The Dave Cowens Interview
By: Michael D. McClellan | The player and the teams he plays on are a paradox, unfairly dismissed as a bridge between the two greatest eras in franchise history, and alternately lionized for one triumphant moment, a contest so thrilling that the league’s marketing apparatus dubs Game 5 of the 1976 NBA Finals “The Greatest Game Ever Played.” To pigeonhole Dave Cowens and the 1970s Boston Celtics is to diss the very essence of the man who plays every possession as if it is his last. Cowens is a full throttle post player with no off switch, which is a damned good thing, given that he follows the greatest deal closer the game has ever known.
“No one could replace Bill Russell,” Cowens says quickly. “All I could do was come in, be me, and hope that it was enough.”
Cowens has a point. All Russell achieves before him is win eleven NBA championships in thirteen seasons, to go along with two NCAA titles and an Olympic gold medal. The undersized Cowens, by contrast, plays his collegiate basketball at Florida State and wins nothing. How can he expect to fill the shoes of the great Bill Russell? How can he ever hope to win over a Boston Garden faithful spoiled by all that winning?
The answer lies in Cowens’ competitive drive. As a 6-foot-6 senior at Newport (KY) Catholic High School, Cowens leads Newport to a 29-3 record while averaging 13 points and 20 rebounds. When Adolph Rupp shows only lukewarm interest Cowens, he spurns his home state Kentucky Wildcats and signs with Florida State instead. The Seminoles win eleven games during Cowens’ sophomore season, improve to 18-8 a year later, and finish 23-3 during his senior year. He pulls down 1,340 rebounds during his three seasons of varsity basketball, and is named to The Sporting News All-America Second Team in 1970.
The 1970 NBA Draft is long on talent, and future stars Bob Lanier, Rudy Tomjanovich, and “Pistol” Pete Maravich go 1-2-3. Red Auerbach passes on New Mexico State center Sam Lacey, a 6-foot-10, slick-passing shot blocker who leads the Aggies to the 1970 Final Four, and instead selects the undersized center with the outsized heart and nonstop motor.
“Everybody, including me, thought Red was taking Lacey. It was a classic Red Auerbach smokescreen.”
Cowens arrives in town unafraid of the long shadow cast by Russell and the other Ghosts of Celtics Past. The rookie averages 17.0 points and 15.4 rebounds, quickly earning the respect of holdovers like Satch Sanders and John Havlicek, while going on to share Rookie of the Year honors with Portland’s Geoff Petrie.
With Cowens serving as the catalyst, the Celtics improve from 33-48 to 44-38. He makes up for any height disadvantage with physicality. It surprises no one that Cowens leads the league in fouls as a rookie.
“I led the team in fouls for three years,” he says with a laugh. “I had the mentality that I could guard anybody. I got into a little foul trouble as a result.”
Cowens’ averages 18.8 points during his second season in the league, as the new-look Celtics finish first in the Atlantic Division with a 56-26 record and reach the Eastern Conference Finals. A year later, the Celtics win a franchise record 68 games. Cowens pulls off a rare double, winning the 1973 All-Star Game MVP Award and the 1972-73 NBA’s Most Valuable Player Award, joining legends Bill Russell and Bob Cousy as the only Celtics so honored in the same season. Both honors, however, are rendered mute when the team suffers a heartbreaking Game 7 loss to the Knicks in the Eastern Conference Finals.
The Celtics win 56 games during the 1973-74 regular season and finally get past the Knicks in the playoffs. Awaiting them in the Finals are the Milwaukee Bucks, who boast an aging star in Oscar Robertson and a young phenom in Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The series goes seven games, with the Celtics winning the 1974 NBA Championship on Milwaukee’s home floor.
A year later, the 1974-75 Boston Celtics win 60 games and capture another Atlantic Division crown. Cowens misses 15 games with a broken foot but averages team-highs in points (20.4) and rebounds (14.7), finishing second to Wes Unseld for the rebounding title. Unseld and the Washington Bullets snuff out a Celtics repeat, dropping them 4-2 in the Eastern Conference Finals.
Faced with the offseason threat of losing Paul Westphal to free agency, Auerbach trades the promising young guard to the Phoenix Suns for Charlie Scott, who lands in Boston nearly six seasons after Auerbach drafts him out of North Carolina. The added scoring punch helps; with Havlicek on the backside of his brilliant career, Scott averages 17.6 points and helps Boston capture a fifth consecutive Atlantic Division crown. The Celtics reach the 1976 NBA Finals for the second time in three seasons, beating the Phoenix Suns in that triple-overtime thriller on the Boston Garden parquet. One game later, the Cowens and the Celtics are world champs for the second time in three years.
The ’76 title represents a high-water mark for the 1970s Celtics. Paul Silas is sent packing during the off-season, a move met with anger and disappointment by Cowens, who comes to rely on the power forward’s gritty board work. And then, just eight games into the 1976-77 season, Cowens walks into Auerbach’s office and drops a bombshell, requesting a leave of absence from the team. He returns home to his family farm in Kentucky and sells Scotch Pine trees.
Cowens’ temporary “retirement” lasts nearly thirty games. The Celtics finish second in the Atlantic Division before falling to the Philadelphia 76ers in the Eastern Conference Finals.
The Celtics bottom out during the 1978-79 season, a dysfunctional descent into the abyss. The ugliness of that 29-win season is mercifully short-lived, as Larry Bird joins the Celtics a season later and jump starts the Big Three Era. The Celtics win 61 games in what turns out to be Cowens’ last season with the team. He retires again, only to be coaxed back onto the court two years later by former teammate Don Nelson, who is now the head coach in Milwaukee.
“It didn’t take me long to realize it was time to go,” Cowens says. “The fire wasn’t there. I didn’t have the same intensity.”
Dave Cowens walks away for good, his legacy in Boston firmly wedged between Bill Russell and Larry Bird, his accomplishments unfairly obscured by the two greatest players in franchise history.
“There are worse things than getting lost in the conversation of the greatest Celtics every,” Cowens says quickly. “I came into the league my own man, and I played the game the only way I knew how. At the end of the day, I gave it everything I had. I hope that was enough.”
You were born on October 25, 1948 in Newport, KY. Please tell me a little about your childhood in Newport, and also about your basketball career at Newport Central Catholic High School.
I came from a large family with four brothers and one sister. We were spread out, age-wise – the youngest two weren’t born until my teens – so the oldest of us had a lot of responsibility around the house. There were chores to do, siblings to care for, and homework assignments to finish. It was busy, but really no different than any other family situation. You were expected to step up and do your part.
Central Catholic was an all-boys high school, and heavy on sports. I ran track and field for four years, played freshman football, and swam as a sophomore. I grew five inches between my sophomore and junior years, and that’s when my basketball career really took off. We made the state tournament during my senior season, and by then I’d started getting a lot of attention from college recruiters.
Your father wanted to you stay in Kentucky, but you ultimately chose FSU. Did you ever regret your decision play outside of the state?
Not really. By graduation I wanted to be away from home, and to experience something altogether new. I looked at the map and knew that Florida was nice for a lot of different reasons. When you go to an all-boys high school, there comes a point when you realize you’re missing out on a lot. At Florida State, the ratio was something like 4-to-1 in favor of the girls, so that definitely had a certain amount of appeal to me – but when I got there I still had a hard time getting dates [laughs]. I had no money and wasn’t a big man on campus, so the girls really showed no interest.
My parents understood my decision, but it wasn’t easy on either of them. They had watched all of us play sports growing up, were members of the boosters club, and were at all of our high school games regardless of where they were being played. They were also very active in the school, so they would have preferred to have had me closer to home. That way they could have seen me play more, taken trips to the road games, things like that.
I wanted to play basketball. I didn’t’ want to sit on the bench and watch the action. My father wanted me to play at UK, but I didn’t know how I’d measure up. Florida State had no basketball tradition, and it was an independent school at the time. There was no SEC conference and no tournament to go along with it. The program was also on probation, but those things really didn’t matter to me at the time. I just wanted to play as much as possible, and as soon as possible.
Your coach at Florida State was Hugh Durham, who is one of just 11 Division I coaches to lead two different schools to the NCAA Final Four (Florida State, 1972 & Georgia, 1983). Please tell me a little about Mr. Durham.
Hugh is the man who sold me on Florida State University. If it hadn’t been for him I’m not sure I would have gone to school there. He worked my tail off and made me a better player, and he made me prove to him that I could perform on the basketball court.
We both share Kentucky roots – Hugh is from Louisville, where he was a triple sport star in high school. He played basketball at Florida State in the 1950s, got his masters from the school and began his coaching career there as an assistant coach to Bud Kennedy. Hugh became the head coach in 1966, right when I was looking at colleges, and he really impressed me with what he wanted to do down there. He wanted to play an up-tempo style, and he wanted to fast break at every opportunity. I liked the idea of pushing the basketball. Attacking, that was my style. I felt like my talents could be used to their fullest in his system, and that’s what made the Florida State program so appealing.
You just have to look at the FSU record book to know that Hugh was one heck of a player, and he’s an even better coach. He took FSU to the Final Four, and then he did it again with the University of Georgia. He won more games at Georgia than any other coach. He has the best winning percentage of any coach in the history of FSU. I can’t say enough about Hugh Durham.
You were selected by the Celtics with the fourth overall pick of the 1970 NBA Draft. Were you aware that Bob Cousy and the Cincinnati Royals wanted you with the fifth pick?
Yes. As a senior in college I had an idea that the Royals were interested. They needed a big man, and there was some early talk that it was going to either be me or Sam Lacey. It was all speculation, just like it is today, but I did have a pretty good idea both teams were looking at me. Prior to my senior year I was asked to fill out questionnaires, which were used as part of the scouting process. So you knew what teams were interested based on who asked you to fill one out. But you have to remember that the draft was much different back then – you didn’t have the hoopla surrounding it like you do today. It wasn’t covered around the clock, and it wasn’t a made-for-TV production like you have now. The ABA and the NBA were both competing for the same talent, which meant you had this competition between the leagues helping to drive up player salaries. That was one thing we had working in our favor.
All the talk coming out of Boston had Red selecting Sam Lacey with the fourth pick. Bob had the fifth pick, and right up until the night before it looked like Lacey to the Celtics. That was Red’s bluff all along. He saw me play during my senior season and left the game at halftime to throw everybody off. He didn’t want anyone to think he was interested. That was classic Red.
Former Celtic great Frank Ramsey negotiated his first contract in the dugout at Fenway Park. What was it like to talk contract with Red?
Back then you had the deal pretty much worked out, because the NBA wanted to make sure that the ABA didn’t raid the top talent. The team assumed the deal, the salary was agreed upon, and the contract got done. Perks were negotiable – car stipends, things like that.
Agents typically took a 10% cut off the top, but I was able to get an agreement in place for 5%. Norm Blass, a New York-based attorney, took care of everything for me and negotiated the points of the contract. So it wasn’t like in the days when Frank played. Back then you didn’t have agents and there was no competition for your services. You look at a player like Bob Pettit, who was the league MVP in 1956 and 1959, and his highest annual salary was less than what I made during my rookie year. The older players held down other jobs after the season was over, and a lot of them ran basketball camps to help supplement their income. My camp was started thirty-two years ago for the very same reason. Players today don’t have to do that. They’re millionaires before they ever play a single minute in the NBA.
You were co-winner of the Rookie of the Year award, averaging 17.0 points and 15.4 rebounds. Were you surprised at how quickly you became an impact player in the NBA?
I honestly didn’t know what to expect. I’d played up-tempo in high school and college, and my conditioning was at a very high level. I was used to pushing through various thresholds of pain and fatigue, even when other players were having trouble. The league at that time suited my style perfectly. When you watch an NBA game today, you’re lucky to see either team break 100 points. It’s become a half court game. When we played it was nothing to see a 130-128 score – today that’s unheard of. That gets back to the up-tempo style of NBA basketball when I played. There was much more ball movement – isolation plays just didn’t exist the way they do today – and there was much quicker ball movement. The pace was just so much different. You’d cross mid-court, there would be one or two passes, and then the shot would go up. The strategy of running the play clock down to zero wasn’t in vogue. Neither were the defensive schemes that you see now. We played defense back then, but the league wasn’t as diluted as it is now. You had better shooters, and players who were better at the fundamentals. Part of the problem today has been league expansion and the influx of high school players.
What was it like following the Bill Russell as the Celtics’ next great center?
I just went into it with everything I had. I played hard every night, gave maximum effort and tried to do my best. You can’t replace a Bill Russell.
As a rookie, you led the league in fouls. Was this the result of your incredible intensity or an example of negative rookie calls, and did Satch Sanders ever razz you about breaking his then-team record of fouls in a season?
I led the team in fouls for three years [laughs]. I had the mentality that I could guard anybody, and there were times when I’d be playing defense well beyond the lane. When I played, there were scoring big men on almost every team and it was always a challenge to stop them. Bob Lanier, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem, Bob Bellamy, Willis Reed – every night it was a completely different style, a different matchup, but all of these guys could score. That was the one constant.
The Celtics played the Los Angeles Lakers three times during their record-setting 33-game winning streak during the 1971-72 season.
The Lakers had a heck of a team for three or four years during that period. They had great players at almost every position, but they also had great depth. That was the big difference between them and everyone else. They kept the pressure on their opponents in every game that season, and they were practically unbeatable. To win 69 games and lose only 13 – and to win thirty-three in a row – is a testament to the talent on that team. Wilt, Gail and Jerry are all in the Hall of Fame, and these are still three of the best ever at their positions.
That team was coached by former Celtic great Bill Sharman. Did you know Bill?
Bill Sharman is a nice man, a true gentleman. I had a chance to play in a pickup game with him when he coached the LA Stars of the ABA. He was the perfect coach for the 1971-72 Lakers. He treated them like veterans, and they responded by playing like champions.
Tell me about playing against Wilt Chamberlain.
Wilt was one of the most dominant players in NBA history. People talk about Shaq being an unstoppable force, but Wilt during that era was even more so. He was Rookie of the Year, a four-time league MVP, a Finals MVP, a two-time NBA champion – and that doesn’t even touch his 100 point game or his 50 point scoring average in the early sixties.
What do you remember about Gail Goodrich?
Gail played for Coach Wooden at UCLA, and helped the Bruins win their first two NCAA championships. He was left-handed, and he had a great shooting touch. A lot of people thought he was too small to play NBA basketball, but he was as tough as anybody on their team.
How about Jerry West?
Jerry was the best pure shooter in the game. He scored all those points during the regular season, but he was even better during the playoffs. When you have players like these on your team, and you have great depth, then you’re going to be hard to beat. The Lakers were like that during the 1971-72 season.
The Celtics acquired Paul Silas from the Phoenix Suns prior to the 1972-73 season. Please tell me about Paul, and what he meant to the team.
Paul complemented me very well. He liked playing on the inside, whereas I liked playing both inside and out. He was a veteran who knew how to play the game. He gave me the comfort level I needed to stray away from the basket. He wasn’t big, but he was the best rebounder in the league. He’s a prime example of size not being the most important factor when it comes to rebounding the basketball. Skill level, positioning, knowing how to play the game – these things are more important. It takes a special mentality to be a great rebounder, and Paul had that.
The Celtics won a franchise record 68 games during the 1972-73 season. However, the team suffered a heartbreaking Game 7 loss to the Knicks in the Eastern Conference Finals.
The Knicks had the second best team in the NBA that season. There wasn’t anyone in the West that could contend, so we know that whoever won the series would end up winning it all. That’s the way both teams looked at it. We all felt the Eastern Conference Finals was for the championship. We lost Havlicek for that series to a shoulder injury, and that really caused problems early on. We fell behind 3-1 in that series before turning it around and forcing a Game 7 back in Boston. We were confident going in – we had Havlicek back, and he started – but we ran out of gas. We spent everything just clawing back to even the series at 3-3, and we didn’t shoot the ball well. Even though we didn’t win, we felt we had a great team. We came within one win of matching the ’71-72 Lakers for best season ever, and we felt just as good as that team. But John’s injury hurt, no question about that. It was a tough series to lose.
What one characteristic most personifies the way you played the game?
Enthusiasm. I was very much a Dennis the Menace on the court. My attitude was to play all out, and to just let it rip. I was always running. I stayed in constant motion, running fast and trying to wear my opponent down. I viewed my job as an individual contest within a team contest, and the object was to outwork everyone that I was matched up against. When the ball went up I wanted to be the one coming down with it.
Take me back to the ‘70s. What was the style of basketball like back then?
There was a much more crowd-pleasing brand of basketball being played. The ABA had the great flair, and the NBA had the old school franchises. You had players like Tiny Archibald and Bob McAdoo. You had Rick Barry, Bobby Jones, David Thompson, Dr. J, Chet Walker, Dan Issel, Bob “Butterbean” Love. You had Rudy Tomjanovich, who was one of the greatest shooters to ever play the game. It was a great era, but it gets overlooked because of the players who came along during the ‘80s – the Birds, the Magics, the Jordans.
I’m not a fan of the three-point play, which has become such a big deal today. The big men don’t get the touches that they got when I played, and a lot of it has to do with the three-pointer. Today you see so much isolation. There was much more ball movement back then, which made it more fun to watch.
By 1973 you were the NBA All-Star Game MVP and the league’s Most Valuable Player.
It was an honor to be voted the league’s best, because the players and coaches voted for the MVP during that time. It meant something to have my peers recognize my effort. I was never out to impress some guy who has never played the game. I shared the Rookie of the Year award with Geoff Petrie – it was a media thing, so it didn’t mean as much to me as winning the MVP award. Back then the award wasn’t such a big deal – at least not like it is today. When you look at a picture of me receiving the award, you can see that the ball is made out of wrapping tape. You wouldn’t see that today – it’s much more of a production, and it means much more in terms of money.
Being named MVP probably had a lot to do with our winning 68 games that year. We only lost fourteen games, so you figure somebody on the team had to get it. John [Havlicek] had to be considered, because he had such a great season and he was our go-to guy on offense.
In Game 7 of the 1974 NBA Finals, head coach Tommy Heinsohn changed his strategy against Milwaukee center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Please take me back to that game, and your role in slowing down the Bucks’ star.
Up until that point I’d played four years in the NBA with zero help on Kareem. It was a case where you had to suck it up, and on many occasions he made me feel like anything but an MVP. My goal was always to stay close statistically – if he scored 35 then I wanted to at least score twenty, so that there was only a fifteen point differential. Today Shaq can go off for 40 and hold his opponent to four, which is a huge amount to make up.
Tommy decided to double up on Kareem in that game, and it came as a real surprise to the Bucks. We’d never practiced this scheme, but our team was smart enough to pull it off. We wanted to slow down the Bucks’ offense, and make players like Cornell Warner and Curtis Perry beat us. We wanted them to shoot, which was something that they weren’t used to doing. We also wanted to keep the ball out of Oscar Robertson’s hands and make other players handle it. Don Chaney’s sole focus in that game was to dog Oscar. He kept the pressure on him, took a lot of time off the clock, and forced the Bucks into rushing their offensive sets. The plan worked perfectly. We won Game 7 on the road, 102-87, and brought home the championship.
Is it true that you slept on a park bench in Boston Common following that ’74 championship against the Bucks?
We won the championship on May 12th, which was Mother’s Day. It was an afternoon game, so we flew back to Boston and headed straight for the big celebrations around town. My brother was with me – we spent the evening walking through the masses of people, and then around 8PM we jumped in his car and went home. I was too hyped to sleep, so I drove back into Boston, stayed out late and visited with friends around town – we drank champagne, celebrated the big win, had a great time. It was either very late or very early, depending on how you looked at it, and I was dead tired from all the excitement. I didn’t want to take a chance on driving, so when I saw the bench I decided to catch some Z’s. When I woke up on Monday morning I learned that there was a parade being organized. That’s where I went.
The Celtics won the 1976 NBA Championship, defeating the Phoenix Suns in a series most noted for that triple-overtime thriller on the Boston Garden parquet.
At times it seems as if that’s the only game anyone has ever watched me play in – that and the Milwaukee game, when I dove on the floor [laughs]. Obviously, that is the one game that everyone remembers. It was a crazy game – we got up big and then let it slip. It was a classic coaching chess match – the bench played a huge role. Glenn McDonald was incredibly important, and that series is what he is best remembered for. He came into the game and played loose. He always kept himself ready to play.
At the end of the second overtime we thought it was over. All we wanted to do was get the heck out of there, and that’s what we did. We all got off the floor. Bob Ryan later told me that Havlicek had his shoes off, and that someone else had their ankle-tape cut off. There was pandemonium going on. I saw the game on film a few years ago, and Dennis Awtrey and Ricky Sobers were punching people. Then to get everyone off the floor and Gar Heard comes back and hits that shot to send it into triple overtime. That is what was so amazing about the game, to have so many things like that happen.
Please tell me about the late Johnny Most, and what he meant to the Boston Celtics.
Johnny was the team’s true Sixth Man. Everybody knew him – he was a mainstay of the club, as much a part of it in some respects as Red. He had that unique voice. It was a gift. How he spoke, the things he said…he was the Boston Celtics’ biggest proponent.. He was also a major league homer, just like Chick Hearn was with the Lakers, and you needed that. He had one of the most famous voices in sports.
Eight games into the 1976-77 season you temporarily retired from the Boston Celtics. How did Red handle this situation?
He didn’t try to change my mind or stand in my way. He said that he wanted me to remain on the team, but that he understood my reasons and respected my decision.
Had you never played basketball and the world had never heard of Dave Cowens, what would you have liked to have done with your life?
I would have probably entered the service, or done something in construction.
Final Question: If you could offer one piece of advice on life to others, what would that be?
Maintain humility. Do good for others. Rise above adversity. Compete and achieve.
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