't go to New York. I just can't imagine you not a Celtic." I couldn't imagine it either.
Still my mind wasn't really made up the morning I met my personal attorney, Bob Richards, and headed to Logan Airport for a flight to New York and another meeting with Werblin. I was going to give him my answer. I told him I would, and he was waiting to hear it.
I was walking to get a cab when I heard it the first time: "Red, don't go!" It was some guy working on the street. Then I heard it again. And again. I must have heard it 20 times. Then the cabbie told me the same thing. As we walked onto the plane the pilot stopped me. Same thing: "Don't go." I was touched. Bob was touched. It was a very emotional experience. They were all telling me what I already knew: I owed it to the team and I owed it to myself to give it one last shot in Boston.
That's what I told Sonny when we got to New York and he was great about it. He's a class act. I like him, I respect him. I'd have no problems at all working for him. I doubt that we spent more than 30 seconds discussing money, that was never the big issue from my point of view or his. Or discussions just centered on the job.
I came back to Boston and held a press conference. I said, "It wasn't a matter of money. It was just a matter of where I wanted to be." The headline in one of the papers the next morning read: The Pride of the Celtics: Red let his heart overrule his head. No question about it. I did.
Things quieted down for awhile, but with John Y. it was only a matter of time before the next bomb went off. The Earl Tatum thing really bothered me, but it couldn't hold a candle to the Bob McAdoo deal seven months later. That one took the cake.
We were having a terrible season. Havlicek was gone. The Archibald-Barnes-Knight thing never worked out. We ended up losing 53 games that year, the worst record in the history of our franchise. The Boston press was starting to climb all over Brown, and this really upset him; he was extremely sensitive to criticism.
We had a home and home series with the Knicks that February: down there Saturday night, back to our place Sunday afternoon. We won the Saturday game, and when we arrived home Sunday morning the papers were filled with rumors of a big trade involving McAdoo. Brown had gone to PJ Clarke's with Sonny Werblin, and I guess he wanted to show everyone what a big wheel he was. That's what I figure he had bought the team for: The prestige, the ego gratification of being associated with the Celtics. Later on, word had it that it was his wife, Phyllis George, who came up with the bright idea of having McAdoo come to Boston. I don't know if that was true or not. All I know is that it wasn't my idea.
Sonny was smart. He went along with Brown: "Let's make a deal!" He wanted to get rid of McAdoo anyway, so he started bringing up the guy's stats. There they are, talking a big deal, and nobody's got any contracts in front of him so there's no way of verifying any of the essential information.
Brown calls me up. I tell him, "No way. I don't like it. I don't approve of it." All right, he finally agreed, no deal. He'd back off. I left the Garden that night believing it wouldn't happen.
But it did happen. The deal was officially announced the next morning; apparently it had been consummated over the phone the previous afternoon, sometime after Brown told me he wouldn't do it.
How crazy had the situation become? Get this: When Jan Volk, my legal aide who's now our general manager, got into the office that morning he began going over the paperwork and discovered there was major issue involving $1 million of deferred compensation that had been assumed by the Knicks when they acquired McAdoo from Buffalo in 1976. Now it was up in the air as to whose responsibility that would become. When Jan brought this to Brown's attention, Brown told him "Don't worry about that. You stay out of it, I'll take care of it."
Meanwhile Brown's partner, Harry Mangurian, who kept a pretty low profile, called the office and wanted to know what the hell was going on. Jan told him about the $1 million question and also told him how Brown had ordered him to keep his nose out of it. Harry became very concerned and told Jan, "I don't care what he said, I want you to straighten that out."
It did get straightened out, and the obligation went back to the Knicks where it belonged. But if it had been left up to Brown - who was very poor on details - we'd have eaten that mistake.
That was it; that was enough for me. There was just no living with the situation any longer. The man was just so hyper, so adamant, so unwilling to listen to suggestions, so certain that he knew it all, when in reality he didn't know a damn thing about what he was doing.
So I put it to him, "John," I said, "if you don't sell this team, I'm going to leave."
There had been rumors that he was thinking of selling to Mangurian, who, as his partner, had first option to purchase Brown's interest in the club. So I went to Harry, too. I told him if he didn't own the team within two weeks from that day, a Tuesday, I'd be gone.
Werblin told me he'd keep that job offer alive for three years, a great gesture on his part. But I made up my mind that I wasn't going to jerk him around again. Therefore, I was very firm in my remarks to Mangurian. "Harry," I told him, "you're a nice guy, a good businessman. I'd have no trouble working for you. But I'm not interested in offers that have been tendered or any of that crap. Those things can be kicked around for months, and meanwhile I'm still dealing with John Y. So as far as I'm concerned, if you don't own this team outright - that means 100 percent - two weeks from now, then you can count me out. I don't want to be here. You can run it yourself. I'm not going to sit around cooling my heels while lawyers go through tons of paper. I won't hang around for that. I'll release myself from the situation."
Well, it took two weeks, but Harry did it. He bought out John Y. Brown. Then weeks later we signed Larry Bird, whom I'd drafted the previous spring as a junior eligible at Indiana State, and two years after that, we were world champions again.
The nine month siege was over. That's how long Brown owned the Celtics. Nine months. But it was long enough to nearly destroy what we'd spent 30 years putting together. And you wonder why I say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing?

One of the many owners we've had in Boston was a man named Marvin Kratter, who was chairman of the board at National Equities, a big company in New York with a lot of holdings, primarily in real estate. I liked Marvin, I still do. In fact, I've gone into some investments with him since he sold the club in 1968.
He was a business building genius, a super salesman, a brilliant man who also had a large ego. He'd bring clients up to Boston to see a game and use his company jet. But instead of having someone in our office phone ahead to the restaurant where they'd be eating, Marvin loved to call from the plane, halfway between Boston and New York and order right there from the menu. Things like that. And, of course, hed have limousines waiting for his entourage when they arrived at the airport.
That's the way he was, and I kind of got a kick out of him. It wasn't me. No way. That's never been my style. But it was fun to watch and he was fun to be around - except when I felt his outgoing manner was detrimental to our operation.
I remember one time when Bailey Howell got something in his eye, a very minor situation. I said we'd have our own opthamologist look at it, but, no, Marvin starts yelling, "Hey, we've got a great eye doctor down in New York, let's get him down there." He scared poor Bailey half to death.
One time he had a direct phone line installed from his office in New York to my office in Boston, just so we could "keep in touch." Well, I knew what that meant. Marvin was a fan, and he'd be on that phone five or six times a day if I didn't do something about it. So every time he called I made believe the phone was out of order on my end. Finally I said, "Marvin, this damn thing's never working. Let's get it out of here." It was gone after a couple of weeks.
One day just before an expansion draft, he calls a meeting of all his department heads at his office in the Pan Am building in New York. There they are, his board of directors, and there I am, sitting with them. Pretty soon I discover that the purpose of this meeting is to decide which players we're going to protect in the upcoming draft. I can't believe it! I start to say something but Marvin waves me off: "Not yet, Red. In a minute."
He turns to one of his vice presidents. "What do you think of not protecting Nelson and Sanders?"
The guy says, "Well, Marvin, you know what you're doing. If you think that's okay, I go along with you."
He turns to next guy, who tells him, "I'm not totally in accord on not protecting Sanders, but I'll go along with Nelson." Meanwhile I'm going nuts.
Finally he calls on Jack Waldron, the only one who showed me any guts. "Marvin," he says, "the only thing I can say is that you're paying Red a lot of money to run the team. Don't you think we ought to hear what he has to say?"
Now, at last, it's my turn. I get up and I'm hot. Really steamed. "You mean I can actually have the floor?"
They all look at me like they know what's coming. "I don't know what the hell is going on here." I tell them. "But this is the damndest thing I've ever seen in my life. You guys discussing the skills of basketball players is like having a group of civilians run a war. It's ridiculous. A joke. You're talking to your friends, talking to people you know, and coming back with all their crazy opinions. Having you guys run a draft would be like asking me to pick out a piece of real estate and tell you what it's worth. I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't presume to do it. I wouldn't have the balls to sit here and tell you people how to run your business. But that's exactly what you've been doing to me - and if this is how you plan to run things, then you can take your ballclub and shove it! I want no part of it. And I'll issue a release to the press immediately saying I've got nothing to do with what's about to happen."
"Red, Red." Marvin says. "Don't get so excited." He puts his arm around me and takes me over to the window. "Look," he says, "Isn't that a beautiful view?
I told him what he could do with his view. "I'm not here to look at any damn views," I said. "I'm here to get something squared away. And, Marvin, I meant what I said." Then I left.
They eventually came around to my way of thinking, but that's what I mean by a little knowledge being a dangerous thing.

Then there was John Y Brown, the straw that nearly broke this camel's back. John and his partner, Harry Mangurian, owned the Buffalo Braves at the same time Irv Levin and his partner, Harold Lipton, owned the Celtics. John wanted out of Buffalo. He looked at several cities and finally decided on San Diego. Irv, meanwhile, was a California guy who wanted to stay in the NBA, but not necessarily in Boston, particularly after the fans in the Garden gave h im a good going over on John Havlicek's retirement day. That was in April 1978. Our record that year was 32-50, and no one in Boston was happy. I couldn't blame them.
Brown and Levin got together and made a deal to swap franchises. Levin went to San Diego with the Braves, who were renamed the Clippers, and Brown came to Boston. The transaction included not just the ballclubs, but some individual members of the teams, too. Kermit Washington, Kevin Kunnert and our second first round pick that year, Freeman Williams - the first was Larry Bird, thank God they didn't take him - went to San Diego, and Tiny Archibald, Marvin Barnes and Billy Knight came to us. That was the first time in all my years in Boston that a player transaction had been made without my knowledge.
I learned about all this in a phone call I got from Brown, and by the time I hung up I realized this ownership was going to be different from anything I'd ever experienced before.
John was flamboyant, to say the least, and we clashed right from the start. I never questioned his right to do the crazy things he did; he was the owner, and I alwasy acknowledged that. But I'd tell him, "John, you and I have different personalities, different theories, and if you don't sell the team I'm going to leave." I also told him he had the right to let me go, though I strongly hinted that if he exercised that right he might have some trouble getting along in Boston.
Would he have minded seeing me go? I don't know. I never knew what was going through that man's mind. I know he never indicated a strong desire to see me stay. There was no controlling that guy. No way at all. The situation with John Y was out of hand from the first moment he set foot in town. And it grew worse as time went on.
He'd call all over the league, trying to pick the brains of other teams' coaches and GMs, then come running to me with all these ideas which purportedly were his own. But I knew where they were coming from, because all of these people kept telling me what was going on. They'd call me up ans ask, "Red, why's this guy bothering me?" After a while they got tired of his routine and figured, "I'll fix him." They began lying to him, feeding him bad information, giving him nothing but double talk, and he never knew it. He never had a clue. He was too busy playing the big shot owner.

So draft day comes tomorrow and I've got the number one pick of all time. I can have my choice of any player who ever wore an NBA uniform. I can's pick three. I can't pick two. I can pick only one.
So who do I pick: Russell or Bird? They're both my guys.
The only way to go about it is coldly and logically. Let's say I take Bird. The next guy takes Russell, and after him it's Walton, Jabbar, Malone and Chamberlain. In that first round, all the top centers go, and then they start in with the greatest forwards and guards. Meanwhile, I'm left with no center, which means I've got a big problem, assuming I can't win in a league like that with Bird as my center.
See, when I build a ballclub - again, realizing Bird's an exception - my number one priority is my center. My second priority is my guard, the one who's going to be handling the ball most of the time, like Cousy or an Isiah Thomas. Those are the guys you're going to win or lose with. Then come your forwards.
So, let's say I have Russell as my center: Since everyone else is taking centers, there are still some great forwards around when I get my second pick, through none are quite the same as Bird.
Now let's say I've got Bird as my forward, and I team him with an average center, say a Rich Kelley or a James Edwards.
Would I be better off with the first combination? Or the second? That's what you've got to ask yourself: How am I going to round out my team?
In other words, if I can pair a Russell with a Havlicek, am I going to be better off than I would be with a Bird and some other center?
The answer's got to be yes.
So when they call my name I've got to say: "Boston takes Bill Russell.
And then I've got to start working on a trade.

I know of a case where a player signed a long term contract, then went out that first year and had a hell of a season, so he asked management to renegotiate the deal. Well, the team didn't want to, but it felt forced to because he'd become an all star player. Next year, the same damn thing happened. He wanted to renegotiate again and the team capitulated again. Then he went in a third time the following season, but now, the club put its foot down. Nothing doing. So he said, "Ouch, I just hurt my back."
What did the team do? It figured for another $50,000 or $100,000 it could make his back well in a hurry, so again it capitulated.
What would I have done? It's difficult to speak for someone else's problems, especially when they involve a player as important as this guy was. Nevertheless, I'd have put him and his "bad back" into a hospital immediately. Bad back? Let's see. And then have the doctors stick him so full of needles he'd think he was a pincushion! That might change his mind in a hurry. And, of course, if they discovered there was nothing wrong with his back, you might have a pretty good case against him. I wouldn't accuse him of faking it, mind you. I'd just tell him, as I walked away from his bedside, "I want you to stay here until you're all better. When you're ready to play you can put your clothes on."

I'll tell you another thing I don't like today: Cheerleaders. You don't need them at the professional level. They don't contribute anything. They're nothing more than a poor attempt to emulate the freshness of the college atmosphere. Whether it's football or basketball, they don't belong at the professional level, and I've been fighting that for years. They belong in high school. They belong in college. They don't belong in the professional game.
First, you've got enough problems in basketball without having girls hanging around the gym. Before you know it, they're making eyes at some of the guys, and some of the guys are going to stray. It happens.
But the main point is, they're running up and down the court, cheering their brains out, and nobody's cheering along with them. All they're really doing is entertaining themselves. You can't take professional fans to a pep rally, like they do in college and hand out leaflets telling them: "These are the songs and these are the cheers, so memorize them; then, when we bang the thing and have the horn, you come in and do this..."
It can't be done. So the idea of cheerleading is a facade, a joke, just and excuse to have some scantily clad girls running around, turning your game into a Broadway show. I don't like it. And I don't like cheerleading organists either.
I'd much rather have high school tumblers and gymnasts doing routines for the crowd's enjoyment. And I love that double dutch jump roping kids are doing now. Of all the entertainments you see at basketball games today, that's my favorite.

The addition of Rasheed Wallace makes the Celtics' frontline more intimidating than it already was. But more important to their quest for another title are the health of Kevin Garnett and the psyche of Rajon Rondo. You have to wonder about both.

At the hotel in Philly now chilling here all week to work out with team mates we geting it in early trying to get ready for the season.

Not a camp but every one will be here may be 2 are 3 guys not comeing but for the most part we all here.

Done working out now we going play paintball with team mates.

Tommy Heinsohn is another guy who never gets the credit he deserves. Everyone thought he was a shooter. They called him "Gunner."
Well, it's true. He was a shooter, but that's what I wanted him to be. I told him to shoot. That was his job, and he was damned good at it. But people forget he also could pass, and he was one of the best offensive rebounders of his time.
He was one of my "whipping boys." The other was Loscutoff. Whenever I had a point I wanted the whole team to hear, they were the guys I'd yell at. Their hides were thick: they could take it. Other players might have gotten angry or embarrassed. Not these two. In one ear and out the other. I don't think they even heard half the things I said, which was all right with me. It was the rest of the team I was directing the message to.
One night we ran up a 25 or 30 point halftime lead. It was no contest. So I walked into our dressing room, as as soon as the door closed behind me, Heinsohn jumped up. "Okay, Red," he said, "I didn't rebound, I didn't block out, I didn't shoot. what else didn't I do?" Everyone started to laugh. Me, too. what could I say?
Tommy was tough, tougher than most people realize, because he also happens to be a very warm, outgoing guy, who likes people and has a great sense of humor.
I'll always remember the night I asked him to play a special "role." We were up against Philadelphia in the playoffs, which meant having to contend with Wilt. So I devised a play that called for Tommy to stand in Wilt's path whenever he started to chase after Russell. Wilt had to be one of the strongest men in the world, and when he finally caught on to what Tommy was doing, he got madder than hell and ran right up Heinsohn's back a couple of times. But Heinie never budged and never complained. He just stood his ground and continued doing the job all night long. That's why I loved the guy. He also coached us to tow championships in 1974 and 1976, after taking the job when Russell retired.

No one knew much about Cowens, except that, at 6'8.5", he didn't seem to have the size to become a great NBA center. His school, Florida State, was prohibited from playing in the NCAA tournament because of recruiting violations, so that kept him out of the national limelight. ButI'd heard enough abuot him to intrigue me, so I went down to take a look in person, and I couldn't believe my own eyes. In fact, he was so good it scared me. I got up and left in the third quarter, trying my best not to show my excitement, hoping that no one else in the league knew what I learned that night.
As soon as I got back to Boston I told Heinsohn, "Tommy, I've found your center."
All that remained was sweating out the draft. Lanier went first. Then San Diego took Rudy Tomjanovich, and Atlanta selected Pete Maravich. We had him!
Russell went down to Florida to meet him, and when he came back he was as impressed as I had been. "Red," he told me, "You've got a great one there."
"What makes you so sure?" I asked him. "You've never even seen him play. "I talked with him," he said, "and I looked into his eyes. Believe me, I know. This kid's going to be something."
Cowens became one of the great competitors of all time. He didn't just play the game, he attacked it.
I think my favorite Cowens story is the night he fouled Mike Newlin. It's a classic. We were playing Houston, and Dave was sky high, as usual. He set a pick, then turned to face the basket - and Calvin Murphy went sprawling onto the floor. Dave had just nudged him, hell, since Murphy was only 5'9", he probably didn't even see him. It was an act, but they called a foul - and right away you could see the frustration on his face.
The next thing you know, Newlin took a dive. Another foul on Cowens. Now Dave was livid. He was a banger, a scrapper, he just wanted to play. This penny ante foolishness was eating him up. I knew something was going to happen, that fire came into his eyes.
Play resumes and he starts running downcourt, and then he spots Newlin. Poor Newlin never know what hit him. Dave plowed into him like a freight train, knocking him through the air about 12 feet. Then, without even waiting for Newlin to land, he turned to the officials and in a voice loud enough for the whole crown to hear, he yelled, "Not that's a foul!" That was Cowens.
Then one day in November 1976 he came to me, five months after he'd led us to his second championship in three seasons, and told me he was fed up with basketball, exhausted, and just couldn't do it anymore. He wanted to quit. He was 28.
"Dave," I told him, "if you don't want to play anymore, there's nothing I can do. That's life."
Sure I could have ranted and raved : What about your teammates? What about your fans? What about your obligations to all these people? But I couldn't do that to him. I had too much respect for the guy, and I could see he was emotionally wiped out. If a guy's that unhappy, you can't force him into a better mood. All you'll do is worsen his attitude.
He wanted to quit for an indefinite period. If I had pushed him at that moment, maybe he'd have quit for good. Who knows? But that's what was running through my mind.
"Keep in touch," I said. "We'll talk. And when you think you're ready to come back, when you've regained your peace of mind, we'll go at 'em again, okay?" That's how we left it.
He took quite a beating in some of the papers and on most of the talk shows; there was every little sympathy for his position. People said he was a flake. They insinuated he was selfish and disloyal. They made it sound like he was a soldier going AWOL or a sailor jumping ship. The abuse he took was mean, cutting and undeserved.
that was the other reason I made no attempt to argue with him when he told me how he felt. He displayed the highest ethics in that situation that anyone could possibly imagine. He could have been cute about it. He could have said, "My back hurts, I can't play." No one would have criticized that, and he could have continued cashing his pay checks. Believe me, it's been done before.
But that's not Cowens. This kid's too principled for that. "Look," he said that day, "I'm not injured. There's nothing wrong with me, so I don't want to be paid. I just don't feel like playing anymore. How could I argue with that?
He came back later that season after missing 30 games and spent the next three years with us. They included the two worst years of my entire association with the Celtics, 1977-78, and 1978-79, a horrible period of ownership problems and personnel turnovers in which we lost 103 games. Havlicek retired in the middle of that stretch, and for awhile Dave tried his hand as a player-coach. We didn't see daylight again until the spring of 1979, when the ownership mess was finally resolved and Larry Bird was on his way.
Cowens and Bird - What a pair they'd have made when Dave was in his prime - had one season together, then Dave called it quits. Now it was physical injuries that were bogging him down. He ws 32, and his body just couldn't take the beating it was getting every game.
He walked onto the team bus in the middle of training camp, 1980, and told his teammates goodby. Seven months later, we were champions again. I wish he could have shared in that.