The Frank Ramsey Interview
Written By: Michael D. McClellan | Frank Ramsey, the NBA’s first great Sixth Man, is as likeable and as easygoing as they come, but he has an image problem; in the December 9, 1963 issue of Sports Illustrated, Ramsey writes a first-person tell-all that pulls the curtain back on what later becomes known as flopping. Ramsey isn’t the first to flop, and he certainly isn’t the last—flopping becomes such a blight that in 1997 the league introduces a four-foot dotted line area around the center of the basket, and in 2012 starts fining players for the con—but the SI cover story makes him the first player to talk publicly about it: “Drawing fouls chiefly requires the ability to provide good, heartwarming drama and to direct it to the right audience. I never forget where the referees are when I go into an act.”
The reaction to Ramsey’s cover story, Smart Moves by a Master of Deception, is fast and furious. Everyone, it seems, is throwing shade: The New York Post calls him a flimflammer, NBA president Walter Kennedy sends him a letter of censure, and a Madison Square Garden crowd serenades him with cries of “Fake!”. While Ramsey’s rep takes a hit with the SI piece, the 6-foot-3 swingman continues to provide instant offense coming off the bench, helping the Celtics win seven NBA titles in his nine seasons with the team. Before Ramsey, the “Sixth Man” role doesn’t exist. Today, the league hands out the prestigious NBA Sixth Man of the Year Award, with a lineage that includes Celtics greats Kevin McHale and Bill Walton.
Flimflammery aside, it’s Ramsey’s contributions off the bench that deserve attention. His career 13.4 points-per-game average is hardly eye-popping stuff, but he plays the game in a different era, decades before the introduction of the three-point line. He’s also known as a clutch shooter with a knack for peaking at the right time, producing several dominant runs that help the Celtics win numerous titles. From 1957–1961, Ramsey averages 17.1 points and 6.4 rebounds during the playoffs. His single-best postseason is in 1958–59, when he averages 23.2 points and grabs 6.2 rebounds while helping Boston win its second NBA title.
Ramsey grows up in Madisonville, Kentucky, living in his grandparent’s simple farmhouse. He shoots baskets in his spare time because there’s nothing else to do. He’s 10 years old when Japan launches its surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, and remembers it like it’s yesterday.
“There was an extra section in the newspaper devoted to the attack,” Ramsey says. “It happened on a Sunday, and we had an assembly in the school auditorium the next day. We sat and listened to President Roosevelt’s radio address to the nation, and that’s when we learned that the United States had officially declared war on Japan.”
Ramsey works the farm until he learns to drive, and then he makes what money he can working an assortment of odd jobs—painting houses, digging ditches, and cleaning the streets, to name a few. He also plays multiple sports at Madisonville High School, earning All-State honors in baseball and honorable mention in football. Basketball remains his first love.
Ramsey ends up playing college ball for the legendary Adolph Rupp at the University of Kentucky. It’s a perfect fit with the homegrown Kentucky standout playing for the Big Blue, fresh off of back-to-back national championships in 1948 and 1949.
“I recruited myself,” Ramsey says with a laugh. “When I was a senior in high school a friend of mine was a freshman on the UK football team, and he invited me to Lexington. I visited the campus and got a taste of Kentucky basketball. I met Cliff Barker and Ralph Beard, who were All-Americans and part of the Fabulous Five that won the national championship in ’49.”
For Ramsey, Rupp is larger than life.
“You meet someone like that and your mouth just falls open. Coach Rupp was a dictator, and I think all of the great coaches have that quality. Red had it, and so did Vince Lombardi. They demand so much out of you. And yet, Coach Rupp’s office was no bigger than an average-sized bathroom. There was space for two desks and that was about it. He took players from all over Kentucky and won with them, mostly small town kids who would do anything for him. Going to UK, I thought I would sit on the bench for three years and then start the last one, but luckily for me I played much sooner.”
As a sophomore, Ramsey helps lead the Wildcats to the 1951 NCAA Championship over Kansas State. He earns multiple All-American honors during his time in Lexington, but his sophomore season is torpedoed when Alex Groza and several other Wildcat players are caught up in a point shaving scandal with tentacles reaching all the way to the New York mafia.
“It was something that you just handled,” Ramsey says of the scandal that becomes the first de facto NCAA death penalty. “We were just normal students like everybody else. We continued to take classes as work towards earning our degrees. Cliff Hagan and Lou Tsioropoulos eventually earned their masters degrees. The three of us were close friends. We practiced together three days a week to get ready for the next season.”
Ramsey is equally nonchalant about that national championship.
“It was no big deal, really, not a lot of fanfare,” he says. “We were excited to win, but it wasn’t something that changed us. I went back home after school let out for the semester and ran the sawmill for my daddy.”
Ramsey, Hagan, and Tsioropoulos all graduate from Kentucky in 1953 and, as a result, become eligible for the NBA draft. All three players are selected by the Celtics—Ramsey in the first round, Hagan in the third, and Tsioropoulos in the seventh. All three also return to Kentucky for one more season despite graduating, and lead the Wildcats to a perfect 25–0 record and a #1 ranking in the Associated Press poll. Ramsey averages 19.6 points and is named a consensus second-team All-American. Because then-existing NCAA rules prohibit graduate students from participating in post-season play, the Wildcats decline a tournament invitation rather than jeopardize their perfect season.
“There was nothing to it,” Ramsey says of UK’s decision to refuse the bid. “Coach Rupp made the decision not to play in the tournament that year, and that was it.”
Red Auerbach famously drafts Ramsey as a junior eligible, a tactic he later employs when he drafts Larry Bird.
“It was a surprise move that caught a lot of people off guard. A lot of other teams weren’t happy about it, but that was classic Red, always one step ahead of everyone else.”
Ramsey quickly learns that Auerbach negotiates contracts in a way that can only be described as Auerbachian.
“I was in Boston with a group of college all-stars, and we were playing the Harlem Globetrotters at Fenway Park. Red stops me in the Red Sox dugout and begins talking contract, and within thirty minutes we’d come to an agreement. Because of my military responsibilities, I remember requesting a six month deferment as part of that original contract.”
At Kentucky, Ramsey joins the ROTC. Early in his NBA career, he serves a year in the military as a First Lieutenant with the US Army Military Police.
“Almost everybody at that time served in the military,” he says. “The one thing it taught me was discipline. I played that first season in Boston and then went into the service. I was still in the Army when we won our first championship in 1957. The Celtics played that seventh game against the St. Louis Hawks on a Sunday, and I was discharged from the Army on the following Tuesday.”
When Ramsey returns, he wastes little time making an impact off the bench.
“The credit goes to Red, because he was the one who set the rotation,” Ramsey says. “When I joined the team we had two all-star guards in Bob Cousy and Bill Sharman. They were tremendous players. It was Red who decided on the substitution pattern from game-to-game, so my job was to be ready to play. I watched the flow of the game and tried to keep myself prepared to contribute. A lot of times I would sub in for Tom Heinsohn. Before Bill arrived, we had plenty of scorers but no real defense. Bill Russell gave us the defense that we’d been lacking, so my job was easy—come off the bench and provide a scoring boost.
“All of the players that Red surrounded himself with had a great deal of class. That was what made the experience so special for me. Everyone wanted to win. It wasn’t about individual accomplishments, and I think a lot of that can be traced to how many of us served in the military. Jack Nichols, Jim Loscutoff, K. C., Sam, myself—all of us served, so we were used to discipline. Red was the general and we followed his orders.”
When Sharman and Cousy retire, Auerbach plugs in future Hall of Fame players Sam Jones and K. C. Jones, and the championships keep coming.
“I first met Sam at a basketball tournament in Columbia, South Carolina, while I was still in the Army,” Ramsey says. “Sam could hit that trademark bank shot from either side of the floor. He was willing to wait his turn to start. He was a tremendous basketball player and an outstanding individual.
“K. C. was a student of the game, which really helped him later when he was coaching Larry Bird and the rest of those Celtics during the ’80s. He had a tremendous amount of integrity. We lived close to each other during those days, and we would carpool to airport and solve all of the world’s problems along the way.”
The list of those coached by both Adolph Rupp and Red Auerbach is short indeed. Ramsey is one of the lucky few.
“Red’s training camps were very demanding,” he says. “Once the season started, the practices were short and intense. We really liked to scrimmage. Russell didn’t scrimmage as much as the rest of us, because he usually played the entire game. That’s forty-eight minutes of basketball, which places quite a demand on the body. Our favorite scrimmages were the big guys against the little guys. We would divide the teams up that way for two reasons: because all of the little guys thought that they could play the pivot, and all of the big guys thought that they could bring the ball up the court [laughs]. We would also scrimmage five-against-five, eliminating a player from each team along the way, until it was down to one-against-one. It was always a big competition to see who was named champion.”
Ramsey also remembers those annual barnstorming tours like they were yesterday.
“We used to tour Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts . . . heck, we even went as far up as Houlton, Maine,” Ramsey says. “A team always traveled with us on those exhibitions, so we’d play the same team at every stop. One year it was the Minneapolis Lakers. We traveled with the Cincinnati Royals the next year, and then Philadelphia the year after that. It’s funny what you remember. On one particular trip I remember listening to the World Series as it was being played. We’d get so tired of being around each other that there would always be a scuffle or two by the end of the trip. You could always count on that.”
There are other differences back then.
“Money, for one,” Ramsey says with a laugh. “We didn’t spend the summer working out, because we all had summer jobs. We had to, because we were paid only a small fraction of what the players make today. When the season was over we all went our separate ways to make a living. Bob Cousy had his summer camp, Jim Loscutoff had a camp, Tommy Heinsohn sold insurance.”
When most outsiders think of Auerbach, they conjure images of an arrogant, cigar-chomping hard-ass who stops at nothing to win. While there might be some truth to the latter, those who play for Auerbach get to see another side of the man. Just ask Frank Ramsey.
“Red came across as a boisterous, but deep down he was a pussycat,” Ramsey says. “Every year we would play one of our games in College Park, Maryland. Red, of course, lived in Washington, DC, and after the game he would take the whole team over to his house, and he and his wife Dottie would serve us Coke and cold cuts. The gruff person that everyone knows, that’s the coaching side of Red Auerbach. That’s the one always arguing the calls, always doing anything to win. But that was just one side of him. I remember one time when we were in Chicago to play a game, and (NFL quarterback) Sid Luckman came into the locker room. He was Red’s friend, and they had a mutual business interest. Sid asked Red if he could borrow 20 bucks. Red pulled out $100 instead. I asked him why he gave Sid the hundred dollar bill when he could have given him a twenty instead. I’ll never forget his reply. Red said, ‘Sid will forget the 20 as soon as I give it to him, but he’ll always remember the 100.’ That was classic Red.”
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