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The Nate Archibald Interview

By:  Michael D. McClellan | The dream starts here, in the gang-infested, drug-ravaged projects of New York’s South Bronx, a place where bullets fly and dreams die in near synchronous rhythm, a concert of violence that plays on a continuous loop next door, down the street, all around.  Murder in the 4-0 – New York’s 40th Precinct to the uninitiated, a two-square-mile area in the South Bronx that is home to the Patterson housing projects – is a way of life, a place where it’s nothing to see wounded men in the prime of life walk with canes or ride in wheelchairs.  The Yankees might be the pride of the borough, but the only pitchers here are the ones dealing drugs.  This is nothing new; heroin has long been shot into the vein of the South Bronx, and visits by Jimmy Carter, Mother Teresa, Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II have done nothing to stem the tide.  Still, the South Bronx remains a mystery to most New Yorkers, a shadow city within the city, out of sight and mind, except when someone gets shot or falls down an elevator shaft – a collection of bad-news redbrick piles to whiz by on the BQE.

The dream starts here, and it starts with a boy and a basketball.  The ball goes wherever the boy goes.  He shoots at a rusting rim in all sorts of weather, the creased concrete uneven and cracked, graffiti spray-painted onto the wall just beyond.  He dribbles hard and fast under the noonday sun, his shoes barely touching the pavement, sweat racing down a face so boyish it takes decades for time to catch up.  He grows from child to teenager, the basketball jammed under his arm as he makes his way home from the PSAT Community Center, Latin jazz rolling down from the open windows above, the timeless rhythms of Eddie Palmarie the lone remaining companion in a day that starts with thirty boys playing pickup.  It’s the early Sixties, and Patterson is little more than a decade old.  The gangs haven’t taken over yet, and the opioid epidemic hasn’t yet transformed an abandoned railroad bed into “The Hole,” the South Bronx’s answer to the “Bluff,” Atlanta’s open-air heroin market made famous by its ominous acronym:  Better Leave U Fucking Fool.

The boy is one of the lucky few to escape and make it big.  The fraternity includes boxer Iran “The Blade” Barkley, who, as a teenage member of the Black Spades street gang, engages in years of turf wars and bloody fights in the South Bronx.  He rises up to knock out Thomas Hearns and win the WBC middleweight title, and earns $5 million during a career that also includes winning the vacant WBB heavyweight title.

That Barkley later descends into poverty and returns to Patterson homeless should surprise no one, which makes the story of Nate “Tiny” Archibald even more extraordinary.  Archibald not only escapes to register one of the greatest seasons in NBA history, leading The Association in scoring and assists in the same season, he goes on to win an NBA Championship with Larry Bird en route to being named one of the NBA’s 50 Greatest.

It could have gone the other way for Archibald, who attends DeWitt Clinton High School but fails to make the basketball team during his sophomore year.  He finds a mentor in Floyd Layne, who runs the local community center, and it’s Layne who convinces Archibald to stay in school and give basketball another try.  Archibald seizes the opportunity, ultimately graduating from DeWitt and playing a transition season at tiny Arizona Western, where he averages 29.5 points-per-game.  He transfers to the University of Texas at El Paso, and in three seasons transforms himself from a one-dimensional point guard into a legitimate NBA prospect.  Scouts take notice, especially after a 51-point performance in the 1970 Aloha Classic.

The Cincinnati Royals hold the fifth pick in the 1970 NBA Draft.  Cincinnati, in desperate need of a big man, selects Sam Lacey.  Somehow, Archibald is still available when the Royals pick again in the second round, nineteenth overall.  Head coach Bob Cousy wastes little time selecting UTEP’s talented point guard.

Archibald, who earns the alternate nickname  “Nate the Skate” while playing summer ball at Rucker Park, struggles during his rookie campaign.  He averages 16.0 points and 5.5 assists, but catches heat for being careless with the rock.  Turnovers continue to plague Archibald during his second season, causing Cousy and General Manager Joe Axelson to briefly consider trading their young floor general.  The Royals stand pat, and Archibald goes on a scoring rampage over the second half of the season.  His 34.0 points-per-game average after the All-Star Break is second only to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

“It was just a matter of getting on a roll,” Archibald says.  “If the shot was there I was going to take it, and if not then I wanted to find my teammate.  At that point in my career I was a scorer first.  Cooz gave me the freedom to play.  He trusted that I’d take good shots, and that I’d pass the ball if there was a better option on a given trip down the court.”

The Royals, struggling on the court and at the box office, relocate to Kansas City ahead of the 1972-73 regular season.  The franchise also changes its name to the Kings.  Archibald responds with a season for the ages, becoming only player in NBA history to lead the league in scoring and assists in the same season.  The numbers – 34.0 points and 11.4 assists – are eye-popping.  The third year pro is selected to play in his first All-Star Game, and is also honored with a place on the All-NBA First Team.

“Cooz gets a lot of credit, because he gave a skinny kid from the Bronx the chance to go out there and do his thing,” Archibald says.  “Some coaches are good for bigs, and some are good for guards.  Cooz helped me to analyze what was going on out there, and he really helped me to understand when to take the shot versus passing the ball.  I became an extension of Cooz on the court.”

Archibald suffers the first serious injury of his career during the 1973-74 season, cutting short his campaign after 35 games.  He bounces back during the 1974-75 season, averaging 26.5 points and 6.8 assists, and earning a return spot on the All-NBA First Team.  More importantly, the Kings reach the playoffs for the first time in nine years.

Archibald averages 24.8 points and 7.9 assists during the 1975-76 season, again earning All-NBA First Team honors.  He’s in his prime and at the top of his game, but the Kings finish 31-51 and out of the playoffs. The Kings’ struggles forces management to make a change, and Archibald is traded to the New York Nets.  A foot injury ends his 1976-77 season after just 34 games, the second major injury in four seasons.  He’s then traded to the Buffalo Braves, tearing his Achilles tendon before the 1977-78 season starts, never playing a game in a Braves uniform.  When Archibald is traded yet again, this time to the Boston Celtics prior to the start of the 1978-79 season, it looks like his best days are behind him.

“I weighed 240 pounds when I got to Boston, which was a far cry from the 170 pounds that I carried in my prime.  Red took one look at me and said that if I didn’t lose weight that I wouldn’t play.  It wasn’t that he didn’t want me – he just didn’t want two of me!”

The Celtics are only two years removed from its last championship when Archibald arrives, but it feels like decades.  Boston, however, will soon add a generational talent in Larry Bird.  The 1979-80 Celtics rebound to win 61 games and reach the Eastern Conference Finals, eventually falling to Dr. J and the Philadelphia 76ers.  Archibald also bounces back, and is once again an All-Star.

Healthy again and in shape, Archibald is the MVP of the ‘81 All-Star Game.  He’s also selected to the All-NBA Second Team.  The arrival of Parish and McHale puts the team over the top; the Celtics win a classic seven-game rematch against the Philadelphia 76ers in the Eastern Conference Finals, clawing back from a 3-1 deficit to take the series.  The Celtics reach the pinnacle one series later, defeating Moses Malone and the Houston Rockets for the 1981 NBA Championship.  For Archibald, the championship is the crowning achievement in a Hall of Fame career.

“There are guys who’ve had a much better career than myself and haven’t won a championship.  You look at players like Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing and you realize how lucky you were to win it all.  I was able to persevere through the injuries and keep learning the game.  Everything that Cooz talked to me about as a rookie ended up coming true.  I didn’t need to be a scorer to help my team win a title.  I was the facilitator on a championship team.  To do it with the Boston Celtics is a dream come true, and something I’ll cherish for the rest of my life.”

You were born on September 2nd, 1948 in the South Bronx’s Patterson housing projects.

A lot has been written about Patterson and my growing up there, and about how horrible it was supposed to have been.  A lot of that negative stuff comes from people who write about the projects but haven’t lived there, so you have this misconception that it was a dangerous, drug-infested place where you ran for your life every day.  I’m not saying that there wasn’t trouble – every neighborhood has it’s problems, and you have to deal with them, but Patterson wasn’t as bad as it has been portrayed in print.  Journalists who haven’t lived there do their research, but it’s not the same because they didn’t grow up in the projects.  I don’t remember seeing a bunch of abandoned cars all over the place, but I’ve read about them in articles that people have written about Patterson.  There just weren’t a lot of cars of any kind when I was growing up – most folks took the train or the bus.  I don’t remember people throwing garbage from their apartment windows, but I’ve read about that happening, too.  The stories made it sound like you needed an umbrella to keep from getting hit with all of the trash being poured onto the sidewalks [laughs].  But that just wasn’t the case.  Patterson was clean.  The buildings were clean.

 

What was the community like back then?

It was a tight community.  People looked out for each other – the parents and grandparents knew each other, they visited with their neighbors, and they ate at each other’s tables.  That closeness was part of what I called my survival kit, which helped to keep me out of trouble.  I had the community center and all of the programs it offered.  I had sports.  I had the school.  It all played a part in keeping me from falling victim to bad influences such as drugs, crime and violence.

 

You frequently talk to young children about growing up in the projects.  What stands out after all these years?

Growing up we didn’t have a lot of material possessions, but we made the best out of the situation.  There was always food on the table.  My mother made the best cornbread, and we always had beans and grits to eat.  Meat was considered a luxury.  Steak, chicken and fish were served on special occasions.  There were seven of us to feed, so she made whatever food we had stretch as far as possible.  And although we didn’t have a lot, we shared what we did have.  Everybody looked out for one another.  People got along.  When I go back to Patterson now, I can tell that there is a big gap in that closeness between neighbors.  Growing up, if any of us did something wrong the other parents would report on it.  They were given permission to slap us on the backside if we got out of line, and then we knew we’d get it again when we got back home [laughs].  Today, people don’t want to get involved.  That’s unfortunate.

I played basketball and softball, but I didn’t play football – I couldn’t afford the equipment and wasn’t really big enough anyway [laughs].  The games drew people together and gave us all a common bond, regardless of our backgrounds or ethnicities.  It was beautiful.  Patterson had a large Latino population, but by living there you understood that the term “Latino” was an umbrella that covered many different groups of Latin communities.  There were Puerto Ricans, and there were Dominicans.  There was a distinction.  Each group had it’s own identity, and things that made them unique.  There was always music being played.  Folks would dance to all different kinds of stuff, because the words really weren’t the important part.  You might not understand the words to a song written in Spanish, but everyone could understand the beat.  The music crossed all boundaries.  I remember listening to the Latin music and loving it.  I was a fan of artists like Eddie Palmarie, who played what is now known as Latin jazz.

 

Your mother was your rock.  Tell me about her.

We didn’t have meat on the dinner table very often – but then we never missed a meal, either.  Our mother worked at Alexander’s, which was a supermarket in the neighborhood, and she always made sure the family had food on the table.  We ate a lot of bean soup.  And we were always right there ready to eat at 5PM, because she used to say, “The kitchen is open from 5:30 until 7 o’clock, but not a minute longer.”  And she meant it.  Come 7:01 the kitchen was closed and we weren’t going to get anything else to eat.  It’s a lot different today.  Young kids today have pocket money, and most of them are spoiled when it comes to food.  They can look at something and say, “I’m not going to eat that.”

We were a very close family, and still are to this day.  Back then only two people had keys to the apartment – my mother and my older sister.  And just like dinner, there came a time when you’d better be in the apartment or the door would be locked.  I remember coming home and banging on the door, and my sister refusing to let me in.  She’d say, “I’ll only let you in if you promise to do the dishes.”  And that was deal.  We still laugh about it today.  You have to understand that our father left when I was fourteen, so we all took turns filling his shoes.  It must have worked, because there are five undergrads in our family, and three with masters.  I’m still going to school because I believe you never stop learning.  My sister is working on her PhD.  And that all goes back to our mother.  She insisted that we go to school and get our degrees.  So even after I went to the NBA I knew I’d go back and finish the work needed to graduate.  My mother would see me, or call me, and it was always the same.  She’d say, “Where’s my degree?”  And that’s the way she looked at it.  That was as much her accomplishment as it was ours.

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A man named Floyd Layne changed the trajectory of your life.

Floyd was one of my many mentors growing up.  He was the sports director at the community center in our neighborhood.  I didn’t make the basketball team as a sophomore at DeWitt – I was just a scrawny, skinny kid who liked to play the game – and was also floundering in the classroom.  I considered dropping out of school.  Floyd mentored me.  He convinced me to stay in school and get an education, and he also asked me to consider going out for basketball again.

 

Two years later you were All-City.  Take me on that journey.

DeWitt’s head coach at the time was Hank Jacobson, but Hank was gone by the time my junior year rolled around.  He was replaced by Bob Buckner, who had played basketball with Bobby Knight at Ohio State.  Bob turned out to the be best thing for me – he was a disciplinarian who provided an open forum and who made players compete for spots on the roster.  He didn’t care what had happened last season.  Everyone started off with a clean slate, and players had to prove themselves all over again if they wanted to play on his team.  I probably benefited more from the coaching change than anyone because I wasn’t even on the roster.  It was a fresh start.  His attitude was, “Last season doesn’t matter – what are you gonna give me now?”  And he rewarded the players who bought into that.  I was a much better player by then, and I really responded to him.  I made All-City as a senior and I don’t think we lost a game all year.  It was a major turning point in my life.

 

Following graduation, you headed off to Arizona Western Community College.  How did you end up so far from home?

I had a scholarship to play Division I basketball, but my grades weren’t good enough to qualify.  So I had to go to Arizona Western, which was a small school and the perfect place for me at that time in my life.  Leaving New York, it was good to go to a small environment where I didn’t disappear in the shear numbers of students.  The people there were genuine, the classes were small, and the transition from high school to college wasn’t as dramatic as it might have been at a bigger school.  I was able to get the attention that I needed – there was plenty of tutoring available to help with the coursework, and there were resources available to help me learn how to learn.  Arizona Western was like my Noah’s Ark in a giant, confusing ocean of higher education.  It really prepped me for the rest of my academic life.

 

What was life like on the basketball court?

I had fun at Arizona Western – not many people know this, but I wanted to stay there two years instead of one.  Our team went 35-1, which really made it hard for me to leave.  The system was really suited to my style of play – we were constantly pushing the ball up the court.  It was a fast-breaking attack.  We ran at every opportunity.  I think I averaged 29.5 points-per-game that season, and most of those baskets came in transition.  But it wasn’t a run-and-gun, street-ball offense.  We played smart  on the court.  We worked really hard on revving up the offense, and this philosophy was the exact opposite of the system in place at Texas Western.  When I transferred there, Coach [Don] Haskins had just won a national championship with a defensive-oriented system.  It was more disciplined.  More structured.  It was obviously successful – Coach Haskins is a hall-of-fame legend – and I gladly fit my style of play into it, but my time at Arizona Western stood out from a pure enjoyment standpoint.  Who wouldn’t have fun running the court and scoring all of those points [laughs]?

 

After one season at Arizona Western, you accepted a scholarship to play at the University of Texas at El Paso.  Please tell me about your time at UTEP.

UTEP was a huge transition.  I had to wait my turn.  Willie Worsley was on the team.  He was a little older than me, and he also played ball at DeWitt Clinton – I was a sophomore when he was a senior.  Back then no one knew who Nate Archibald was, but Willie Worsley was a player with the big-time reputation.  He led the city in scoring as a senior – he averaged more than 30 points-per-game and was considered the best basketball player in New York.  He never backed down from a challenge.  The man always put on a show.  He was also a big summertime player, so I got to play with him a little bit.  I always tell people that when Willie was playing, I had the best seat in the house.  Why?  Because I was on the bench when he was busy doing all of those crazy things on the court [laughs].

 

A lot of Haskins’ success stemmed from his decision to recruit New York.

That 1966 championship team had three players on it from New York City high schools – Worsley from Clinton, and two players from Morris High School in the Bronx; Nevil Shed and Willie Cager.  I knew those guys because we played summer-league ball together, and having familiar faces there meant everything when it came to choosing UTEP.  The fact that they had just won the national championship didn’t hurt, either [laughs].

 

UTEP – then known as Texas Western – won that 1966 national title and became the team to start five African-American players at the major college level.  Did the significance resonate with you back then?

It meant a lot because it was for the national championship, but it just happened to be five black guys playing against five white guys.  That undertone brought the game a lot of attention because of the whole segregation thing, because it was televised and being played for all the money.  For me, knowing those guys was more important.  I’d played ball with Worsley, Cager and Shed.  I could identify with them because we’d grown up in the same environment.  So when I arrived a year later it wasn’t such a big deal to fit in.  They understood what it was like to grow up in New York.

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What was it like adjusting to Division I basketball?

As a student-athlete you start out by keeping the grades to compete, and then once you’re on the team you start to fight for minutes.  Then you want to take minutes away from the guys at your position.  That all comes from being hungry.  Back then I wasn’t hungry – I was 150 pounds ringing wet – back then I was starving [laughs].  I think that goes back to growing up without a whole lot.

Success in the classroom was equally important to me by then.  It goes back to my mother’s influence.  To her, the fact that I played professional basketball never ranked with what any of us accomplished in the classroom.  I understand that now.  I remember when I was playing for the Nets, and the Philadelphia 76ers were coming to town.  I had a broken bone and wasn’t going to be in the lineup.  That afternoon I stopped by and my mother was getting all dolled up.  I said, “Where are you going?”  She said, “To the game.”  She never went to the games, but Dr. J was going to be on the floor that night and she loved watching him play.  It wasn’t that she didn’t like watching me; it was just that she was more interested in my education.  She was a great woman.  So my decision to play at UTEP had a lot more to do with these things than with any of the black-versus-white stuff that the media talked about.  It was important, but it wasn’t the biggest thing that put me in El Paso.

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Following graduation you played on a Phillips 66 team in Idaho.  Tell me about that.

It was a collection of college players showcasing their talents for the pros – collegiate All-Star games – and Haskins sent me up there to play.  The games were rough.  There was a lot of bumping and banging, a lot of people getting knocked to the floor.  I played three games and was running for my life the whole time [laughs].  But my scoring average was impressive, which helped generate some interest, and I played well against some of the best talent coming out that year.  I always wanted to excel against the guys in my class, no matter who it was.  I was excited whenever I got the chance to play against the likes of Dave Cowens, Pistol [Pete Maravich], Rudy [Tomjanovich], Charlie Scott, or any of the others.  For me, it was a great challenge.  I took the mindset that I was a bandit and they were on my hit list, and I wanted to play against them so bad.  I knew I had to be in great shape to stand out against them.  I kept myself in great shape.  Always well-conditioned and ready to run.

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From there you played in the 1970 Aloha Classic, lit up the scoreboard, and caught the eye of Cincinnati Royals head coach Bob Cousy.

When the All-Star games were over, a couple of guys ended up not going to Hawaii and I took one of the slots.  The trip wasn’t a new experience for me; I’d played there because UTEP was in the WAC with the University of Hawaii.  So I just wanted to stay loose, have fun, and learn some more about myself as a basketball player.  I scored 51.  Cooz was there.  I met him for the first time in Hawaii and it was really special for me.  I’d had seen him on television, and I knew all about his career with the Boston Celtics.  He was the Royals coach at the time.  He took me aside before the game and said, “I’m going to be talking to you.”  I didn’t say much – I was pretty quiet at the time – but in the back of my mind I’m thinking, “Why do you want to talk to me?”  After the game we sat down together and at first he didn’t say anything about drafting me.  He just wanted to know what my intentions were, and whether I was interested in playing NBA basketball.  I froze up, went completely blank.  I told him that I didn’t know for sure, but that I hoped to play in the NBA.  He said, “Well, we’re looking at players for the upcoming draft, and you’re one of the guys that we have in mind.”  I didn’t believe it.  To hear the great Bob Cousy say that he was interested was just too much, almost like he was blowing smoke at me.  But he was true to his word; the next thing I know, I’m a member of the Cincinnati Royals and Cooz is my coach.

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Please tell me about Mr. Cousy, and what it was like to play for him.

I always tell people that Bob Cousy was like my step-dad, that’s how much I think of him.  Even though he’s from Queens and I’m from the Bronx, I never held that against him [laughs].  It was great to play for him.  He gave me a shot at pro basketball when none of the so-called experts thought I could play in this league.  And for him to think of me that way, well it only gave me more confidence and really helped my development.  He was one of the greatest point guards to ever play the game, so I listened to everything he said.  Our conversations were guard-to-guard.  He understood the position so well, and he knew what I was going through as far as learning to play the game.  He made me understand what it was to be a leader.  He envisioned me being more of a floor general and less of a scorer, and he said, “One of these days you’re going to change the way you play the game.  You’re going to become more of a quarterback and not so much of a scorer.”  That’s what happened.  I ended up winning that championship in ’81 with the Celtics of all teams, and I didn’t score a ton of points.  Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish, Cedric Maxwell – those guys were going out and getting the points.  My job was to run the offense and keep the team flowing, just like Cousy had said way back in my rookie season.

A lot of guys get drafted and don’t get a chance to play, but Cooz was a man of his word.  He gave me the basketball and said. “This is your team.  Run it.  Score points in transition.  Get guys up-and-down the court.”  He had all this faith in me, even at such a young age.  It shocked me, really, because I wasn’t ready for that much responsibility.  You’re talking about a guy who is twenty-one years old, and he’s asked to run an NBA team.  I just wasn’t ready.  He expected me to be a more vocal leader, but that wasn’t my nature.  I didn’t do a lot of talking.  I let my game do that.  Later on he complimented me on that first season, but thought that I didn’t speak out enough.  I just told him that I led by example.  I think he came to understand that.

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You averaged 28.2 points-per-game in only your second season in the league.  You were particularly hot down the stretch, averaging 34 points after the All-Star Break.

I don’t know that it was by design, it was just a matter of getting on a roll.  At that point in my career I was one of the primary threats on offense.  I just went out and played the game.  If the shot was there, I was going to take it, and if not then I wanted to find my teammate.  Early on, I was a scorer first and a quarterback second.  Cooz knew that I’d have to change my game, that I’d do it eventually, but he didn’t put the clamps down to get his point across.  He gave me the freedom to play.  He trusted that I’d take good shots, and that I’d distribute the ball if there was a better option on a given trip down the court.

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The Royals moved to Kansas City prior to the 1972-73 season, changing their name to the Kings.  You averaged 34.0 points and 11.4 assists, becoming the only player ever to lead the league in both categories in a single year.

That was never by design, either.  It was something that just happened.  I never went out on the court feeling as though I was going to make history that way – I just wanted to help the team win.  I went out and played the game.  Cooz gets a lot of credit for that record, because he gave the chance to play.  He gave this skinny kid the chance to go out there and do his thing, and in a lot of respects I became an extension of Cooz out on the court.  Some coaches are good for bigs, and some are good for guards.  Cooz helped me to analyze what was going on out there, and he really helped me to make good decisions.  I think that’s why I was able to lead the league in scoring and assists in the same season.  I could quickly dissect the situation and instinctively know when to take the shot versus giving up the ball.

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Cousy led the league in assists eight times, but never led the league in scoring.

Our team that year was different from all of those great Celtics that Cooz played on.  We didn’t have a Bill Russell.  We didn’t have a Tommy Heinsohn.  We didn’t have a K.C. Jones, or a Sam Jones, or a Jim Loscutoff.  We didn’t have the old guys to learn from, the guys who’d been through the playoff wars and had walked away with championship rings.  We were learning how to communicate without the benefit of great veterans who’d been there and done that.  But we did have guys like Johnny Green, who took me under his wing and helped me understand the game better.  Johnny had led the league in field goal percentage.  He was a great target on the court.  I looked for him when we needed a big basket.  He was on the receiving end of a bunch of my assists, and he was also the wise sage who gave me a lot of great advice.  Leading the league in both categories in the same season was a very satisfying accomplishment, but not one that outranks winning the championship in ’81.  It was just something that all came together – we were running at every opportunity, and scoring a lot of points in transition.  I just played my game, which blended perfectly with the philosophy in place at the time.

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You suffered an Achilles tendon injury the following season.  How did you bounce back so quickly?

The single biggest factor was probably the return trip that I made to New York after I tore the Achilles tendon.  I went back to work with the youth in the neighborhood, and all of these kids were so supportive.  They were saying, “Tiny, you can still play.  You can come back from this injury.  You’ve still got it.”  And here I was in New York, supposedly mentoring them, and they were ones imparting the wisdom.  It made me work hard to regain my speed.  I didn’t want to let them down.

 

1974-75 marked your return to greatness.  You averaged 26.5 points and 6.8 assists, returned to the All-NBA First Team, and led the Kings reached the playoffs for the first time in nine years.  What was it like to finally taste the postseason?

Coming back, I had the quickness that made me such a dangerous player.  All of the self-doubt was gone; I was healthy again, and it showed in the way I played the game.  It was a dream season because we finally made the playoffs.  We had solid players on that team – Jimmy Walker, Nate Williams, and Sam Lacey to name a few.  Scott Wedman was a rookie that year, and he really helped us.  But we lost to the Chicago Bulls in the playoffs, so that was a big disappointment.  Anytime you’re eliminated it’s a bitter pill to swallow.

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You mentioned that Scott Wedman was your teammate while with the Kings.  Ironically, you would both go on to win NBA championships with the Boston Celtics.  Please tell me about Scott.

Scott was a really good player.  Those first couple of years he was kind of in the shadows in Kansas City, because he was a young guy just getting started and he wasn’t one of the focal points of the offense.  But as time went on he became one of the team’s stars, and one of the better players in the league.  He could shoot the lights out.  Nobody in the league shot it any better.  He was a role player when he went to Boston, which was a big change for him, but he really wanted to win a championship.  He knew that he’d never take Larry Bird’s spot, and that his job would be to come off the bench and provide a spark on offense.  That’s exactly what he did, and the Celtics won two championships with him on the roster.

 

You averaged 24.8 points and 7.9 assists during the 1975-76 season, again earning All-NBA First Team honors.  The Kings, however, struggled in the win column.

It was frustrating, but I just kept playing my game.  I was never satisfied when we fell short of the ultimate goal.  It had been like that since I’d started playing basketball.  We added Bill Robinzine through the draft, but we just didn’t put things together like I thought we would.  We won 31 games and missed the playoffs, so to me that was a huge step backwards.  It didn’t matter what I’d done as an individual.  We didn’t get it done as a team, so there was some doubt about contending for a championship.

 

The next couple of seasons were marked by injuries and trades, as you moved from the Kings to the New York Nets and Buffalo Braves.  Please tell me about this period in your life.

It was a difficult time for me as a professional basketball player.  I was hurt and I only played in 34 games for the Nets.  We didn’t make the playoffs, and then I ended up being traded to Buffalo – and didn’t play at all during the 1977-78 season.  So it was a very challenging period for me mentally.  I had to deal with the injuries, and at the same time stay positive and focused on coming back.

 

You were traded to the Boston Celtics on August 4th, 1978.  Your spot on the team was anything but assured.

I weighed 240 pounds when I got to Boston, which was a far cry from the 170 pounds that I carried in my prime.  Red [Auerbach] took one look at me and said that if I didn’t lose the weight that I wouldn’t play.  It wasn’t that he didn’t want me, because he did.  He just didn’t want two of me [laughs]!  So Red told [Celtics’ trainer] Ray Melchiorre to help me lose the weight.  Ray put me on a diet; skim milk with Raisin Bran for breakfast…no sugar, no butter, no jelly.  I love fried eggs, but he cut those out, too.  I could have them hard boiled, and that was it.  Lunch was a dry salad – no dressing – and no tomatoes.  Dinner was skinless meat, broiled.  Nothing to drink but water and grapefruit juice.  And if that wasn’t enough, Ray made me wear a fat suit when I worked out [laughs].  He was into scuba diving, so he brought one of those scuba suits to the training facility and had me put it on.  It wasn’t a short suit, either – it was one of those long ones.  Putting it on was no problem, but taking it off was almost impossible [laughs].  But it all worked, because the weight came off and I was back to my playing weight to start the season.  I had my speed back, and I was back to running for my life [laughs].

 

Tell me about the legendary Red Auerbach.

That first year in Boston I didn’t play lot, at least by my standards.  I wasn’t sure where I fit in or if I’d remain on the team.  Red and I had some interesting conversations – he loved to walk through the locker room and tell you about the great Celtic teams that he coached during the 50s and 60s, and about all of the championships that he won on the parquet.  Red would also sit you down in his office, which was a smoke-filled room loaded with championship mementos, and he’d try to motivate you to play up to those standards.  I remember sitting down with him one day, the cigars stinking up the place, and he wanted to welcome me to the team.  He said, “Tiny, I’m not sure where you’re gonna be by the end of the season.  You’re out of shape and overweight, and I want guys who are in shape.  I’m just not sure if you’re gonna be any good.  You gotta compete.  To be in this picture you’d better want to win.”

 

The Celtics were in full-fledged rebuilding mode when you arrived.

That first year in Boston was ugly.  We won 29 games and didn’t have much hope.  Satch Sanders started off as the head coach, but he was fired and Dave Cowens took over as player/coach.  On paper there was some good talent on that team – Cowens, Chris Ford, Curtis Rowe, Jo Jo White, Don Chaney – but the mixture wasn’t right.  We even had young guys like Cedric Maxwell and Rick Robey.  Bob McAdoo was on the roster for twenty games or so.  But there was just so much turmoil and negativity that things went from bad to ugly, and they just stayed that way.

Larry Bird was drafted as a junior eligible, so we had to wait a year to find out what kind of player he was.  He was our hope, although the press kept saying that he was too slow to play in the NBA, and that he couldn’t jump or shoot or play defense.  When he arrived, and we actually got to see how good he was, that was when I started to believe that we’d compete for a championship.

 

Tell me about Larry Bird.

Larry was easily one of the greatest players I’d ever played with.  Everyone calls him Larry Legend, but I’ve always liked to call him Larry the Professor.  He was so smart.  He could analyze things on the court, and then diagnose a play almost before it even happened.  He dissected his opponent.  And while he might not have had the greatest physical tools – he wasn’t going to jump through the roof like a Dominique Wilkins – he was a master of the fundamentals.  Nobody was any better at doing the little things collectively, like boxing out and making the extra pass.  He had the highest basketball intellect that I’ve ever been associated with.  It was a privilege to play with him, and also with Kevin and Robert.  They were the heart of our team and the reason we won it all in ’81.

 

The 1979-80 Celtics won 61 games and reached the Eastern Conference Finals.  You were once again an All-Star.  How did your role change with the arrival of Larry Bird?

My role changed every year, which goes back to what Cooz told me my rookie season.  Red Auerbach needed a quarterback to run his team, especially since he was assembling such a talented front line, and he wanted to motivate me to be the player that I was before the injuries.  But he also knew that he needed a player who could distribute the ball, someone who didn’t need to score a ton of points, and by that time in my career I was more than ready to share the load offensively.  I’d been a big-time scorer, but I hadn’t gone deep in the playoffs.  I wanted a ring.  The pieces were coming together.  Max [Cedric Maxwell] was already there, Larry was there, and Robert and Kevin were on their way the following season.  And with Larry on the team we were able to turn it completely around.  We only won 29 games my first season, and then we won 61 games the next.  At the time it was the biggest turnaround in NBA history.  Larry was the focal point of the offense, and that was fine with me.  The next year we had Robert and Kevin, as well as M.L. Carr, so there were a lot of options.  And we were all close, which was the best part.  Max and I were like brothers.  We stayed in the same house, we went to his home in North Carolina during the off-season, and we had a lot of great times together.  The camaraderie on those teams was unbelievable.  Nobody can take that away.  The practices were real battles, and they made us closer as a team.  There were fights, but that’s only because the intensity level was so high.  Nobody was giving up, not even for a minute.  And the individual records didn’t matter.  We were all after the same thing, which was to be recognized as the best in the world.

 

The following season you were named the MVP of the All-Star Game.  After suffering so many injuries in recent years, how did it feel to be recognized as the best of the best?

It was special.  I was healthy again, and I was on a team that had a chance to win it all.  I never doubted my ability, so it was good to be able to remind people that I could still play the game at a very high level.

 

The 1980-81 Boston Celtics came back from a 3-1 series deficit to defeat the 76ers and advance to the NBA Finals.  Please take me back to that classic series.

Nobody was giving up.  There was no quit on that team.  Philly was the team to beat, they had the big lead in the series, and we just kept playing as hard as we could.  Larry told us to take one game at time, and we were able to focus on that.  All of the games were very close, and very intense.  Those last three games all went down to the wire, and they reminded me of the great Red Sox-Yankees series, with the Red Sox coming back from a 3-0 deficit to win.  People may forget this, but our best battles back then were against the 76ers.  They had Doc [Julius Erving], Andrew Toney, Bobby Jones, Caldwell Jones, Darryl Dawkins, Doug Collins, Steve Mix, Lionel Hollins, and Maurice Cheeks.  Philly was loaded.  We had to beat them just to get to the Finals and face the Houston Rockets.  It was a great series, probably the best I’ve ever been involved in.

 

You reached the NBA Promised Land one series later, defeating Moses Malone and the Houston Rockets for the 1981 NBA championship.  What was it like to finally win basketball’s ultimate prize?

It was like Christmas.  There are probably a lot of guys who’ve had a much better career than myself, guys who haven’t won a championship.  You look at players like Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing and you feel for them, and at the same time you realize how lucky you were to win it all.  I was fortunate and lucky to get to play early on, and to learn how the game was supposed to be played.  I was able to persevere through the injuries and keep learning the game.  I was just thankful to be a part of that team, and to have the ball in my hands.  Everything that Cooz talked to me about as a rookie ended up coming true.  I was the quarterback on a championship team.  I accepted my role and I did the things that made my teammates better, and we were able to run the table.

 

You have been inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, and have been recognized as one of the NBA’s 50 Greatest Players.  What do these honors mean to you?

They are the ultimate honors.  Red and Cooz were right there at my induction ceremony, and just having them as a part of it made me relax.  I was able to take the podium and speak about my career.  I had been so nervous beforehand, but they helped me keep it together.  Afterwards they told me that I stole the show, and that I’d talked about everything.

 

You’ve always gone back home – coaching clinics, donating equipment, giving your time.

I love teaching.  When I look at my childhood, I realize how important it was to have safe havens to keep kids away from drugs and gangs.  Activities such as basketball are so important in that regard.  League play teaches kids the importance of sportsmanship and discipline, things that I learned early on because of the people who donated their time and energy to make a difference.  And education stands out above all.  It’s  the foundation that helps to keep kids from doing crazy stuff.  It’s important to help these kids understand that they lose out if they don’t have an education.  That’s why I keep going back.  I want to help instill the values of sportsmanship and education in children at the earliest age possible.

 

Final Question:  You’ve achieved great success in your life.  If you could offer one piece of advice on life to others, what would that be?

Live life to the fullest, and remember that a rich life is not one measured by money or material possessions.

 

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The Jim Ard Interview

By:  Michael D. McClellan |  He played in the league with that red, white and blue ball, teaming with the great Rick Barry and doing battle with the incomparable Julius Erving, but his ultimate thrill was winning an NBA Championship with Dave Cowens, John Havlicek, Jo Jo White, and the rest of the 1975-76 Boston Celtics. Game 5 of that ’76 NBA Finals will forever be known as “The Greatest Game Ever Played,” a triple-overtime heart-stopper in the fabled Boston Garden, and Jim Ard, pressed into duty following the disqualifications of Cowens and Paul Silas, stood tall when his team needed him most. From winning the tip in that third overtime to canning the decisive three-throws in what would be a 128-126 nail-biter, Ard proved himself a worthy middle man in the Celtics’ bid to gain control of the series. Anonymous to many, especially to those outside of Boston, Ard’s spirited play in the final five minutes helped the Celtics capture that all-import Game 5 – and, in the process, take a 3-2 series lead back to Phoenix for the championship clincher. How big was that win? Had the Suns, behind a miracle shot by Garfield Heard, the dubious officiating of Richie Powers, and the spectacular play of Paul Westphal, somehow managed to wrest control of the series by winning that Game 5 classic, Phoenix would have been playing for the 1976 NBA Championship on its home floor. Who knows what might have happened. Instead, it was the Suns who had their backs against the wall in Game 6. Demoralized and weary-legged, Phoenix proved no match for the Celtics in a must-win game. The rest, as they say, is history.

While never a star at the professional level, Ard was heavily recruited out of Thornton Township High School in Harvey, Illinois. He was a rugged big man with decent footwork and a good feel around the basket, and more than a hundred schools offered scholarships. The University of Cincinnati won out, in large part because of its storied basketball tradition. He finished his senior season by being named All-American, at which point both the established NBA and the fledgling ABA heavily courted his services. The ABA, with its lure of the bigger contract, ultimately proved too appealing for Ard to pass up. He signed a four-year deal with the New York Nets, played there for three of them, and then found himself a member of the dreadful Memphis Tams. It was during this period that Red Auerbach, ever on the prowl for talent, plucked Ard from the waiver wire. Ard was thrilled.

“It was a big moment for me,” he recalls. “In the ABA, I had a chance to play with, and against, some very special players – Rick Barry, John Roche were teammates, while Julius Erving and Dan Issel were rivals. And while the quality of play in the league was good, everything else just didn’t measure up to the NBA. So, to join a championship contender, especially a team with a storied tradition like the Boston Celtics…it just didn’t get much better than that.”

Signed to relieve Cowens and Silas, injuries instead thrust Ard into the spotlight far sooner than expected. He struggled through 59 games that season, never growing comfortable in the offense, and the Celtics failed to repeat as NBA Champions. A year later, Ard was ready to help his teammates reclaim what they’d lost. He proved himself a key reserve, coming off the bench to play tough, hard-nosed defense, and the Celtics were suddenly far deeper – and healthier – than the year before. They finished with a 54-28 regular season record, muscled their way past the Buffalo Braves and Cleveland Cavaliers in the playoffs, and faced off against those young, resilient Suns in the Finals.

That ’76 championship would be Ard’s zenith. He would play one more full season in a Celtic uniform, before being waived on November 8, 1977 – just one game into the 1977-78 campaign. He would retire nine games later as a member of the Chicago Bulls.

“I had an enjoyable and rewarding basketball career,” Ard says with a smile. “I was able to play for a storied collegiate program, and I was fortunate enough to win an NBA title with the greatest franchise in professional basketball. How many people can say that?”

Not many.

Celtic Nation is honored to bring you this interview.

You played basketball at Thornton Township High School in Harvey, Illinois, but your early years were spent out West.

I was born in Seattle, but my family moved south to Richland not long after that.  Richland was home to the Hanford Site, or better known as the home of the first nuclear power plant in the United States.  We lived there though junior high school, at which point we relocated in Illinois.  In junior high I wanted to play football, but I found out that I didn’t like it.  I ended up playing basketball instead.  My father put up a backboard – I could either play by myself and work on the various aspects of my game, or I could have friends over to play against.  It was a valuable tool in my development.  I think that’s the thing that really got me hooked on basketball.

 

You led Thornton to the state championship in 1966, received dozens of scholarship offers, and decided to play collegiate basketball for the University of Cincinnati.  What led you to sign with the Bearcats?

I was part of the team, but I can’t really say that I led Thornton to the championship.  It was exciting to win it all, no question about that, and it helped to open doors at schools like Cincinnati.  In selecting a college, I wanted the right combination of academics and athletics.  There were several schools that had the right blend, and I was able to narrow my choice down to two – Cincinnati and Michigan.  But the Big Ten was more of a football conference, while Cincinnati had a rich basketball tradition and a very strong nucleus of players.  I had a chance to sit down with Oscar Robertson and talk about the University of Cincinnati, and my place in the basketball program.  It was a great meeting.  I was in awe.  He’s the one who sold me on the school.

 

During were named All-American following your your senior season.  What was it like to be recognized as one of the best basketball players in the country?

It was rather surprising to be named All-American, to tell you the truth.  We had a great team during my senior season – I think my selection was a result of the team’s success, and not anything that I did that was extraordinary.  That’s the way I’ve always looked at it.  I just went out and did my part to help us win games, which was the attitude all of my teammates had that season.  We preferred team achievements over individual accolades.  Still, it was an honor to be selected.  Cincinnati has a storied basketball program, and there have been so many great All-Americans to play there – Oscar, Tom Thacker, Ron Bonham, Bob Wiesenhahn, Paul Hogue, and Tony Yates, to name a few.  It was an honor to join a group like that.

Socially, there was a lot going on in our country during my time in high school, and later at Cincinnati.  You had the Vietnam War, you had the assassinations of Martin Luther King and President Kennedy, and you had the British Invasion.  It was a very interesting time to grow up.  In professional basketball, you had Bill Russell and all of those great Celtic championship teams.  You also had the rivalry between Russell and Wilt [Chamberlain], and the rivalry between the Celtics and the Lakers.  In that context, I later found it hard to believe that I had won an NBA Championship playing for those same Celtics.  It was a great thrill.

 

Following college, you found yourself coveted by two leagues:  The Sonics drafted you with the sixth overall selection in the 1970 NBA Draft, while the fledgling ABA also made its intentions known.  What led you to spurn the NBA in favor of the league with the red, white and blue ball?

Basically, I think I may have gotten to the same place either way – playing basketball in the NBA – even though I knew I wasn’t going to play for Seattle.  My agent and the owner of the Sonics were not on the best of terms, and that led to some hard negotiations with Seattle.  The fact that another league was involved in the bidding process helped financially, because it drove up the dollar amount that the [ABA] New York Nets were willing to pay.

I think we finished just under .500 during my first year with the Nets.  We had some characters on that team – a young Rick Barry, and Bill Melchionni, who had gone to Villanova and won an NBA championship with Wilt Chamberlain in Philadelphia.  My rookie year in the ABA was definitely an eye-opening experience.  The travel, the accommodations, the facilities – none of that was on par with what was being offered in the NBA.

 

The ABA was able to compete for players because of something known as the “Dolgoff Plan”.  What role did this plan play in luring top talent to the ABA, and what impact did it have on player salaries?

Well, first I’ll tell you about the lure of the Dolgoff Plan, and then I’ll tell you about the reality of that arrangement.  The lure was that it made the value of the ABA contract far larger than what the NBA was offering.  The face value of the contract with the Nets was $1.4 million, and that’s what was reported in the news, but the actual dollar value was nowhere near that dollar amount.  It worked out to be $250,000 over four years.  The Nets also agreed to put $8,000 a year for 10 years in a Dolgoff Plan, which was an annuity that I would collect starting at age 41.  That sounded all well and good, given the financial forecasts at the time of my signing, but the stock market took a horrible turn almost immediately after the ink had dried.  The money was locked into some really bad investments – so bad that the plan was worthless by the time I was old enough to begin collecting.  I went to court over the way the plan was constructed, and eventually received a small settlement.  It was nowhere near the $1.4 million face value of the contract.

The Dolgoff Plan was a valuable tool in the ABA’s battle to attract talent that would have otherwise gone to the NBA.  The deferred payments allowed the ABA to offer contracts that, on paper at least, were far greater than those in the National Basketball Association.  But that was only on paper.  The ABA used it to sign guys like Spencer Haywood, Billy Cunningham, and Dan Issel.  But in each case, the plan just didn’t pay off as expected.

 

While with the Nets, you were coached by a young Lou Carnesecca.  What was it like to play for Lou?

Very intense.  He was a very demanding coach, detail-oriented, and also very focused.  Those are the traits that made him so successful wherever he coached.  He was also a very good teacher.  He could watch you do something once, and then tell you exactly what you were doing wrong – and how to fix it.

Lou was just a great, great coach.  He led the Nets to the ABA Finals, and he had all of those great teams with St. John’s University.  He was the Big East Coach of the Year, and the National Coach of the Year.  He’s in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.  You look at what he’s accomplished in his career, and it just doesn’t get much better than that.

 

For the 1970-71 season, owner Roy Boe acquired superstar Rick Barry from the Virginia Squires.

It was very interesting playing for the Nets that season.  Rick was supposed to play for Virginia, but he refused, stating that he would not play for the Virginia Squires.  So, when he arrived in New York, I wonder what we’ve gotten ourselves into with this guy.  He was known to be so over-the-top, and so vocal, that I wasn’t sure that he would fit in.

Well, when Rick arrived, Lou asked me to work with him after practice.  We went to a local playground for two straight weeks, immediately after practice, and worked on our shooting and our defense.  He was such an unbelievable shooter.  He could hit from anywhere, and with consistency.  Those one-on-one practice sessions really helped both of us, and it didn’t take me long to realize that Rick wasn’t the arrogant star that the press had written about.  That’s not to say that he didn’t have a lot of confidence in himself.  He had enough ego for three basketball teams.  He definitely spoke his mind.  But away from the game he was a decent guy.

 

During the 1972 ABA Playoffs, the Nets pulled off a huge first round upset of the mighty Kentucky Colonels.

That was a special season for us.  We signed John Roche, who had been drafted by Kentucky, and who had been a three-time All-American at South Carolina and the MVP of the Atlantic Coast Conference.  We signed [Tom] Trooper Washington.  He wasn’t a big guy, maybe 6’7”, but he always established great position underneath the glass.  I think he averaged close to ten rebounds per game that season.  And Rick managed to stay healthy the entire season, which was a huge advantage for us.  He finished the season just behind Charlie Scott for the ABA scoring title.  We also had the first winning season in team history.  So, we had a lot of momentum going into the playoffs.  We felt confident that we could compete against Kentucky, even though we’d only won 44 games compared to their 68.  We weren’t intimidated.

The first two games of that series were in Louisville.  We went into their place, which was rocking, and we won both games.  Rick scored 50 points in the series opener – the Colonels tried everything, but they just couldn’t stop him from scoring that night.  They kept applying more and more pressure, forcing Rick to take shots farther from the basket, but it didn’t matter.  He just kept draining them.  He was too much for Kentucky to handle, and that gave us a great mental edge.  We played loose.  Kentucky played tight.

We shut them down in the first half of Game 2 – I think we held them to 34 points.  Rick and John played great ball.  We won that game decisively.  The best thing was that no one gave us a chance to win a game in the series, and we left Louisville up 2-0.  We split games in New York, and then lost Game 5 back in Louisville.  That sent the series to Nassau Coliseum for Game 6.  We were pumped up.  The crowd was deafening.  We knew we didn’t want to play Game 7 back in Kentucky, so we went out on the court and played aggressively.  It was an unbelievable win for us.

 

One round later, you faced Julius Erving and the favored Virginia Squires in the Eastern Division Finals.  What was it like to play against a young Dr. J?

It’s hard to describe to someone just how gifted Julius Erving was, because words fall short of adequately explaining his impact on the game of basketball.  He was Michael [Jordan] before Michael.  He was able to defy gravity in a way that was almost preposterous.  He was an athletic freak, and I mean that in the most sincere way possible, because the gifts that he had come around once in a generation.  That’s how special he was as an athlete.  Beyond that, he was just as special as a person.  Very bright.  Articulate.  Great flair.  He was the biggest star the ABA had to offer, and our signature player.  Later, with the 76ers, his appeal helped to propel the game to new heights.  He became a true ambassador of the game of basketball.

I remember that series against Virginia very well.  The Squires won the first two games in Virginia, Dr. J was the biggest reason for that.  He scored 26 points in Game 1, and then 38 points in Game 2.  At that point, it looked like we were going to be swept out of the series.  We couldn’t establish any momentum – Rick didn’t play particularly well, at least by his standards.  And even though we did a decent job of containing Julius, he was still able to hurt us down the stretch.

We returned home for Game 3, but there was a big delay – ten days – because the Nassau Coliseum was booked for other events.  Something like that would be unimaginable today, and even back then the NBA didn’t run into those kinds of problems.  But that was the norm in the ABA.  It was struggling to survive and flourish in the shadow of an established league.  Anyway, the delay was necessary because neither team wanted to play a playoff game at the Island Garden.  It had bleacher seating.  It was adequate for high school basketball, and maybe small college ball, but that was it.

The long layoff turned out to be an advantage for us.  It enabled us to regroup and heal – we were pretty banged up by that point in the season.  We won both games at home to even the series, then split the next two games to force Game 7.  Up to that point, neither team had won on the other’s home court.  Game 7 was in Norfolk.  The place was packed.  Julius played great – I think he finished with 35 points – but Rick hit a huge three-pointer late in the game and Virginia was unable to answer.  It was a great series, and one of the most exciting that I’ve ever played.

 

Following a stop in Memphis, you found yourself plucked off of the waiver by Red Auerbach.

I found myself very fortunate to join a team with the rich history of the Boston Celtics.  It was amazing.  My expectation was that I would come in and provide backup relief to Dave Cowens and Hank Finkel – injuries changed all of that.  I remember signing my contract, and thinking that I’d have a couple of weeks to get ready to contribute, and then getting thrown into the fire immediately.  It wasn’t an easy adjustment.  The biggest difference between the ABA and the NBA, in my opinion, was the size of the men in the middle.  The ABA had Artis Gilmore, who was 7’2”, but there weren’t many other players his size in that league.  The NBA had imposing players on just about every team – and sometimes two.  Washington had Wes Unseld and Elvin Hayes.  Bob Lanier was out there to be reckoned with.  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.  There were just so many talented big men, so you faced one almost every night.  In the ABA, it was basically Artis as far as size and strength were concerned.  Thankfully, Dave and Hank were able to come back quickly, and we were able to establish a solid rotation.  That helped us mesh the next season, when we won the championship.

 

What was it like to play center for the Boston Celtics?

It was probably the best-managed organization that I’ve ever been a part of, and that includes my post-NBA career.  Since retirement I’ve worked for a number of tech companies in Silicon Valley, very successful enterprises, and none of them comes close to the way the Red Auerbach and the Celtics ran things in Boston during my time with the team.  It was also a great thrill to be a part of such a legendary team.  Playing in front of the Boston fans, playing in the fabled Boston Garden, playing beneath all of those championship banners…it was a very special experience, and unlike any other in basketball.  It must be akin to playing baseball for the New York Yankees, or playing football for the Green Bay Packers.  It was more than just about the game of basketball.  It went much deeper than that.  Looking back, being a Boston Celtic was the highlight of my basketball career.

 

The Celtics won 60 games that season, but stumbled against the Washington Bullets in the Eastern Conference Finals.

What stands about for me was the respect that I had for guys like Wes Unseld and Elvin Hayes.  They were the big guys that made life so difficult for us in that series.  They dominated us in that series.  We just couldn’t find an answer underneath the basket, and fell behind 3-1.  That was too much of a hole to dig out of, even with all the great players we had on the roster.  I think we lost that series in six games.  That kept the Celtics from a chance to repeat as champions, and it also put the Bullets into the ’75 NBA Finals.  Rick [Barry] was playing for Golden State then, and the Warriors won that championship series, 4-0.

 

Fellow ABA-er Charlie Scott joined the Celtics for the 1975-76 season.  Please tell me about Mr. Scott.

Charlie Scott was a very, very bright individual.  Very talkative.  You put those two elements together, and you realize that he should have been a lawyer [laughs].  He was a thrilling player.  I didn’t know him very well prior to his joining the Celtics, and I was a little apprehensive at first because of the stories that I’d heard.  There were rumors that he had been a malcontent in Phoenix.  My concern was what impact he would have on team chemistry, and how he would mesh with established stars like John Havlicek, Dave Cowens and Jo Jo White.  Would there be enough basketballs to go around?  Would he cause problems in the locker room?  Things of that nature.  Plus, we had given up a promising young player in Paul Westphal to acquire a proven veteran to help us win a championship.

I was pleasantly surprised to find Charlie Scott very much a team player.  He came to Boston and did his best to fit in.  He didn’t try to be the star, and he didn’t have to score a ton of points to be happy.  He was only concerned with winning, and I think that that’s what made him seem like such a diva in Phoenix.  It wasn’t that he had to lead the Suns in scoring in order to be happy.  I think the team was so bad, and the talent level so low, that he felt a need to shoulder the offense in order to win.  I think that if the Suns had other players who could score, then Charlie Scott would have been happy to distribute the basketball more.  Anyway,  by mid-season I could tell that the trade for Charlie Scott was a good one.  He was a leader.

 

What was it like for you to finally win a world championship, and what do you remember about that triple-overtime game against the Suns?

There are so many things that still stand out.  I remember the heat in the Boston Garden.  I remember that we had a big first half – we were dominating the Suns in just about every aspect of the game.  And then, just like that, we quit hitting shots.  I don’t have an explanation for it, other than to give Phoenix all of the credit for making the adjustments defensively.  Westphal played a great game.  He helped the Suns cut into the lead in the second half, and played a pivotal role by calling that timeout the way that he did.

The fans were rowdy, no doubt about that.  I remember Gar Heard’s shot, the clutch play of Glen McDonald, and my own contributions in overtime.  And there were so many bizarre calls by the officials.  Somehow we hung on to win.  I remember thinking, in that third overtime, that whoever hung on to win this game would probably win the series.  It was that pivotal.  Everybody was spent.  Had we lost that game, we would have gone to Phoenix for Game 6 needing a win just to stay alive.  The Suns would have had the huge mental and physical advantage.  Their fans would have been just unbelievable.  But we were able to win it, and then we were able to lock up the championship in Phoenix.  Charlie Scott played great in that game.  Winning that championship was an unbelievable experience.

 

That 1975-76 championship team was stocked with talent.  Please tell me a little about Dave Cowens, John Havlicek, Jo Jo White and Paul Silas.

Dave and Paul worked so well together.  They were a great combination.  Whenever Dave would roam outside, Paul would be underneath the basket, hauling down rebounds.  I think each made the other a better player, and each benefited from having the other on the court with them.  Dave was the unquestioned leader.  Paul – I could talk about him all day long.  He was ferocious on the glass.  He was relentless.  He had those big hands and that big, strong body.  You weren’t going to get around him.  Even guys much taller couldn’t handle him.  He was a beast.

Havlicek was just a great athlete, and an exceptional basketball player.  When it came down to taking the last shot, he was the guy you wanted with the ball in his hands.  If I were the coach of that team and the game was on the line, I’d set up a play and run the ball through John.  He was going to score more often than not.

Jo Jo – he was a strong man.  People may not realize that about him.  He was an ex-Marine, and he was always in such terrific shape.  He could have been a superstar on other teams in the league, but he was all about winning.  Jo Jo knew that he had Cowens, Havlicek and Silas on his team.  His job was to distribute the ball, score when the opportunity presented itself, and play punishing defense.  That, and push the ball up the court.  Tom Heinsohn, who was our coach at the time, developed an up-tempo attack that we used very effectively.  Jo Jo was key to that philosophy, and one of the main reasons it proved so successful.

 

The great Celtics teams of the 1970s often get overlooked, in large part due to the success of the Bill Russell and Larry Bird Eras.  How do the 1975-76 champions stack up against the best in the NBA today?

Well, it depends on the rules.  There were no zones back then, as there are today.  The hand-checking rules are far different today.  And I understand why all of these changes have been made.  The game has evolved, and in that process there has been some offensive stagnation.  In the late eighties, there was a trend toward isolation plays on the offensive end of the court.  There was no ball movement.  A team would bring the ball up the court, and the best player would go one-on-one and try to score.  It became boring.  When you look at teams today, teams like Phoenix and Dallas, you are almost surprised that they push the ball up the court and play team basketball.  Everyone is involved.  You’ve got great players like Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzki, and the teams are running on every possession.  There is a lot of ball movement.  It’s really beautiful to watch.  Well, that’s the way basketball was played in the ‘70s.  That style was the rule, not the exception, and it didn’t look so unique because everybody played it.  Now, it’s almost a novelty.  That’s a shame, because I think that brand of basketball is far more exciting to watch.  It’s definitely more fun to play.

But to answer your question, I think a lot depends on the rules.  If the rules are the rules that we played under, then I think that gives our team an advantage over the best in the NBA today.  If we play by the rules today, I’m not so sure how we’d stack up.  I think we’d be very competitive, and one of the better teams in the league – a contender for a championship.  I just don’t think the new rules would allow us to maximize our strengths as a team.

 

What do you remember most about the fabled Boston Garden?

I was shocked the first time I played there – it was so old and decrepit, and it was kind of shocking to see how far in disrepair that place had fallen.  But then I quickly learned that that was part of the charm of the Boston Garden.  That was part of its mystique.  It was cold in the winter and hot in the summer, and the parquet floor had all of those dead spots on it.  I learned very quickly how important that place was to the team and the city, and how much of a home court advantage the Boston Garden really gave the team.  My favorite memory in the Garden?  You might imagine it to be Game 5 against Phoenix, but it was actually the next season, when we raised that championship banner to the rafters.  It was then that I realized that I’d contributed to something very special, and that I had joined a very elite club in doing so.

 

When looking back on playing in both the ABA and NBA, who were some of your most difficult defensive assignments, and why?

Dan Issel.  He had that great jump shot, and he was very efficient at getting to the basket.  Bob Lanier.  The best footwork of any center in the league.  Like Issel, he had a great jumper.  And he was so strong.  I’d rather try to take a jumper over him than try to overpower him in the paint.  You couldn’t push him around – it just wasn’t going to happen.

 

Final Question:  If you could offer one piece of advice on life to others, what would that be?

Never forget where you came from.

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The Hank Finkel Interview

By: Michael D. McClellan | Someone had to bear the burden of replacing arguably the greatest winner in the history of professional sports, and that someone turned out to be Hank Finkel.  A karaoke singer who had somehow wandered onto Pavarotti’s stage, Finkel performed for an audience spoiled by the immensely unattainable standards of his predecessor. Celtics fans could recite Bill Russell’s accomplishments as if had all happened yesterday:  Eleven titles in thirteen seasons, eight in a row, two of the last three as player-coach.  Still drunk from a dynastic run of championship celebrations, they refused to see Hank Finkel for what he really was – a piece of a rebuilding puzzle, a stop-gap measure until Red Auerbach could unearth a starting center capable of filling Russell’s shoes.

“Henry Finkel is not the reason we’re losing,” head coach Tommy Heinsohn barked at reporters during a particularly frustrating stretch during the 1969-70 regular season. “It’s not fair for him to be singled out as the symbol for the team’s problems. You lose a Bill Russell, and there are going to be consequences.”

For his part, the player nicknamed “High Henry” by legendary radio announcer Johnny Most tried to stay positive, but he found himself so depressed that he considered walking away from basketball completely. Heinsohn promised him that help was coming, and that things were going to get better. Auerbach delivered in big way, drafting center Dave Cowens in 1970 and trading for power forward Paul Silas two seasons later.

“Tommy defined my role as a backup to Dave and Paul,” Finkel says quickly.  “I was able to come off the bench and play alongside All-Star talent. I wasn’t the focal point. I could do the little things that I did best, while the other guys could focus on rebounding and scoring.”

Finkel burst onto the scene at the University of Dayton, where he led the nation in field goal percentage as a senior.  The slender seven-footer also earned All-America honors in 1966, attracting the attention of scouts throughout the league.  The Los Angles Lakers selected Finkel in the second round of the 1966 NBA Draft, only to make him available for the NBA expansion draft a year later.  Selected by the San Diego Rockets, Finkel played two uneventful seasons in San Diego before landing in Boston.  Finkel stood no chance as Russell’s replacement, as the Celtics missed the playoffs for the first time in 20 years.

Fast-forward to the 1972-73 season.  With Cowens and Silas in the fold, and with a young Jo Jo White running the attack, the Celtics roared to a 68-14 record, losing to the New York Knicks in the Eastern Conference Finals.  A year later, however, the Celtics’ championship drought would come to an end; in a season in which John Havlicek would record his 20,000th regular-season point, the Celtics would capture their 12th NBA title, dominating the Milwaukee Bucks in a winner-take-all Game 7.

“It was a hard-fought series,” Finkel recalls.  “Neither team could maintain control of home court advantage.  We thought we were going to win the title in Game 6 at the Boston Garden, but then Kareem hits that huge sky hook at the buzzer to force Game 7 back in Milwaukee.  We pushed the ball hard in that next game, and we made their guards – particularly Oscar Robertson – work to bring the ball up the court.  It was an unbelievable feeling to win a championship – and my proudest moment as a Boston Celtic.”

Finkel would retire a season later – his sixth with the team – but by then the torment of 1969-70 was a distant memory.  He had shown incredible strength and poise in the face of adversity, and he had become a better person because of it.  The fan abuse also made him more appreciative of the good times.  To this day he remains a beloved figure to fans and teammates alike.

“I prided myself in doing the little things, and I think my teammates understood that that’s what I did best.  All-Star players like John Havlicek, Dave Cowens, Don Nelson and Jo Jo White need guys that can do the dirty work.  That was my specialty, and that was what I gave the team every time I stepped on the floor.  We were a very close-knit group.  That made winning a championship with them even more special.”

Celtic Nation is honored to bring you this interview.

You were born April 20th, 1942, in Union City, NJ.  What childhood memories stand out after all of these years?

First of all, Union City, New Jersey is exactly that – all city.  In a matter of five minutes you could have gotten ten guys together and gone down to the court and played five-on-five.  It was that urban.  We definitely weren’t the suburbs.  So that’s what stands out most in my mind.  That, and all of the friends you make coming from the city.  I think it’s easier because of the concentration of people, as opposed to the suburbs where things are more spread out.

 

You played high school basketball at Holy Family.  Tell me about your high school career.

It was a parochial school.  I went from kindergarten to twelfth grade in the same building – after that, I said ‘thank you very much’ [laughs].  It’s very unusual for somebody to go from kindergarten to twelfth grade in one building.  The grade school was on one floor, and the high school was on another floor.  The gymnasium was downstairs below.

I started playing basketball during my sophomore year in high school.  Up until then I didn’t want to play organized basketball, because I was having fun just playing in backyards and on schoolyards.  I entered high school during my freshman year at six foot, and by my sophomore year I was six-five.  I stood head-and-shoulders above everybody else.  Of course it was a parochial high school, and we only had 150 boys and 150 girls in the entire school.  So I was taller than everybody else, and the coach said, ‘Who’s that big guy walking down the hall?’  And they said, ‘That’s Finkel.’  The coach had my sister Louise in his physics class, so he looks at my sister and says, ‘I want to see your brother at the first basketball practice.’  And that’s what started it.  I went on to play three years of high school ball.  I just didn’t want to play as a freshman, and to be honest with you, I didn’t want to play as a junior or senior, either.  I was seven feet tall when I graduated from Holy Family.  I went from six feet as a freshman to seven feet as a senior.  The problem was that I was seven feet tall and only weighed 175 pounds, so the big guys on the other teams used to move me around pretty good.  But looking back on how my life has been touched by basketball, I thank God that I did end up playing.

 

What led you play college ball at Dayton?

I spent one year at St. Peter’s College in Jersey City, New Jersey.  I played my freshman year there before I moved on Dayton – and there is actually a funny story behind that.  I was standing on a street corner, at a Dairy Queen, talking to my buddies.  That’s when an opposing coach from high school drove by and saw me  standing around – I was hard to miss, because I was seven feet tall – and he pulled the car over and said, ‘What are you doing?’  And I said, ‘Nothing.’  Which was true, because I had just left St. Peter’s College.  Then he says, ‘How would you like to go back to school?’  Well, I told him that I would have to talk to my mother first, because my dad had just passed away.  My mom never even batted an eyelash.  She looked at me and simply said, ‘You go back to school.’

The coach that I’m referring to was quite a player himself – his name was Harry Brooks, and he was an All-American basketball player at Seton Hall.  So we’re standing there on the corner that day, discussing a possible basketball scholarship, and at some point during the conversation I say, ‘Where are you talking about?  Seton Hall?’  And he says, ‘No, no.  I’m talking about the University of Dayton, in Ohio.’  I thought about it for a second, if that, and I say, ‘Okay, that’s great.’  And that was it.  One minute I’m hanging out on a street corner, with not real plans for the future, and the next I’m playing basketball Division I basketball at Dayton.

 

As a senior, you were honored as a Helms Foundation All-American.  How did it feel to be recognized as one of the best basketball players in the country?

I never looked at it that way.  I always got a lot of criticism because I couldn’t jump.  The only thing that I could do very well at that time was shoot.  So I never really looked at myself as one of the best players in the college basketball.  Besides, I never focused as much on individual feats and statistics as much as I did playing well and the team winning.  I had no interest in making All-American.  I wanted to win with the University of Dayton.

 

In 1974, you were inducted into the University of Dayton Athletic Hall of Fame.  What does this honor mean to you?

Once again, not being an individual and being a team guy, I guess it means that the team did well.  I think that’s why I was inducted into the UD Hall of Fame.  Having said that, having some statistics to accommodate the team doing well probably enabled me to get in.  For me, the Hall of Fame at UD really doesn’t mean anything.  What does mean something is the fact that I went to the University of Dayton.  I’ve said all along that if I didn’t have the opportunity to turn pro, then I would have stayed in Dayton, Ohio.  The fans were wonderful.  The people on the campus were supportive.  The coach was terrific – his name was Don Donoher.  And everything about it at that time would have encouraged me to stay in Dayton, Ohio.

 

Tell me about Coach Donoher.

He was like my brother.  First of all he wasn’t much older that I was.  He was a young fella.  He took over for a guy named Tom Blackburn.  Blackburn was the coach my sophomore year, and then he became sick and passed away from cancer.  He passed away at the end of my sophomore year.  At the time, Donoher was the assistant coach under Blackburn.  Everybody liked Donoher, so we all petitioned to help him get the job.  As a result, he was a very young head coach at the time.  I think he was in his early thirties – he was only ten years older than his players.  The whole team with Donoher was more like brothers than we were like coach and team.  That may have been a big reason why everybody got along so well.  And we did very well on the court – of course, it helped because we had a pretty good team.

 

You were selected in the second round of the 1966 NBA draft by the Los Angeles Lakers.  What was it like to start your professional career on the other side of that great Celtics-Lakers rivalry?

I hear that a lot – about being drafted by the Lakers – but I was actually picked by the Chicago team at the time.  They either sold or traded me to Los Angeles immediately after the selection, but I wasn’t drafted by the Lakers.  I think it was the Chicago Zephyrs.

 Anyway, I got the single best piece of advice on being a pro from a pro – you may have heard of him…his name is Jerry West [laughs].  It came in that first training camp.  In college I was predominantly a scorer, and I tried that in training camp against guys like Leroy Ellis and Darrall Imhoff.  These guys were seven-feet tall like I was, and as a result they were knocking me off-balance, blocking my shot, and making it very difficult for me to score.

Freddie Schaus was the coach at the time, and during one of the scrimmages he calls timeout and tells everybody to take a rest.  That’s when Jerry West came over.  He said, ‘Finkel, you don’t have to shoot the ball every time you get it.’  I said, ‘What are you talking about?’  He said, ‘Go out and set some picks.  Set a pick for me.  If I have the shot then I’m going to take it.  If I don’t have the shot, then roll to the basket and I’ll get you the ball.’  That turned out to be the single best piece of advice that I ever received.  For the next ten years I made a living setting picks and blocking out, and all of the credit goes to Jerry West.

 

Your next two years were spent with the San Diego Rockets.  During this period you teamed with rookie phenom Elvin Hayes, as well as future coaching greats Pat Riley and Rick Adelman.  Please tell me a little about each of these men.

I teamed with Elvin during my second year in San Diego.  The first year was the expansion year, and I fared well because that was an expansion team and I got a chance to shoot.  Pat Riley was on my team that first year, and I’ll never forget the story about seeing him for the first time.  It was at training camp that very first year, we were all gathered outside, and here came Pat Riley in a canary yellow Corvette.  It was a convertible, of course.  Black interior.  And he was as polished then as he is today.  He was wearing a gorgeous golf shirt, form fit, and he had a pair of shorts on at the time.  Nice tan.  Forty years later, Pat Riley is still the same guy.  And by the way, he was one tough competitor.  A tough kid.  Six-five, well-built, strong…set a pick on him and he’d try to break you in half.

The only thing that I remember clearly about Rick Adelman was that he played with his head.  He knew where guys were, and he was a pretty good shooter.  And if I’m not mistaken, I think he was drafted in one of the later rounds – maybe the seventh round by San Diego – but he played so hard and so well that he made the team.  And those same characteristics have helped him to become an outstanding head coach.

Elvin – just a great, great player.  Big and strong – I’ll bet that he was about six-ten, about 260, big hands, strong body….he could shoot the ball, he could rebound, he could jump, he could clog the middle so that it was tough to get around…he was just a great all-around player.

 

On August 7th, 1969, you were traded to the Boston Celtics.  What went through your mind?

Two things – I knew that I had to get rid of my convertible and all of my Bermuda shorts, because I was coming to Boston.  Secondly, Elvin Hayes had come on the scene in San Diego.  So, my time was up.  I was not getting any playing time at all.  I was still young – twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old – and I felt that I could contribute in some capacity to another team.  Pete Newell was the general manager for the Rockets, and when he told me that I’d been traded to Boston, I said, ‘Boy, it doesn’t get any better than that.’  Coming up here with all of this tradition and all of these great players, the numbers in the rafters, and the parquet floor…and that doesn’t even speak of Red Auerbach and Tommy Heinsohn.  Red was the general manager and Tommy was the head coach.  So I said, ‘That’s terrific.’  And that’s how I wound up getting traded to Boston.

 

Your arrival in Boston coincided with the retirement of the great Bill Russell, and the end of the Celtic Dynasty.  What was that first season like, and how did you handle the expectations placed on you by the city and its fans?

I almost quit.  Celtics fans are tough – they want a winner.  And I’ve said all along, that if you’re going to play sports in any town, you would want to play in either Boston, New York, or Philadelphia.  I say that because they have the most rabid fans in the country – and arguably in the world.

When I came to Boston, Sam Jones had retired.  Russell had retired.  The whole team was beginning a new era, and a rebuilding process was taking place.  I was by no means in the category of the guys I’ve just mentioned, but I had my own assets.  I was prepared to come in and do whatever I could to help this team continue that same standard of excellence.

Well, the team struggled.  Things got rough, and the fans started booing me, and I got discouraged.  It got to the point that I contemplated retirement.  And then, after the season, Red and Tommy pulled me into Tommy’s office and said, ‘Wait, slow down, we’re going to get you some help.’  And I said, ‘Okay, not a problem.  I’ll stick it out.’  And then they went out and drafted Dave Cowens.  The rest is history.  So I stayed with the team, and after they draft Dave Cowens I said, ‘Man, it doesn’t get any better than this.’

 

Red Auerbach nabbed Jo Jo White in the first round of the 1969 NBA Draft, and followed that up with the selection of Dave Cowens a year later.  Please tell me about each of these men, and their significance in turning the Celtics back into champions.

Jo Jo – great shooter, great team player, all finesse – but boy, when you needed a clutch basket you went to Jo Jo every time.  Cowens’ play could be described as anything but finesse.  He was a hard-working, blue collar, aggressive player.  He was a 6’9” center who dominated his position in the NBA.  You’ll never see another Dave Cowens in the NBA as long as you live.  This guy would tear you apart on the basketball court.  And he did it night in, and night out…and he did it against other centers who were much bigger and much taller.

By the way, I’ve always been asked who I found to be the toughest player to play against in the NBA, and the first name at the top of the list is Dave Cowens.  That would be Dave because I had to play against him everyday in practice.  And when you play against Cowens in practice you may as well just go against him in a game, because he only has one speed and only knows one way to play the game – and that’s hard.  So he was just as tough in practice as he was in the games.

Anyway, they were just two different types of players.  Jo Jo was more finesse but a great shooter, and Dave was the kind of guy to dive on the floor and get his hands dirty and his knees scratched.  He wasn’t afraid to get in a scrape.

 

Two holdovers from the glory years were Satch Sanders and John Havlicek.  Please tell me a little about Satch and Hondo.

Satch was a great influence because he knew the game, he knew what it took to win, and he tried to teach all of the young players – including myself – what to do and how to do it.  Satch was almost a coach-like figure, even though he was still a player.

Havlicek was Havlicek.  To me, it seemed like Havlicek used to run 125 miles-per-hour up and down the court and never break a sweat.  What a great player – great shooter, great rebounder, great team player.  And what a great influence to have on the team.

And by the way, don’t forget about Larry Sigfried.  Larry was a very hard-nosed player – a typical Red Auerbach guy.  Like Cowens, not afraid to get his hands dirty or his knees scratched.  Not the most talented player in the world, but he always played very hard.  You knew that he would give you 110% every night.  I loved Larry Sigfried – boy, he was a tough kid.

 

Your coach in Boston was Tommy Heinsohn, who was one of your most vocal supporters.  Please tell me a little about your relationship with Mr. Heinsohn.

I had a great relationship with Heinie.  Heinie knew exactly what I could do, and what I could not do.  The same can be said for Red as well.  Red Auerbach’s philosophy on building a team – and this comes into play with me, too – was that a basketball team was like a puzzle that has twelve parts.  He always said that you don’t trade two of them to pick up one, because that still leaves a piece of the puzzle empty.  Tommy subscribed to that.  He realized that I was big and strong, that I could shoot, but, more importantly, he also knew that I could block out and set picks.  Back in those days, the NBA had great centers like Kareem, Wilt, Willis Reed, Nate Thurmond, and Wes Unseld.  And if Cowens was playing forward, or if he was in foul trouble, the only thing I had to do was block those guys out.  We already had the rebounders in Cowens, Paul Silas, Don Nelson, and John Havlicek.  As long as I kept the big guy off the boards, then those guys had a chance to get the rebound.  And the other aspect of it was on offense; besides being a shooter, I could set a pretty good pick.  If you set a pick for guys like Havlicek, Jo Jo, Westphal, Nelson, and Cowens when he was playing forward…if you get those guys free for one second, then they’ll hit 75% of those shots.  And that’s what I did – I kept going around setting picks for those guys, a little bang-boom…you get a great shooter free for just a split second, and he’s going to put the ball in the basket.  And that’s all I did.  I defined my NBA career by doing those two things – blocking out and setting picks.

 

The late Johnny Most nicknamed you ‘High Henry,’ something that has stuck with you through the years.  Please tell me a little about the legendary Johnny Most.

Wonderful guy.  By the way, he made icons out of all of us.  I’ve been retired for thirty years now, and to this day people call me ‘High Henry’, and that’s only because of Johnny Most.  Johnny was the kind of guy that, if you were playing for anybody, you wanted to play for the Celtics because he made you out to be a superstar [laughs].  He was a homer, and everybody knew it.  He had his own style.  He found the opposition to be the evil, bad guys.  As far as off the court, you could sit down and talk basketball with Johnny in the hotel lobby.  This guy had a background that pre-dated the arrival of Russell.  So, what you wanted to do was sit down with Johnny and talk to him about all of the old-timers whose numbers are in the rafters and whose names are in the Hall of Fame.

But having said that, Johnny Most made icons out of all of us guys.  That goes for superstars like Havlicek and Russell, as well as the fringe players like Hank Finkel.  He was just a great guy to have on your side.  And he was a good friend on top of that.  One last thing about Johnny; if you were in the hotel lobby or the restaurant, you knew whether he was in there or not.  His voice was that loud and that piercing.

 

By 1972-73, the Celtics were once again among the NBA’s elite.  That team won a club record 68 games, but fell to the New York Knicks in the 1973 Eastern Conference Finals.  Had that Celtics team won the NBA championship, where do you think it would rank among the all-time greats?

I think that the Russell Era had all of the great teams, because they used to go nine, ten deep.  And then you have Russell in the pivot.  He was the difference maker.  So, I can’t tell you whereabouts we’d rank – certainly it would have been behind those great Russell teams, but I do think that we had a great team in our own right.  We had the likes of Cowens at center, Havlicek and Nelson Satch underneath.  We had Jo Jo running the offense.  I don’t know where it ranks, or where it would have ranked had we won it all, but I think that we were one series away from winning the title that year.  If we would have gotten past the Knicks in the Eastern Conference Finals, we would have won our first championship a year earlier.

 

A year later the Celtics won twelve fewer games, finishing 56-26, but the end result was a world championship – the team’s first since the retirement of Bill Russell.  Please tell me about that playoff run, the win over the Milwaukee Bucks, and what it was like to be a part of that first post-Russell championship team.

Well, Milwaukee had a pretty good team, too.   They had Kareem at center and Oscar Robertson at guard.  They had Bobby Dandridge.  I remember getting to play quite a bit in that series, because Kareem got Dave in foul trouble a couple of times.  It was just a great feeling to win the championship, but there was more to it than that.  I’ve said all along that being a Boston Celtic was the greatest thrill of my basketball career.  Winning the championship was the icing on the cake.  When you’re a part of an organization that has Red as the general manager and Heinsohn as the coach, and all of those great players as teammates, that’s the epitome of playing for the Celtics.

The second greatest thing was my teammates.  You go from Silas to Havlicek to Cowens, and on down the line.  Jo Jo, Don Chaney, Paul Westphal.  You just can’t beat playing with guys like that.  And the third greatest thing was winning that championship, because everybody wants to win a championship.  But again, the greatest thrill was just being a part of the Celtic family.  Nothing compares to that.

 

Please tell me about your teammate, Celtics great Don Nelson.

Nellie was a great shooter.  A great team player.  Knew the fundamentals.  Always looked out for his teammates on the court, but he was a great shooter.  I remember once particular incident where Nellie had 9,999 points, and he needed another hoop or another foul shot to get 10,000 points – which was quite a feat in the NBA, especially at that time.  There was a timeout, and Heinsohn asked Nellie what he wanted.  And Nellie said, ‘Have Finkel set the pick.’  Sure enough, I set the pick, and Nellie came off of it, hit the basket, and surpassed 10,000 points.  Nellie wasn’t a superstar, but he was a basic, fundamental, all-around player.  That’s why he was so successful as a coach.  He knew the entire game.

 

The Celtics would win two championships during the 1970s but, in many ways, these titles tend to get overlooked.  Do you think this is because both titles were sandwiched between the Bill Russell and Larry Bird Eras?

Probably.  You got two players right there that are the greatest in franchise history – and two of the best in the history of the NBA.  Red has said that if he had to start a team from scratch, he didn’t know if he would pick Bird or Russell.  So, you are probably right.  But I’ll tell you what – I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; you’ll never see another Dave Cowens.  The guy was 6’9”, and he played with so much heart and tenacity.  You’ll never see another guy that size play center and be that effective in the NBA.  And then you have Havlicek, Jo Jo, Chaney, and Westphal.  We had great teams, too, but you’re probably right.  The marquee names of Russell and Bird are what causes us to get lost in the shuffle.

 

You have a special relationship with the Volk family.  Please tell me a little about the late Jerry Volk, and also a little about his son, Jan.

Jerry Volk, in my opinion, was just a perfect gentleman.  I was put on waivers, and my wife and I were contemplating going back to San Diego.  The weather was nice, and I had an opportunity to teach school out there.  I had already lived in Boston for seven years.  We owned a house and had two children who were in the school system there, and this was the place we’d lived the longest since college.  So my wife and I were trying to figure out what to do when Jan called.  He said that his father wanted to talk to me.  This was in November, when all of the teaching and coaching jobs were pretty much taken.  So Jerry said, ‘I don’t know what your plans are, but what don’t you go to work for me?  You could make a few bucks and see if you like business.’  And the rest is history.  It’s because of Jerry Volk that I own a business now.

Unfortunately I went to a Celt game when Larry Bird was playing, and Rick Weitzman was sitting next to me at the press table.  He said, ‘Did you hear what happened to Jerry today?’  And I said, ‘No.’  He said, ‘Jerry had a heart attack and dropped dead.’  That just broke my heart.  I’m forever indebted to Jerry for giving me that opportunity.  He was just a great guy.  And Jan Volk – I didn’t know him as general manager of the Boston Celtics, to be honest with you.  But I understand that he was really good at managing the salary cap and organizing a team.

 

You were also close with Tommy Heinsohn.

I can’t say enough about Heinie.  I think he really appreciated the way I would dive on the floor.  I think he appreciated that I wasn’t afraid to bump and bang and shove.  He really appreciated those kinds of things.  He kept me on the team for six-plus years, so he must have liked what he saw out of my effort.  Great coach.  I think he retired prematurely.  He’s been very successful in broadcasting, and he’s making a good buck, but I still say that it doesn’t matter where he went, he would have made a great coach.  He made the playoffs seven out of eight years, and he won the championship twice.  Nowadays you have 30+ teams, so you have a lot of mediocre teams.  Back them you had fewer teams, and every team had at least two superstars.  Golden State had Rick Barry and Nate Thurmond, plus a multitude of other players.  Cincinnati had Oscar Robertson and Jerry Lucas.  And back then fewer teams made the playoffs.  It was much harder to qualify.  So Heinsohn really did a heck of a job.

 

Final Question:  If you could offer one piece of advice on life to others, what would that be?

The same thing that Red Auerbach always said to us.  He said, ‘I’ll tell you something; you’re either going to play, or you’re not going to play.  There is no gray area.’  And he said, ‘If you’re not going to play, then let me know.  I’ll put someone else in that will play.’  That’s why he had a place for each of his players.  He wanted guys that would give him 110% every single night, no excuses.  That’s why I don’t accept excuses now from my children or anybody.  There is no gray area in anything in life.  It’s either black or it’s white.  You’re either going to do it or you’re not.  And my choice was not only to do it, but to give it 110% every night.  I learned that from Red.

,

The Charlie Scott Interview

By:  Michael D. McClellan | His professional career was supposed to start here, in Boston, joining Jo Jo White and Dave Cowens as part of Red Auerbach’s post-Russell rebuilding plan. Forget that the ABA’s Virginia Squires also had designs on Charlie Scott’s services, and that it was a foregone conclusion that Scott would follow the money and play in the spunky new league with the red, white and blue basketball. Also forget that, had there been no ABA, Scott would hardly have lasted into the seventh round of the 1970 NBA Draft, where Auerbach rolled the dice to secure his rights. Scott was a big-time player from a big-time program, a two-time All-American who had earned a spot on the 1968 Olympic Team, torched arch rival Duke for 40 points in an ACC tournament game, and propelled the venerable Dean Smith to his first Final Four. Auerbach gambled that Scott would eventually yield dividends for the Boston Celtics, if not from the outset then certainly down the road, trusting that the 6’-6” swingman’s would ultimately play in The Association.  Enter the Phoenix Suns.  Looking to make a run at the NBA Finals, the Suns coveted Scott’s versatility and scoring punch, and knew that the ABA’s scoring leader would be a perfect fit in its backcourt.  The Celtics owned Scott’s draft rights, and Auerbach shrewdly pried Paul Silas away from the Suns. Boston posted a 68-14 season with Silas in the fold, and a year later the Celtics were once again champions of the NBA.

Had the story ended there, Auerbach’s seventh round gamble would have gone down as an unmitigated success.  Scott, however, was still on Red’s radar. He had played well in a Phoenix uniform, churning out three All-Star seasons with the team, but the Suns struggled establish an identity with the talented swingman in the backcourt.  By the summer of 1975, GM Jerry Colangelo made it known that all trade scenarios would be entertained.  Boston, meanwhile, had problems of its own. The team viewed Rick Barry and Golden State as its primary threat, and Auerbach sensed that additional upgrades were needed to ensure another title run.  The emergence of Paul Westphal was certain to draw attention in the free agent market at season’s end, with the Celtics getting nothing in return. Auerbach response:  Orchestrating a deal sending Westphal to Phoenix in exchange for Scott.

“It was a win-win deal for both teams,” says Celtics legend Tommy Heinsohn, who coached both guards.  “Scott immediately helped us win the 1976 NBA Championship, and Westphal blossomed into an All-Star with the Suns.”

~ ~ ~

Born on December 15th, 1948 in Harlem, Scott began playing organized basketball at the age of twelve. He attended New York’s prestigious Stuyvesant High School through ninth grade, when his family moved to tiny Laurinburg, North Carolina, a place Scott describes as “an itty-bitty town in the middle of nowhere.”  Laurinburg Academy boasted a rich basketball tradition – Celtic great Sam Jones played there, as did sweet-shooting guard Jimmy Walker – and Scott quickly carved out a legacy of his own, his scoring average trumped only by his work in the classroom.  Lefty Driesell, then the head coach at Davidson College, hit it off with the slender swingman and appeared to have a lock for Scott’s national letter-of-intent.  An eleventh hour pitch by Dean Smith led to an agonizing decision.

“My mind was made up,” Scott says.  “Davidson was the place for me. But my high school coach talked me into looking at all of my options. He used to take me to watch the Tar Heels play. Deep in his heart, I think he wanted me to go to the University of North Carolina, so he was very persistent in making sure that I kept an open mind. I visited the campus and knew that I wanted to go to UNC, but it was hard to break my verbal commitment with Lefty. He was the first college coach who really recognized my talent.”

Scott became the first African-American scholarship athlete in the school’s history, paving the way for future basketball greats Phil Ford and Michael Jordan. In addition to becoming a two-time All-American, Scott led the Tar Heels to back-to-back ACC championships and Final Four berths in 1968 and 1969. Ironically, Scott and Driesell would cross paths once more, this during 1969 East Regional final. With a trip to the Final Four at stake, Scott connected on 10 of 14 field- goal attempts in the second half, including a 20-footer with three seconds left to eliminate Davidson from the tournament.

Following graduation, Scott was selected by both the Virginia Squires and the Boston Celtics. He signed with the upstart Squires, averaging 27.1 points, 5.6 assists, and 5.2 rebounds on his way to being named the 1971 ABA Rookie of the Year.  A year later he teamed with a young Julius Erving, leading the league in scoring with a 33.4 PPG average. He was named as an ABA All-Star both seasons, but his dissatisfaction with the league led him to sign with Phoenix.  He finished his first season as a Sun by posting averages of 25.3 points, 6.1 assists, and 4.2 rebounds, numbers that validated his talent and proved he could excel against the world’s best.

“I was a confident player with a short memory,” he says, smiling.  “I always thought my next shot was going in.”

Despite the addition of Scott, the Suns struggled to a 38-44 record and missed the playoffs.  Things were worse a year later, as the team went 30-52 in John MacLeod’s first season as head coach. Scott averaged 25.4 points, 5.2 assists and 4.3 rebounds, but he could have cared less.

“I wanted to win.  I’d won a gold medal in the Olympics.  I’d been to two Final Fours.  I wasn’t concerned about putting up big individual numbers.  I wanted a chance to compete for a championship.”

Scott’s third and final season as a Sun provided more of the same – impressive personal numbers (24.3 points, 4.5 assists, 4.0 rebounds) but little in the way of team success. And then, on May 23, 1975, Boston traded Westphal and two draft picks to Phoenix for the rights to Scott. The Celtics went 54-28, with Scott the third leading scorer on one of the most balanced teams in franchise history.

“Dave Cowens averaged 19 points that season.  Jo Jo White averaged 18.9.  I averaged 17.6.  John Havlicek averaged 17.  Paul Silas averaged 10.7.  There aren’t many teams that can boast that kind of balance.”

The Celtics beat a stubborn Buffalo Braves team, 4-2, in Scott’s first-ever playoff appearance. A six game dispatching of the Cleveland Cavaliers put the Celtics back on the championship stage, pitting them against the most unlikely of opponents – the Phoenix Suns.

“It’s funny how that worked out,” Scott said, well aware of the irony involving the ’76 Finals matchup, “but we were very confident about our chances of winning the series.”

The series, of course, remains best known for Game 5 in the Boston Garden, the NBA’s self-proclaimed “Greatest Game Ever Played.” The Celtics prevailed in that pivotal triple-overtime gem to take a 3-2 series lead. Lost in the excitement was the series clincher back in Phoenix, one in which Scott played his best with the most on the line. His 25-point, 11-rebound, 5-steal, three assist performance propelled Boston to its 13th NBA Championship.

The 1976 NBA Finals would be the pinnacle of Scott’s professional basketball career. He would go on to play four more seasons, including a brief stint with the Los Angeles Lakers, before retiring as a Denver Nugget. Still, he considers Boston his NBA home. He feels that it was his destiny to win a championship there, even if road was far more arduous that he ever thought possible.

“I think my time spent with the Suns really helped me to appreciate what it was like to win a championship,” Scott said without hesitation. “I was more mature by the time I arrived in Boston, and I had just endured three frustrating seasons in Phoenix. I was ready to come home and help the Celtics win a championship. And that’s exactly what I did.”

Take me back to your childhood.  What stands out?

I grew up in Harlem, and I didn’t have much hope of going to college.  I started playing basketball when I was twelve years old, when I took an interest in it.  I played bitty-ball and AAU ball.  I enjoyed playing, and I got better at it.  At the age of fourteen I went away to Stuyvesant High School in New York City, and they didn’t allow me to play on the basketball team.  Academically, it was a high standards school, and they were very strict about who could play and who couldn’t.  It actually turned out to be a positive for me, because I learned how to study and how to prepare myself for tests, and without basketball I spent a lot of time doing both.  I transferred to Laurinburg High School, which is in North Carolina, following my tenth grade year.  That’s when I started playing high school basketball.  It was there that I was able to get a scholarship to go to the University of North Carolina.  So that’s basically a thumbnail sketch of how I got from Harlem to North Carolina.

 

Laurinburg has a rich basketball tradition.  Chris Washburn, Charlie Scott, Sam Jones, Jimmy Walker.

In fact, I ended up at Laurinburg because of Jimmy Walker.  I had some friends who were a few years older than myself, and they had played basketball with Jimmy – a guy named Dexter Westbrook, who went on to Providence college with Jimmy, and James Barlow, who went to Kentucky State, where he was killed in a car accident.  These were guys that were older than me, and had played at Laurinburg.  Dexter and James were the ones that had really told me about Laurinburg High School.  They also told several of their other friends.  That’s how a group of us ended up in Laurinburg, North Carolina.

 

Jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie played the trumpet at Laurinburg before dropping out in 1935.

It’s interesting that you mention Dizzy Gillespie.  He’s one of those who had attended Laurinburg, but very few people know where he went to high school.  Unless you’re from that area, or maybe a jazz buff, that piece of history is lost when his name comes up.  He was a great musician.

 

Lefty Driesell recruited you hard, but you changed your mind and played for the Tar Heels.

Lefty was the first person who really gave me notoriety as an athlete at that point in my life.  I had gone to Lefty’s basketball camp as a junior in high school, and at that time he offered me a scholarship.  He was the one who really told the world about me.  Before then I was playing basketball at Laurinburg, and I really hadn’t heard that much from colleges.  But once I went to Lefty’s camp, it was really the beginning of a tremendous recruiting circumstance.  After Lefty starting recruiting me, I was recruited by all of the other North Carolina schools – Wake Forest, Duke, North Carolina State, and the University of North Carolina.  My high school coach, who probably had a lot more insight than I did at that time, made me keep my mind open and visit other schools.

 

Was it hard changing your mind?

Incredibly hard.  I had made an early decision to go to Davidson, and I was really planning on going to school there.  But I wanted to go to the University of North Carolina, and I had to do what was right for me.  I have to thank Lefty for starting my career.  He was the first person to really take notice of me.

 

You were the first black scholarship athlete at the University of North Carolina.  How did Dean Smith and others sell you on playing for the Tar Heels?

It was the first time that people expressed to me the enjoyment of the university experience, rather than the enjoyment of just the basketball team.  In other words, most schools sold me on their basketball programs, whereas North Carolina really sold me on North Carolina.  The basketball team was a big part of it, but the big selling point was that I would have to go to school there.  I was going to be there for four years, and I was going to spend more time away from the basketball court than I was going to spend on it.  So I think that that was the thing that Coach Smith and everyone else really sold me on.  They were all concerned with my college education, and it impressed me a great deal.

 

You were interested in pre-med.  Any truth to the rumor that the school let you perform an appendectomy to get you to sign?

Well, they didn’t actually let me perform and appendectomy [laughs].  But they did let me in the operating room while an appendectomy was being performed.  They let me look in it as it was being done, so that was true.  And they took me in and let me watch the students working with the cadavers – I watched them open up the chest cavity and remove the various organs.  Honestly, I found it fascinating at that point, but after I got to college I realized my fear of needles was going to hold me back in the medical field [laughs].

 

What do you consider your biggest thrill while playing for the Tar Heels?

Winning is a big part of playing basketball, and I could think of a lot of games where we were able to walk away victorious.  Some of them, like the time I scored 40 points in that championship game against Duke – what more could you ask for if you’re a Tar Heel – are much bigger than others.  Also hitting that game-winning shot against Davidson was big, with an even bigger twist of irony.  But the biggest thrill that I really had, and I think that anybody who has ever played for the Tar Heels would agree, is the camaraderie that comes from being there and being a part of the team.  The relationships that get built because of being a Tar Heel is unlike anything that I’ve ever experienced.  It’s a big thrill to be a part of the tradition that is North Carolina.  It means a whole lot.  I think it’s more important than any one game that we may have played, or any one truly great moment that can be pointed to historically.

 

You were a two-time All-American.  What was it like to be recognized as one of top players in college basketball?

That’s an honor that you can’t foresee.  All you can do is go out there and to play.  My thing was that I always tried to do the best that I could do, and that I tried to let everything flow and then fall into place.  I played to gain the respect of the other players on the court, and I feel proud knowing that I can look back, knowing that I played as hard as I possibly could.  I may not have always played as well as I could have, but I always played hard and I did the best that I could at that moment.  To be recognized as one of the nation’s top players for that is a real thrill.  You can’t want anything more.  The most important thing is that those North Carolina teams were winning teams.  That really made it worthwhile.  It meant that my play was doing something productive, and that it was moving the team forward in terms of winning.  It was proof that I wasn’t playing selfishly.  I was a part of a winning formula, and part of what started that winning tradition at North Carolina.

 

You were also a member of the 1968 men’s Olympic basketball team.

That 1968 Olympic team was really the last team to win the gold medal in consecutive order.  The ’72 team lost to Russia.  So in hindsight that team becomes even more special.  I was eighteen at the time, so it was great to be a part of the Olympic team as an eighteen year-old player.  It’s a thrill and an honor that becomes bigger through the years, especially because the television coverage has turned it into such a huge spectacle.  Those things that we earned then have become magnified in terms of significance in today’s society.  It’s a thrill to be an Olympic gold medal winner.  It’s a thrill to be an NBA champion as a member of the Boston Celtics.  It’s a thrill to be a part of the Tar Heel tradition.  I think I had the best of all worlds when it comes to basketball.  I don’t think I can be a person who can moan and groan about my basketball career and who I played for, and the traditions of the teams for whom I played.  And I can’t complain about who I played with, and what we accomplished.  I think it was a blessing.  I have nothing but great respect and honor for my college, Olympic and professional affiliations.  I was lucky in the way that my basketball career evolved.

 

You were drafted by Virginia Squires of the ABA and the Boston Celtics of the NBA.  What factors led you to sign with the fledgling ABA?

At that time I think it had to do with loyalty.  That team was in Washington, and was then known as the Washington Caps.  The next season the team would move to Norfolk, and become known as the Squires.  One of the players on the team was Larry Brown, who was the coach at North Carolina who recruited me.  Basically, it was another recruiting process.  I had familiarity with Larry.  And I was drafted by the Boston Celtics only after I had signed to play basketball for the Virginia Squires.  I don’t think, if I had only intended to play ball in the NBA, that I would have been drafted by the Boston Celtics.  That was the same year that they drafted Dave Cowens.  The Celtics drafted me with the fourth pick in the seventh round, which wouldn’t have been the case had there only been one league.  I would have gone much earlier, in the first round, and the Celtics would probably have had to choose between Dave and myself.  The team needed a big man – Bill Russell had just retired, and Red Auerbach was in a rebuilding mode.  So I think the only way the Celtics would have had the chance to draft me was by me signing with the Virginia Squires.  It was good fortune all the way around.  I ended up in the ABA because of my familiarity with Larry Brown, and the hope that the Squires would emerge very soon.

 

Tell me about your agent, Al Ross.

People called him ‘The Pirate,’ although I’m not sure how he got that nickname.  Al Ross was known as the lawyer who could get you from one league to the other – he was the one who got Spencer Haywood out of the ABA and onto the roster in Seattle – and since I was ready to leave the ABA, my association with him grew out of that.  Al had the wherewithal and the legal staff to make the transition happen, and he had the relationships with the NBA owners who could pass the league rules regarding player movement.  My opportunity to jump leagues arose when the Squires didn’t pay my bonus when it was due, basically breaching the contract.  Al Ross worked his magic, and I ended up in Phoenix.

 

Please tell me about your ABA experience.

My ABA experience was a good one.  At the time, the NBA was a more sophisticated league.  There was more structure.  On the court, you had the pick-and-roll.  You had Oscar Robertson.  You had Wilt Chamberlain.  It was more of a fundamental league.  The ABA was more of a speed league, with a lot of running.  In fact, the ABA is what the NBA is today.  It was really ahead of its time.  It had the open lane, the three-point shot, the open court – things the NBA later incorporated into its rule book.  In the ABA, you had basketball played without the big man.  That was really the biggest difference.  You played a game that was not dominated by the big man.  Since the inception of the NBA, the league had been primarily dominated by the big men in the post.  You had George Mikan, Bill Russell, Wilt.  The ABA, on the other  hand, was a league dominated by the swiftness of the guards and wing players.  That was the style that I played in the ABA, and later – especially in the 1980s with those great Celtics and Lakers teams – it was a style adopted by the NBA.

 

Julius Erving was your teammate that second season.  Please tell me a little about Dr. J.

The first time I saw Julius play was when the team had rookie camp in Hampton, Virginia.  At that time you could tell that he was something special.  Julius had a ferocity for the game from the very beginning.  His style was one of grace and ferocity, and you could see that he was going to be a great ballplayer.  There was never any doubt.  With guys like that, you can tell just by the way they play.  That first time I saw Julius there was no doubt that he was a superstar.  He carried himself like that from Day One.

 

You jumped to the NBA in 1972, and played three All-Star seasons for the Phoenix Suns.  Please tell me about this period in your basketball career.

Jerry Colangelo was the general manger at that time.  He and Al Ross worked that deal.  It was a great experience.  Playing in the NBA was everything that I thought it would be, and everything I wanted my basketball career to be about.  I enjoyed playing in the NBA.  Phoenix was a great place to play, but we didn’t have the talent to compete with players like Jerry West, Wilt Chamberlain, Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, and Dave DeBusschere.  These players were stars on very strong teams.  We just didn’t have the personnel to win on a consistent basis, at least as consistently as I would have liked.  And I think management felt the same way.  We were in a division where 42 or 43 wins put you in third or fourth place, and at that time only two teams from each division went to the playoffs.  That got us nowhere.  So that was probably the most disheartening thing.

Still, I have no complaints as far as getting an opportunity to play in the NBA.  It was a big thrill for me.  I was able to compete against all of those great players that I just mentioned, and that allowed me to measure myself against them on a daily basis.  That was the ultimate basketball phenom.  It was all that I could have wished for and more.  But again, my whole basketball career had been defined by winning, and I wasn’t used to coming up short.  It was a humbling experience.  I think it made me more appreciative of the winning.

 

May 23, 1975: Boston trades Paul Westphal and two picks for Charlie Scott.

I remember that date well – I was on my way to Brazil.  In fact, I was standing in line and Paul Westphal was standing right in front of me.  Talk about irony.  We were getting ready to catch a flight, and Larry Fleischer asked me if I had heard the news.  I said, ‘What news?’  He said, ‘You were traded to Boston for him.’  And then he pointed to Paul.  I thought it was a joke.  I said, jokingly, ‘Nah, you know that’s not true.  Phoenix got more than that for me.’

I was always a Celtics fan, and I had always wanted to play for them.  When I went to Lefty Driesell’s camp as a junior in high school, Red Auerbach was one of the guest speakers.  The Celtics played an exhibition game in Charlotte when I was in high school, and my coach took me to the game.  I got to meet the great Sam Jones.  I’ve always loved winning, and the Celtics were an organization that understood how to win.  So being traded to Boston was a thrill.  And like I said, I’m very fortunate when it comes to my basketball pedigree.  Going to Boston was the icing on the cake.  I never worried about fitting in.  I never worried about anything.  I knew that it was going to be a great circumstance, and that it was going to be a positive situation.  I couldn’t wait.

 

Let’s talk about the 1976 NBA Finals.  Game 5 was a classic.  In Game 6, you were dominant with 25 points, 11 rebounds, five steals and three assists.

I’m going to tell you the truth – I told [Boston Globe journalist] Bob Ryan this, and you can ask anybody who was on that team and they’ll tell you the same thing:  We never worried about Phoenix beating us.  We never thought that Phoenix could win that series.  That whole year, Phoenix had never beaten us.  The only thing that made the games tight at that time, is the fact that writers Bob Ryan and Mike Lupica kept writing in the papers about how the Boston Celtics were bullying up on the poor Phoenix Suns.  As a result, that triple-overtime game was a very closely called game, and that’s’ the only thing that made that game tight. One thing people forget about that game is that we were up by twenty-five points at one time. Then, the next thing we knew, the score was tied.  That was our fault – our own nonchalance. Give the Suns credit; they came back, things turned around, and they were able to stay in the game and force it into overtime. But did we ever think we were going to lose to the Phoenix Suns?  Never in our wildest dreams did we think they had the opportunity to beat us.

 

What made you so sure that the Suns couldn’t beat you?

We looked at the player matchups, and we saw no position where we would be outplayed.  That’s how you approach it in the playoffs.  You ask yourself, ‘Okay, where is it that you’re going to be beat?’  That’s what we did:  Paul Westphal versus Jo Jo White?  Jo Jo is going to win that.  Me and Ricky Sobers or whoever they’ve got?  I’m going to win that.  Paul Silas and Garfield Heard?  Paul is gonna win that.  John Havlicek and whoever they put on that other end?  John is gonna win that.  And then we’ve Dave Cowens in the middle, so tell me where the Phoenix Suns had an advantage over us.  That’s how we looked at the game, and the series.  So even though that game was such a great game, we, as a team, didn’t see any way for the Phoenix Suns to beat us.

 

Were there any teams that gave you pause that year?

To be honest, the team that probably would have been our toughest opponent would have been the San Francisco Warriors.  They were the team that had won the title the year before.  They lost to Phoenix in seven games.  That was the Rick Barry team – they had beaten Washington the year before.  And they had the best record in the Western Conference at that time.  Had we played them in the Finals, I’m convinced the outcome would have been the same.

 

Game 6 was played on a Sunday in Phoenix.

It was played at nine o’clock in the morning.  Championship game.  CBS had a golf tournament that they were committed to televising that afternoon, and because CBS hadn’t scheduled that right, we had to go out and play in Phoenix on a Sunday morning.  I’ll never forget it; we had a five o’clock wake-up call for a championship game.  You have to remember, at nine o’clock in Phoenix, it was noon on the east coast. The start time was a small price to play – like I’ve said, I don’t have much bitching to do when it comes to my basketball career.  Things worked out very well for me.  If I had my choice, I would have gone to North Carolina.  I did that.  I would have played for the Boston Celtics and won a world championship.  I did that.  I feel very fortunate to have things play out the way they did.

 

Your time in Boston was brief, but we have a saying:  “Once a Celtic, always a Celtic.”  What was it like for you to play for this proud franchise?

Once a Celtic, always a Celtic – Red always said that o me, and I believe it wholeheartedly.  Even when I was traded, Red called me, talked to me, and explained the reasons behind the trade.  He also tried to accommodate me and my needs.  As a player, you can’t ask for anything more under those circumstances.  It was short – I wish it could have been longer – but fate has its reasons.  My departure enabled the team to get another draft choice, which ended up helping them get Larry Bird.  So all of those things have fitting reward to them.  It was short, but college was only four years and it will forever hold a special place of significance in my heart.  The same can be said about my time spent with the Boston Celtics.  I’ll always consider myself a Celtic.

Everyone, it seems, has a favorite Red Auerbach story.

One time we had just lost to the Portland Trailblazers on national TV.  We had Sidney Wicks on our team.  Red had just signed Sidney to a multi-year contract, and Sidney really wasn’t the type of player that Red was used to having.  Not long after that game Red came to practice, and he was giving us a little shakedown on what he thought about our performance, and about what he thought about players giving ‘false hustle.’  And he looked Sidney straight in the eye as he was talking to all of us, and he said, ‘Some of you guys think that you’ve got it on me because you’ve got long-term contracts, but I’ll tell you what; I wish you bad luck for the rest of your life.’  And you know how Red really said it – he said it the nicest way possible, a smile on his face, but deep down you knew he meant it [laughs].

All Red wanted was your very best as a ballplayer.  If you gave that to him, then he never had a problem with you.  He and I never had an argument.  He never had to bitch about me.  I worked hard and did my best, and that’s what he expected.  He appreciated my effort.  And that’s all you ever want from someone, recognition and appreciation.  Red, to me, was the master of understanding what every individual needed in order to become a better player.  He’ll tell you that Walter Brown was the architect of the Celtic Dynasty.  I never had the pleasure of meeting Walter Brown, but in my heart I know Red to be the architect.

 

Cedric Maxwell was a rookie during your last season with the Celtics.

Cornbread!  I’ll tell you what – that was magic upon magic.  Cedric was all arms and legs his rookie year.  He learned how to put all of that together, and some way it was able to come out as some type of fluidity [laughs].  Cedric is a great guy – he was a great guy as a rookie, but he was all arms and legs then [laughs]!

With Cedric, I think he had to figure out how to fit his talent into what the Celtics were trying to do.  Fit those talents into the Celtics style.  And when he did that, then those arms and legs became very much a weapon.  He had to develop that little jump-hook, and he had to learn how to move without the ball.  He wasn’t used to doing those things in college.  Again, Red put together the perfect team.  When you look at Larry, Cedric, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish, it was perfect foursome.

 

Of your time spent with the Boston Celtics, do you have a fond memory or an amusing story that stands out most?

Most of the time, the things that are amusing are the things that you can’t talk about [laughs].  That’s the case with my time with the Boston Celtics.  You know, we shared a lot of things together as a team, and a lot of things will just have to stay that way [laughs].

I just enjoyed my time there.  One of my best friends was Jo Jo.  He and his wife Debbie got together with me and my wife as much as possible, so the friendships were the fun things.  I’ve been lucky to go from one family tradition in college to another in the pros.  I remember Howie [McHugh], who used to be the team’s publicity guy.  I remember Randy, who used to be the equipment guy.  Randy was always there for us.  Those are the people that the average fan forgets about, but those are the people that made the Boston Celtics a family.  Those are the things that I remember.

You never forget the sound of the Boston Garden late in a two-point game, especially against Philadelphia, or the Lakers, or against New York.  Those are the times that all made it fun and worthwhile.  And to be on the Celtics side makes it even greater.

 

Final Question:  If you could offer one piece of advice on life to others, what would that be?

That’s hard.  I got a lot of advice from a lot of people.  But I think, above all else, that a person should take responsibility, regardless of failure or success.  I think that when you learn to accept failure, you learn how to appreciate success.  I also think the biggest problem we have now, is that people don’t accept responsibility when something goes wrong – it’s always someone else’s fault.