The Tom Heinsohn Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Friday, August 3rd,
2006
Red
Auerbach often took the Celtics on preseason barnstorming tours throughout New
England. Do you have an amusing story that stands out, and what was it like to
ride in the car with Red?
I
never rode in the car with Red Auerbach – you’d have to be crazy to ride in the
car with Red Auerbach [laughs]. My funniest
story? I don’t know if anyone ever
told you this one, but it revolved around Jim Loscutoff, who had had back
surgery and was trying to make the ball club again. Naturally, after back
surgery Loscutoff was a little tentative. Now, Red had been in the Navy, and
had done some work helping guys recuperate from injuries in the service, and
what have you. Psychologically, he tried to get into Loscutoff’s head. He
wanted to make him forget about the back and just play basketball. Anyway, he
would have separate drills on these road trips up through New England. We’d go
to play in a high school gym, and we’d all go to take a nap in some motel, and
in the afternoon he would take Loscutoff to the gym for a separate workout.
Loscutoff was my roommate, and he would come back to the motel and go, ‘I’m
gonna get that little sucker, and I’m gonna kill him.’ And he kept saying this,
you know, and finally I went to Red and said, ‘Red, what are you doing to
Loscutoff?’ I said, ‘You better watch out, he wants to kill you.’ And Red
said, ‘You and Ramsey, you two come and watch what I’m doing. Just don’t let
him know that you’re there.’ So we sneaked into the high school gym and hid way
up in the stands behind some seats, and we watched Red put Loscutoff through his
paces. And he would throw the ball on the floor, and he would say, ‘Okay,
doggie, go get it.’ Loscutoff was expected to dive on the floor and jump on the
ball. And then Red would throw these long passes so that Loscutoff had one step
and then he would crash into the wall. And after it was all over, I looked at
Ramsey and I said, ‘If I were Red, I wouldn’t keep dong that to Loscutoff – he’s
a little bit left of center anyway, and he’s just crazy enough to knock Red into
next week.’ [Laughs]. But to give Red his due, he got Loscutoff’s head back
into the game, and Loscutoff was an important part of the team for years to
come.
Your
relationship with Red Auerbach is clearly special – you were his initial
choice as his coaching successor in 1966. As a player, you were often his
self-proclaimed whipping boy – the one player who could handle Red’s
criticisms without taking it personally. How were the two of you able to
get along so well?
Before
I became the coach, I spent four years in the management end of the
insurance business, in which I was very successful. As I was going through
the initial management course for the insurance company, all of a sudden I
started to see how good Red really was as a manager of people. How he
drafted certain players, and why. And how he made the acquisitions to get
players in to help keep the team on top. All of the motivations he used,
and everything else. And I thoroughly believed in the philosophy that we
had about running and making the other team play twice as hard, and think
twice as fast. The other thing was, unbeknownst to a lot of people at the
time, every time we signed a rookie and something was wrong, he’d ask me
questions. For example, he might say, ‘Tommy, what’s wrong with Mel
Counts? Why can’t he rebound, and why can’t he hold onto the ball?’ And I
might say, ‘Well, he’s not catching the ball off the board. He brings it
down and it gets slapped out of his hands easily.’ And Red would respond,
‘Well, you work with him.’ So over the years I worked with a lot of
players. As a consequence, Red saw me dealing with a lot of players. Larry
Siegfried, for example. Red was going to cut him, and I used to play
one-on-one with Siegfried. Nobody could beat me one-on-one until Siegfried
showed up. He would beat me every time we played. So I said to Red,
‘Before you cut Siegfried, you should know that he’s the only guy on the
team that can beat me one-on-one.’ Red looked at me curiously, and he said,
‘He does? Well, we’re going to have practice at the Garden. You play him
one-on-one and let me watch.’ So, Red was way up in the stands where he
couldn’t be seen. And he watched – Siegfried never knew this – and so we
played and he beat me again. Red kept Siegfried.
After I had retired, he called me up that summer and said that he had a chance to get Don Nelson. He said, ‘What do you think of Don Nelson?’ And I said, ‘Red, Don Nelson is slow as shit. He cannot run. But he and Joe Holup are the only two guys that I played against in the NBA that I couldn’t get around. I don’t know how he does it, but he does it. He’s also a terrific shooter, so if you’ve got a shot at him I think it’s well worth the effort.’ So that was my contribution to Don Nelson landing in Boston. And I think Red saw something in me as a coach, and that’s why he approached me for the job.
You were
very close to the late Johnny Most, and you recently provided the narration
on Jamie Most’s Voice of the Celtics. What was it like to work on this
project, and what memories did it bring back after all of these years?
Johnny
Most and I were really good friends. I hung around Johnny from my rookie
year on, because he was a very intelligent man, and he was a great
storyteller. And he was a funny, funny guy. My favorite story about Johnny
Most? If he took a liking to you, then he would try to promote you on the
broadcast. At that time my roommate was Lou Tsioropoulos, which was my
rookie year. So, he liked Louie. Loscutoff got hurt and couldn’t play in
the playoffs, and Louie had to fill in for him. And his broadcast went
something like this:
Editors Note: At this point, Mr. Heinsohn, who is famous for his voice impersonations, adopts the gravel-sounding delivery of Johnny Most. He nails it perfectly.
“I can’t believe the defensive job Lou Tsioropoulos is doing on Bob Pettit. I mean, he’s in his jersey, he’s in his sneakers, there’s no place that Pettit goes that Lou Tsioropoulos isn’t right there with him. Here we are in the middle of the second quarter and he’s only got….thirty-two points?” [Laughs].
So that was the type of guy Johnny Most was. He helped me after I started broadcasting the games in ’66. So I roomed with Johnny Most on the road when I did the game. We did twenty-five road games. I would room with him, and he helped me learn how to broadcast. After I became the coach of the Celtics, I started broadcasting at Sports Channel, and in the summer we used to have Johnny Most sound alike contests. So I would emcee the sound alike contest all over New England - at the hotel, a bar, whatever. And we had a lot of fun doing that.
Johnny Most was also a Pop Warner football coach, and the commissioner of a Pop Warner football league in his community. And he helped get my son involved in football. So, we were brought together in many different ways. I was friendly with him as a player, I would pal around with him as a coach, and we hung out in between during my time as a broadcaster. So I hung out with Johnny Most for well over twenty years.
