The Tom Heinsohn Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Friday, August 3rd,
2006
The 1959-60 NBA season brought another
championship to Boston. His scoring average increased for the fourth
consecutive
year, to 21.7 PPG, this to go along with a career-high 10.6
RPG. Battling Wilt Chamberlain and the Philadelphia Warriors in the Eastern
Division Finals, Heinsohn was there when the team needed him most, tipping
in a shot at the buzzer to win Game 6 and send the Celtics back to the NBA
Finals. For Heinsohn, that play remains one of his biggest thrills.
“Wilt didn’t like me to begin with,” Heinsohn recalls with a smile. “He was pretty easy-going, but for some reason I seemed to get under his skin. I scored twenty-two points in that game, including that tap-in at the buzzer. It was a great feeling to score like that.”
Another seven game win over the Hawks gave Boston its second consecutive championship, and its third in four years. The team was beginning to display an aura known today as the “Celtic Mystique”. Through it all, Heinsohn relished his roll as Auerbach’s whipping boy. He knew that Auerbach couldn’t lash out at players like Cousy and Sam Jones. They were wired differently, and they simply weren’t going to respond well to that type of treatment. He also knew that Auerbach couldn’t keep his frustration bottled in. And when Auerbach needed to vent, Heinsohn was the primary target.
“Red knew the egos involved,” Heinsohn says. “He was a master at understanding how to deal with people. He knew who he could ride and who didn’t like to be called out verbally. So instead of blasting this guy, or getting on that guy, he knew that he could take it out on me and get his point across. I knew what he was doing, so it just rolled off. I was fine with it.”
Heinsohn was named to his second All-Star Game the following season, and the Celtics were once again world champions. It was a delicious pattern that would repeat for the next four seasons. He would retire following the 1964-65 campaign, his mind willing but his ailing knees unable to carry him further as a professional basketball player. Still, there were no regrets; his nine years in the league had produced eight championships and six All-Star selections. Auerbach would retire a year later, bowing out with a record ninth banner and committing himself to working in the Celtics’ front office. In the ultimate show of respect, he approached Heinsohn about taking his place on the bench. Heinsohn didn’t have to think long about the offer – he pretty much refused on the spot.
“I was flattered, but I knew that Russell still had a few years left,” he says. “I couldn’t accept the job because, aside from Red, there was only one other person who could coach and motivate Bill Russell – and that was Bill Russell.”
Auerbach agreed, and Russell was named player-coach. He would win two more championships over the next three seasons and then bow out a winner. The final tally for the Russell Dynasty would be eleven titles in thirteen years, including eight in a row.
Russell and Sam Jones would retire following that 1969 title run, and the Celtics were clearly in rebuilding mode. Auerbach once again approached Heinsohn about the head coaching job. This time he eagerly agreed. He wanted to see if he could help Boston rise again, and he knew that the team would struggle along the way. Auerbach, drafting smartly, grabbed point guard Jo Jo White from Kansas in the 1969 NBA Draft. One year later he selected Dave Cowens from Florida State. The choices proved pivotal in Boston’s speedy resurgence; after finishing 34-48 during Heinsohn’s rookie campaign as head coach, the team rebounded with a 44-38 record the following season. A 56-26 record ended a two-year playoff drought, and then the Celtics rolled to a 68-14 record during the 1972-73 regular season. The 68 wins were a team record. Heinsohn was named the NBA Coach of the Year. In the playoffs, however, the New York Knicks refused to be intimidated by Boston’s .829 winning percentage. With John Havlicek nursing a shoulder injury, the Celtics fell into a 3-1 hole before rallying to even the series. New York won Game 7 of the ’73 Eastern Division Finals, and the Celtics were sent home to ponder what might have been.
The next season would prove magical, as Heinsohn’s Celtics dropped to 56-26 but advanced to the 1974 NBA Finals. Considered an underdog to Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) and the Milwaukee Bucks, the undersized Celtics played a frenetic brand of basketball to forge a 3-2 series lead. In Boston for what would a the penultimate Game 6, Jabbar’s buzzer-beating skyhook forced Game 7 back in Milwaukee. The media proclaimed the new-look Celtics dead, that they had squandered their best chance to claim the title. Privately, Heinsohn had a different take on things. He saw an old Oscar Robertson, his legs weary from a long season and a difficult playoff push, and he knew that his players were fresh and ready to atone for that Game 6 loss. And atone they did: Cowens scored 28 points and grabbed 14 rebounds, outplaying the bigger Jabbar. Jo Jo White and Don Chaney forced Robertson to work hard on both ends of the court. Paul Silas was a beast on the glass. And when it was over, the Celtics were once again world champions – the first of the post-Russell era.
“We were able to dictate the style of play,” Heinsohn says, who was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a player on May 6th, 1986. “We forced them to play our way, and we wore them down over those seven games.”
The Celtics were unable to repeat the next season, but they were able to reclaim the title one year later, following the 1973-74 regular season. It was Boston’s second title in three seasons. That series will forever be remembered for Game 5 in the Boston Garden, a three-overtime thriller against the Phoenix Suns that the league now bills as ‘The Greatest Game Ever Played’. As a coach, Heinsohn compiled a 416-240 record over eight full seasons, won five consecutive Eastern Division titles, and two world championships. He would resign midway through the 1977-78 regular season, but his passion for the Boston Celtics has kept him in the game as a television broadcaster.
By all accounts, Heinsohn proved himself a winner on all levels. As a player, he may have been overshadowed by players such as Russell, Cousy, Sharman and Havlicek, but those who were there can attest to his value as a player.
“Tom Heinsohn was one of the greatest forwards to play the game,” says Harold Furash, a close friend to many of the players on those championship teams, and someone who knew Russell’s Boston Celtics perhaps better than anyone. “Sure, he was overshadowed by Russell and the rest of those guys. But had he played on another team, Heinsohn would have piled up his statistics and gotten a lot more attention for his accomplishments. However, those things weren’t important to him. He wanted to win. He wanted to be known as a champion. In Boston, he was able to do that.”
Celtic Nation is honored to bring you this interview.
