For all these reasons, our motivation had to increase a little each year, which made Red's job even tougher. We were always carrying the same amount of water up the hill, but with every championship and every year the hill got a little steeper. Red was running around behind us like a madman, cussing, screaming and cooing us to the top. He had to be a little crazy.
Red and I had our own motivational dances and routines we'd go through, mostly in private. He yelled at me publicly only once - in a hotel in Yugoslavia, as I recall - and I yelled back twice as loud. It didn't work to yell at me, and he didn't have to anyway. The first half of my second season I played like a wild beast, helping the team to such a huge lead that nobody could hope to catch us in the regular season. Then Red called me into his office one day. This was to be my first pep talk, though I didn't know it at the time. "We've got the division sewed up already," he confided. "You know that as well as I do. I can understand that you're letting up a little bit because there's nothing to drive you. Well, you should be MVP in this league, and in this game you can't turn it on and off. You have to play all the time as well as you think you ever could. You know that. And I'd like to end the regular season winning big so that we won't have to do anything different in the playoffs." He went on and on, never raising his voice, alternating little morsels of flattery with appeals to my belief in excellence. That night I went out and broke the league record in rebounds.
By Red's standards, everything he did to help motivate me was subtle. Over the years we worked out all kinds of gimmicks. He'd call me into his office and ask my permission to yell at me the next day in practice, just so the other Celtics wouldn't feel persecuted. I'd agree, and the next day he'd cuss me all up and down the floor so ferociously that his regular victims like Satch and Heinsohn would feel sorry for me. Or we'd trade favors. I'd call him up and say, "Hey, man, I don't feel like practicing today. My arthritis needs some treatment." I hated practice.
"You want to go to the library, darling?" Red would growl.
"I didn't say that." I'd laugh.
"Okay," he'd say, "but you owe me one."
A month or so later we'd be out on a road trip facing a game that Red wanted to win extra bad, and he'd call me over in the locker room. "You owe me one, right?" "Yeah." "Well, I want it tonight." And he'd get it. It was only fair.
Over the years, Red worked me over regularly. He'd make a casual remark to me about how well someone on an opposing team was playing. I wouldn't say anything, but the remark would fester in my mind because I didn't think the guy was playing that well, so I'd work extra hard the next time we faced that player's team. Only later would it hit me that Red's remark hadn't been casual after all. Everything he did was calculated. As I got to know him better I'd laugh whenever he started telling me that Bill Bradley was the greatest college basketball player who'd ever played. This meant we had a big game coming up with the Knicks and Red wanted me to help Satch guard Bradley. We'd both know what was going on, but it didn't matter.
Red didn't have to work hard to appeal to my pride because I was basically self motivated. I showed up ready for (almost) every game, and all I needed were occasional boosts. An unusually high percentage of the Celtics were the same, driven by something inside of them that didn't need much outside fuel. Cousy was that way, and so were Sharman, KC, Ramsey, and Havlicek. Sam Jones was a special case, but his motivation als depended largely on himself. There is no question in my mind that we won championships because so many of us had so much confidence that the air was thick with it.

After a few seasons with the Celtics, I noticed that Sam Jones could take over a game too. He wouldn't do it the say Oscar did, or nearly as often, but sometimes he gave off a feeling that he simply would not let us lose this game. He'd shoot, steal and score layups and when the other team tried to gang up on him, he'd feed the rest of us for easy baskets. Sam took on a glow that said, "This game's over."
But it only happened about one game in twenty, and I puzzled over it for a long time. I couldn't figure it out, so one day I asked, "Sam, why don't you play like that all the time?"
"No, I don't want to do that," he said without the slightest hesitation. He knew exactly what I meant, and he'd already thought about it. "I don't want the responsibility of having to play like that every night."
I was floored. "It would mean of money," I said.
"I know," Sam replied, "But I don't want to do it."
Sam knew how good he was, but he made a choice and lived with it. Many players since him have refused to make that choice; they want the star's money without the responsibility. While I believe that players should be paid as much as the market thinks them worth, I also think the star's money carries the extra load.
I respected Sam's choice, but I didn't understand. One night when we were playing in St Louis he got the ball wide open at the foul line; nobody was near him, which is like giving the Celtics two points. But he just stood there two or three seconds and let the defense recover. None of us could believe what he'd seen.
"Sam, why didn't you shoot?" I asked, as if I was about to cry.
"Cause I couldn't see the bucket."
"You what?"
"I couldn't see the bucket," he repeated seriously, as though the statement made sense.
"What do you mean you couldn't see the bucket!" I screamed.
"I couldn't see it," he said. "The light was shining in my eyes, and I didn't like the way it looked."
I kept waiting for him to laugh, but he was serious, so there was nothing to do but shrug my shoulders.
When I first started coaching I called Sam over one day and said, "I want you to call the plays when you come up the court." It was routine assignment.
"I can't call the plays," he said.
Something was wrong. "What do you mean?"
"I don't have the authority to call the plays," said Sam.
I tried to control myself. "Sam," I said, "I'm the coach, and I just gave you the authority!"
"Oh, no," he said, as if he'd caught me trying to pull a fast one. "You're the coach, but I still don't have the authority, so I can't call the plays."
He looked at me as if he knew he was right. I don't know exactly how I looked back at him, but I couldn't think of any response that seemed right, so I sighed. "You're right Sam," I said quietly. 'You can't call the plays."
I never could guess what Sam was going to do or say, with one major exception: I knew exactly how he would react in our huddle during the final seconds of a crucial game. I'm talking about a situation when we'd be one point behind, with five seconds to go in a game that meant not just first place or pride but a whole season, when everything was on the line. You're standing there feeling weak. The pressure weighs down on you so brutally that it crushes your heart as flat as a pizza, and you feel it thudding down around your stomach. During that time out the question will be who will take the shot that means the season, and Red would be looking around at faces, trying to decide what play to call. It's a moment when even the better players in the NBA will start coughing, tying their shoelaces and looking the other way. At such moments I knew what Sam would do as well as I know my own name. "Gimme the ball," he'd say. "I'll make it." And all of us would look at him and we'd know by looking that he meant what he said. Not only that, you knew that he'd make it. Sam would be all business, but there'd be a trace of a smile on his face, like a guy who was meeting a supreme test and was certain he'd pass it. "You guys get out of the way," he'd say.

This wasn’t a Hall of Fame induction speech, but a bully tripping nerds with lunch trays in the school cafeteria. He had a responsibility to his standing in history, to players past and present, and he let everyone down. This was a night to leave behind the petty grievances and past slights – real and imagined. This was a night to be gracious, to be generous with praise and credit.

“M.J. was introduced as the greatest player ever and he’s still standing there trying to settle scores,” one Hall of Famer said privately later.

From the speeches of David Robinson to John Stockton, Jerry Sloan to Vivian Stringer, there was an unmistakable thread of peace of mind and purpose. At times, they were self-deprecating and deflective of praise. Jordan hasn’t mastered that art, and it reveals him to be oddly insecure. When Jordan should’ve thanked the Bulls ex-GM, Jerry Krause, for surrounding him with championship coaches and talent, he ridiculed him. It was me, Jordan was saying. Not him. “The organization didn’t play with the flu in Utah,” Jordan grumbled.

Turkey’s big man, Omar Asik, attacked Pau Gasol time and time again in the first half, outscoring him 13-8 and posterising him several times. Asik actually seemed quieter when guarded by Marc Gasol. The Turkish center seemed to give his team-mates the confidence to go at the Los Angeles Lakers star player and the other Spanish big guys who, Marc Gasol notwithstanding looked out of sorts on the day. Turkey’s other center, Semih Erden, manhandled Pau down the stretch.

Garnett began working out at the Celtics’ practice facility on Monday. For now, he is limited to participating in court drills that include shooting and running. He could be cleared for contact as early as the week before camp.

“We’re looking for him to be there at the end of the season, not just the start of the season,” Ainge said. “We’re getting him ready for training camp and looking forward to him being healthy in the playoffs. He looks good. Really good.”

Possible candidates include second-round draft pick Lester Hudson(notes) and free agents Tyronn Lue, Dan Dickau, and Mike Taylor, who worked out at the team’s facility on Thursday.

In order to communicate humorously with a teammate in the heat of a game, without words, you have to know him very well. The love of humor on the Celtics helped sharpen our knowledge of each other. I remember once when Bob Cousy threw me a pass under the basket near the end of a game. I was wide open, and all I had to do was dunk the ball. But a number of things instantly went through my mind. The opposing center was Walter Dukes, who loved to hit me in the head after every shot I took. I could count on it; Walter would slap me so hard on the side of my head that I'd shed tears involuntarily. He didn't mind getting caught. And I thought about how we were ten points ahead with less than a minute to go, and then I decided, "Nope, it's not worth it," so I simply just dribbled the ball out from under the basket. Cousy was out there laughing. He knew when he passed me the ball that I wasn't going to take the dunk. He knew that I'd figure that we had the game well enough put away so that I wouldn't take my beating. He and I laughed so hard that we lost the ball, but not the game. Cousy was always doing crazy things when he figured the pressure was off. He'd bring the ball up the court looking serious and call a nonexistent play - Twenty-two! - and turn his back after passing the ball to Sharman, who'd be dumbfounded.
There were only a few players in the NBA whose humor was so natural that they could play well under pressure while constantly chuckling on the court. Of these, the jolliest one was Walt Bellamy, a center whose career overlapped with mine. He was a childlike bear of a man ans was always scowling, grumbling and talking to himself with this little grin underneath that nobody could resist. During games, he referred to himself in the third person, as "Good ol' Walt Bellamy." If a referee called him for being in the lane too long, he would get this exaggerated look of mock pain on his face and keep chattering: "Oh, why did they call three seconds on good ol' Walt Bellamy? Mister Russell and Mister Chamberlain -why they can homestead in there and they don't get called for it. No, sir. But not good ol' Walt Bellamy. All he's got to do is look in there. Just abuse him. Call anything on good ol' Walt Bellamy." By this time, he'd be at the other end of the court, laughing to himself.
Sam Jones was a master at laughing while playing his guts out. His humor was always therapy for us, and Red knew it. Sam wasn't a great theoretician of the game, but he was slick. He'd hustle people out on the court all night and have a high time doing it. He always had something going with Wilt, for instance. Against Philadelphia he'd dribble the ball around the top of the key toward the corner, and I'd set a good pick against the man guarding him. When that happened, Wilt was supposed to pick Sam up. Sam would stop about eighteen feet out, and in a falsetto voice would call, "You better come on out here, Wilt Chamberlain!" Only Sam could sound that sassy, and he always added Wilt's last name, like a mother scolding her child. Wilt would be near the basket, about a step and a half from blocking Sam's shot, but in the next instant Sam would yell, "Too late!" as he let fly a bank shot - which always went in. He'd do it over and over. Sometimes he'd yell two or three times before shooting, if he were open long enough. Finally Wilt would be irritated enough to come out after him, and the instant Wilt lunged to block the shot, Sam would flip the ball to me and I'd dunk it. Which also irritated Wilt, because he hated to see me dunk.
All the Celtics enjoyed this play by play immensely, but I had mixed feelings. I know it was good for us to have Sam teasing Wilt, because it's always wise to get your opponent distracted. On the other hand, as a general rule I didn't like Wilt to get riled up, so once I made the supreme mistake of asking Sam to lay off. It was a confession of worry, which was like declaring open hunting season. "What's the matter, Russ?" Sam would ask. "You ain't afraid of him are you?" This got around to the other players and every chance they got they'd ask me if I was afraid of Wilt. On my bad nights, KC would make matters worse. KC harassed all the centers in the league. He was a master at it. He'd run by an opposing center while the teams were switching at the end of a quarter and, without a referee or a fan in the whole place noticing it, would step on the guy's foot as he went by. Or he'd grab his jersey - anything to irritate the man. KC picked on centers because he thought it was important to distract them, and because they were usually too slow to retaliate. KC always seemed to step on Wilt's feet a few extra times whenever I showed the slightest worry about his mood, and then he and Sam would laugh themselves silly at my distress. They were right, of course, because I had no business worrying about Wilt's attitude.

The Celtics have offered former guard Dan Dickau a training camp invitation, according to agent Mark Bartelstein.

Dickau, who turns 31 Sept. 16, played last season in Germany, averaging 17.6 points in just five games for the Brose Baskets.

Dickau could serve as a third point guard behind Rajon Rondo and Marquis Daniels and is a favorite of general manager Danny Ainge.

Celtics considering, but not committed to, adding a third point guard. Possibles include rookie Hudson, vets Ty Lue, Mike Taylor and Dickau

God Chose Memphis as the place that I will continue my career. I met with Mr. Heinsley, Chris Wallace and my next head coach Lionel Hollins

Iverson tweets "God Chose Memphis". Larry Brown issues statement: "I did no such thing."

Memphis wonders, "Why us, God?"

Memphis: "OK God, that's enough, thanks!"

New Grizz marketing campaign: Gandalf the Grey standing at center court pounding his staff and screaming "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!!!!!!!!"

Finally, AI is a grizzly. Now they can still not make the playoffs

God to AI and Zach Randolph: "Thou shalt not pass ..."

Zach "Black hole" Randolph meet Allen "1 on 5" Iverson. This is the best idea since Isiah paired Steve Francis and Steph

Passing the ball in Memphis is going to be like Federer hitting a forehand: You know the ball is not coming back.

Iverson-Memphis marriage destined to end up like Rodman's and Carmen Electra's

Nothing will help foster Mayo and Gay's development than adding noted nurturing influence Allen Iverson. You've done it again Chris Wallace.

RT @alleniverson: God Chose Memphis as the place I will continue my career--God has a great sense of humor or a poor sense of ball movement

Coincidentally God Chose $2 Million More Reasons to Facilitate the Allen Iverson and Memphis Grizzlies Partnership

Will replacement refs learn how to suck in time for the season?

Retire. LOL. They need for you to think I'm going to do that because they know I'm focused and ready to play this year count me in for 5 yrs

Don't believe the hype someone is trying to build off of saying I said or wrote that I wasn't going to play. Sorry no box for me. LoL..

Mark the Calendar for Sep 27, 2009, Minnesota and Boston Have Engaged in Low Level Talks Concerning Chucky Atkins and Damien Wilkins ...

Follow Me Here, Much Like Barry Situation in Hou, Atkins Could Be B.O. Prior 27th. Giddy, Scal and TAllen Been Connected to Both Rumors ...

Ainge Has Interest in All Three Players. Damien Won't be Bought Out, Brent and Chuck, Maybe.

Just go done with r first day of pick up games went well r team won 3 game to 1

CB: you up to speed on Ubuntu yet?

SW: on who?

CB: oh man, first thing you gotta do is talk to someone and have them explain Ubuntu to you (key to the title 2 years ago)

SW: never heard of it

CB: its about "team ego" - here ya go: http://www.celticsblog.com/...

SW: oh ok thanks

S5k oh man, it's ALL ABOUT ubuntu.

SW: oh ok

I have been a Celtics fan since high school back in the 60’s. And needless to say, I have always had an intense dislike for anything Laker related. One time my son (who was in middle school) brought a friend home from school who had the misfortune of wearing a Lakers tee shirt. I made him wear wear a shirt over it while he was in the house so I didn’t have to look at it. He didn’t come back again. He thought I was a bit deranged because he was wearing the shirt just cause he thought it was cool and didn’t understand why I didn’t like it. :)

God Chose Memphis as the place that I will continue my career. I met with Mr. Heinsley, Chris Wallace and my next head coach Lionel Hollins

Though Walter (Brown) was beloved, he still got his share of ribbing. Everybody did; it was the backbone of the Celtic tradition. Walter was vulnerable because he was the slowest driver in history. Every summer he drove up to Cousy's basketball camp in New Hampshire, about one hundred and twenty five miles from Boston, and for him it was a three day trip. I don't think he ever went more than thirty five miles an hour in his life. We used to play exhibition games in Providence, about fifty miles from Boston, and after the game, Walter would come into the locker room, say, "Nice game, fellas," and leave to drive back to Boston. Then we'd have a postgame meeting, talk to the press, shower, and every single one of us would pass him on the way back. We'd go flying past him, and if you looked sharp you could see him cringing behind the wheel. The closest I ever saw him come to terror was just after he let Red take a spin in his new Cadillac. "That's a nice car, Walter," Red said, "but the motor starts skipping when you go over a hundred and five." Certain Celtics were known to bribe cops to stop him for speeding, just to hear about the look on his face.
The players' driving habits were just the opposite of Walter's, of course. We were the scourge of every police force in New England. Frank Ramsey was probably the wildest. One night in the early years, when we were playing an exhibition game in New Hampshire, I asked Frank if he knew the way to the next town. "Yeah," he said, "follow me." He took off, with me following close behind, shot through an intersection and went flying down a little country road out of sight. I tried to catch him - eighty, ninety, a hundred miles an hour - muttering under my breath. But the cops stopped me. "I know it doesn't make any difference, officer," I said to the one writing out the ticket, "but I was only speeding because I was following an outlaw Boston Celtic named Frank Ramsey to a basketball game. He was going too fast for me." The cops looked shocked, and then to my delight said they'd help me catch him. They jumped back into their car, turned on their revolving light and siren, and we roared off after Ramsey just like they do in the movies. I wanted to catch Frank so bad I could taste it, but we never got close; Ramsey was long gone.
Actually, speeding was mild stuff for the Celtics. We may have been old fashioned gladiators in the pioneer days of pro basketball, but we had a gaudy, high pressure, show business life. Pressure builds up, but you can't let it get to you in the game, so you let it out almost everywhere else. Since almost all of us were married, it would be rude to go into detail, but if a bomb had blown up our road hotel on any given night, it's safe to say there'd have been a large number of extra bodies in the wreckage. Whenever the NBA expanded there'd be a rush among the players to scout out women in the new cities. Our life was a lot like that in a war zone. We were young and crazy, and whatever maturity we had was used up on the court.
On the Celtics it was generally a mistake to be discreet about anything, because sooner or later you'd be found out, and when you were, that tender spot was exactly where your teammates would aim their jokes from then on. It was safest to be wide open. Our humor was toughening.
Pro basketball is a high intensity business, and you can't afford to be worrying about your insecurities when you're playing, so anything the slightest bit offbeat about one of us was bound to be pecked at until the player could laugh at himself. Only people who can laugh at themselves are really confident, and we always laughed at ourselves.
Once we were playing Wilt's team in the semi-finals of the NBA playoffs, and the series came down to the seventh game. As usual, there was so much tension in our dressing room before the game that nobody could talk. I'd already thrown up once, and was thinking about doing it again. While I was sitting there in misery, I looked over and saw one of our players trying to light a cigarette. He went through three or four matches to get that last pregame smoke going, but his hands were shaking so badly that he couldn't manage it. I watched him sitting there shaking like a man with the DT's, and suddenly I started laughing. My laugh is so loud that I've seen people on planes move to the other end just to get away from me. If a giraffe could laugh, it would sound like me. So when my laugh burst out into the fear stricken silence of that dressing room, half the players jumped a foot and the rest were so scared that they threw towels and shoes at me.
I didn't care, I was laughing, out of control. The guy with the cigarette saw that I was looking at him. "What's the matter?" he asked looking peeved.
"You better play your ass off tonight, boy!" I shouted. "If you don't, you're in a heap of trouble!"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, if we lose tonight, by this time next week you'll be back home with your wife!"
Now everybody in the locker room was watching this player. We all knew that he had a permanent girlfriend on the side during the season, but he had to go home to his wife during the off season, and everybody knew he preferred his girlfriend. He tried to look disgusted at me while still attempting to light his cigarette, but he couldn't hold it. His big belly laugh rumbled up and popped out, and he blew the whole unlit cigarette across the room and started hee-hawing as much as I was. The other Celtics all broke out laughing, too - one by one, and then in a rush. We laughed for five solid minutes, and you could almost see the compressed tension oozing out of us like heat waves rising off the desert. Satch Sanders was on the floor with his feet up in the air, and the other guys were crying. When that fateful knock came on the dressing room door, we were so loose we were limp. We went out onto that court still chuckling and proceeded to win another series on the way to another championship.

In order to win you have to get yourself past a lot of things that may not be vital to winning but make you feel good, like scoring a lot of points. You have to forgo the pleasure of proving a point, because what somebody else wants you to prove may be inconsistent with the way you should play to win. At first this idea was difficult for me to accept. When I came into the NBA, it was widely believed that any big player had to be able to shoot well from the outside like Dolph Shayes, Tom Heinsohn, and Bob Petit. If he couldn't, coaches, writers and fans would shake their heads and say, "He can't play." That's what they said about me when they saw that I couldn't make shots from twenty feet, so naturally the one thing I wanted to do was stand outside and shoot twenty footers. I missed almost all of them, of course, and when I did people shoot their heads and said, "See what I mean? He can't play."
After a few kind words from Red Auerbach, like "Russell, what the hell are you doing shooting from way out there, besides making a fool of yourself?" I realized my stupidity and left those shots for Bill Sharman. That lesson was relatively easy because I couldn't make those shots; it was much harder to learn not to prove things that could do, like blocking hook shots. In the NBA back then, a hook shot was considered almost unstoppable. I could block one, but I had to learn that proving it was not the point. Blocking hooks to show that I could do so would be bad strategy on my part. For one thing, I didn't want players to stop taking hook shots, which they might if it became known that I could stop it; for another, I'd already learned that you don't try to block every shot. What you try to do is intimidate your opponent with the idea that you might block any shot. Knowing which shots to go after is one of the most difficult arts in defensive basketball, and it contributes a great deal to winning games. But proving your point about hook shots is not part of the art.
None of the Celtics, least of all myself, eliminated completely all those little personal goals that can interfere with winning. But we didn't have to. For my first few years I looked at the numbers after the game because I wanted to lead the league in rebounding. Cousy wanted to lead the league in assists. Sharman wanted to lead the league in free throw percentage. Heinsohn wanted to lead the league in field goal attempts, and Red wanted to lead the league in technical fouls and fines. The good thing about it was that no two Celtics had the same boal and that nobody was trying to play the wrong role.
Professional athletes, being competitive and vain, usually find it difficult to accept limited roles, but the Celtics were wise enough to know how important it is. Sam and KC Jones knew for a certainty that neither one of them would ever start as long as Cousy and Sharman played, but they accepted their roles because we were winning. Similarly, Frank Ramsey and John Havlicek were better players than the various Celtics who started ahead of them, but neither of them fussed. Instead, they made the sixth man part of the language of basketball. They were perfect for the part because they were hybrid players, not pure guard or pure forward. Havlicek was so good and so durable in this role that if I were playing in an imaginary pick up game among all the players I've ever seen, he's the first one I would choose for my side. I used to worry that hew was too much of a team player, if that's possible, and that he would overreact to suggestions about what would help the team. For the first part of his rookie season, Havlicek was so unselfish that he would always pass the ball, even when he was wide open. He thought a team player is one who passes all the time, which is not true. A team player is simply one who does all he can to help the team win. This may mean shooting more, rebounding more, sitting on the bench more - anything. The whole team, including Red, urged Havlicek to shoot more, and when the message finally got through, he went out one game and put up forty two shots! It was some sort of team record at the time, and we teased him about it for weeks. (He was usually on the receiving end of Celtic humor.)
Red would never let things get far out of focus. He thought about winning more than I thought about eating when I was little. He ached when we didn't win; his whole body would be thrown out of whack when we lost. He didn't care about any player's statistics or reputation in the newspapers; all he thought about was the final score and who had helped put it on the board. He was our gyroscope, programmed solely for winning, and it was difficult for any of us to deviate from the course he set for us.
Red has always been one of the most single minded men I've known. Suppose by the 1990's, I were to become the first black president of the United States, had cured cancer, has won the Nobel Peace Prize and had picked up a dozen Oscars in my movie career. If someone were to ask Red about me, he would say, "Russell? Oh, yeah! He played for me. A great player. I don't care how old he is, he could still play better than any of them out there now." Under similar circumstances, I think he'd say the same of Cousy, Heinsohn, Sam Jones or KC.
But being single minded about winning didn't mean that Red knew only one road to travel. He was always coming up with a thousand angles. He was open with us about some of them and secretive about others, but that was all right. What really mattered was that we trusted him; we knew his anctions were directed solely toward winning and not out of some petty grudge against one of us. We also respected his intelligence. Red is not someone you would wish to have leading a platoon against yours in a war game. He had just enough imagination to discover what he needs to win but not enough to slow him down daydreaming on the way. He'll get there quickly and come up on your blind side.
It was just as important taht Red respected our intelligence, too. He was smart enough to know that you can't win without intelligent players, so he acted as if he had what he needed. We didn't harbor any rocket scientists on the Celtics, but we had a lot of players who were smart about the game. I don't believe that a championship caliber player in any sport can be stupid about the art and war of his game. He may not speak the same language that most professionals do, and he may not have a lot to say to people outside his game, but within his world he will be an advanced student. This has to be true, because physical abilities are relatively equal at the top of professional sports. One the Celtics, we believed that the principal difference between good teams and great ones was mental toughness: how well a team could keep its collective wits under pressure. That's something no coach can give you. In each split second a basketball game changes as fast as ten rapidly moving objects can create new angles and positions on the floor. Your game plan may be wiped out by what happens in the first minute of play. The coach can't be out there; the player has to see what is going on. More, he has to predict where a pattern of action will lead, and then act to change that pattern to the advantage of his team. Teams that can do this under the greatest pressure will win most of the time. Red gave us credit for understanding that different players had to play different roles in order to win. We couldn't expect to do so if each player took on the identical role of scoring as many points as possible, hoping that ours added up to more than our opponents'. One of the first thing he told me when I joined the team was that he was counting on me to get the ball off the backboard and pass it quickly to Cousy or Sharman for the fast break. This, plus defense, was to be my fundamental role on the team, and as long as I performed these functions well he would never pressure me to score points. He also promised that we would never discuss statistics in salary negotiations.
This one conversation accomplished as much as a whole season's worth of tactical coaching. It showed me that Red knew what he was talking abut; he was asking me to do what I did best, and at the same time what the Celtics needed most. In addition, he removed a lot of the pressure I felt about scoring more. All that was to the good. If he'd said to me, "What we need from you is twenty five points a game," I might have been able to do it, but we wouldn't have won much.