The Tom Heinsohn Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Friday, August 3rd,
2006
Bill Russell and Sam Jones retired in 1969, and the Celtic Dynasty was
officially at an end. What was it like to take over the reins as head coach,
and how were you able to temper the fan’s expectations regarding the new
starting center, Hank Finkel?
Needless
to say, Hank Finkel was no Bill Russell. Here I am, I’m going to take over, and
I’m going to try to win a
championship without Russell, Mr. Defense, of the last
thirteen years. And without Sam Jones, one of the greatest offensive players in
the history of the game. I gotta do something with this team. After Cousy
retired, the Celtics didn’t run quite as much, and things slowed down toward the
end of the dynasty because Russell had reached an advanced age. I always
believed that running was the way to win, so I tried to get this team to run a
little bit. Really, what the first year was all about, was an elongated tryout
camp. Trying to fit the pieces together. Actually, if I’m not mistaken, we
didn’t make the playoffs in either of my first two years coaching. But if you
look at the team’s record that second year, it was a good enough record to make
the playoffs most any other year. We had Finkel, we had Richie Johnson, and we
had to devise a way to win. It wasn’t easy. I had to become a coach, have them
listen to me, and establish my credentials as a person capable of doing the
job. It wasn’t easy, especially when you’re losing and the fans are used to
winning championships.
We got through the first year, and then we got Cowens. In the meantime, I had worked with Don Chaney that whole first season, bringing him along. And Jo Jo White was the pick that first season. So I worked with him. The next year I established the style of play, and how to do it. We started in training camp, and we really, really developed an up-tempo game without the likes of a Bob Cousy. And I put together a way of running, so that everybody played a little bit like Bob Cousy. Because I’d run up the floor so many times with him, and I saw how he reacted to the fast break situations. So I devised tactics to do exactly the same thing with different personnel. So we didn’t have to rely on one particular player to deliver the ball, like we did when Cousy was playing. That allowed us to maintain the pace, and win with pace. Because I believed that that’s how the Celtics, when I played, really won. A lot of those games we paced the other team completely out of the game, we’d run so much. But this team I had, with Cowens, was very small. That’s how we had to win games, or not win at all. It succeeded. I put the offense in one year, and then I worked on augmenting it with a pressure defense. The goal was to have a pressure offense and a pressure defense. The pressure offense was to beat them up the floor, make them hustle back, and the pressure defense was to make them work the ball up the floor, and to force them into mistakes. We utilized a lot of people. We changed the morale of the team a little bit, because we used a lot of people, and we started to win.
The
following season the Celtics drafted Dave Cowens. How long did it take for
you to realize he would be special?
I
had never seen him play – Red was the guy that had seen him play. So, when
we got him, I had gone down and I’d seen a couple of other centers, and I
didn’t like any of them. Red kept telling me about Cowens, who he’d seen at
Florida State, and so he said that he was going to draft him. So I said,
‘Fine.’ I didn’t know what the heck he was capable of until I finally go to
see him play. And I immediately said, ‘Wow, this guy is a bundle of energy
and ferocity.’ So, we used that on the fast break. He really wasn’t a good
offensive player at that time. We spent a couple of years working with him
on his offense. And we also put in a system to bring him along, to where
when we played the big centers like Wilt, Bob Lanier, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,
Willis Reed, and all of those guys – the big seven-footers – we really had a
no-center offense. We would pull Cowens out from under the basket, and we’d
rotate people all over the place. So in addition to becoming a rebounder,
Cowens also became a playmaker. He had the ball, and he would make Wilt
come out, and it was a style that became very, very successful for us.
Cowens fit into it beautifully, and it was one of the main reasons we were
able to win so many games. We really played two different styles of
basketball – against the big teams we ran, and then we’d use this offense if
we had to slow down. It forced the opponent’s big guys to come out of the
middle and play defense on the outside, on the perimeter, which they didn’t
know how to do, nor want to do. Cowens gave us a terrific advantage.
What was
it like for you to win your first NBA Championship as head coach of the
Boston Celtics?
It
ranks right up there with winning my first championship as a player. It was
something that I’ll never forget, and it was a great thrill just to be a
part of it. The year before, we had won a team-record 68 regular season
games, but John Havlicek hurt his shoulder in the playoffs and we got into a
3-1 hole in the Eastern Conference Finals. We tied that series up at 3-3,
and then lost that seventh game. So, even though we had a great year, we
were left with a very empty feeling to win 68 games and then fall short of a
championship.
We came back wiser, healthier, and more mature the next year. We only won 56 games, but we had learned that winning in the playoffs is far more important – you have to win during the regular season, sure, but we wanted to peak at the right time. And that’s what we did. We battled Kareem and Oscar Robertson in that series, and neither team could maintain control of home court advantage. In fact, we were up by a point in Game 6, and had a 3-2 series lead, and all we had to do was make one more stop to win the championship. And then Kareem hits that big shot from the corner. It was one of his patented skyhooks, and it sent the series back to Milwaukee for the seventh game.
We knew we were the better team, and going into that final game we wanted to prove it. We also knew that our pace had taken a toll on Oscar. He was at the end of his career, and all series long he had been forced to hustle on both sides of the ball. He was tired. So we turned up the pressure on him even more. We picked him up earlier on defense. We pushed the ball every chance we got. And we were able to win that game decisively. It was a great thrill, and one of the best basketball experiences that I’ve ever had.
