The Walter McCarty Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Friday, March 30th, 2012
In ’98 the Celtics drafted Paul Pierce. Take me back to Pierce in the early years.
Well, you could tell that Paul was going to
be a great player, but there were definitely
maturity
issues with him. At that age he was still
going out to clubs and doing some of the
things that maybe a leader shouldn’t have
been doing. And maybe at that time he
didn’t view himself as a leader. He wanted
to play ball and he wanted to have fun, but
he’s clearly matured over the years and left
a lot of that stuff behind him. He ended
becoming a great leader, and the things that
he’s done during his career in Boston
definitely put him up there in the
discussion with all of the Celtics greats.
Pitino ultimately resigned and headed back to the college game. That’s when Jim O’Brien stepped in and helped the Celtics get back to the playoffs. What was that like?
We were ready. We just knew we were going to get after it defensively that season. We took it upon ourselves to keep opponents from scoring on us – our goal was to contest every shot and force our opponents into low field goal percentages. Tough shots. We were one of the top three defensive teams in the league that season. We really started to trust the system and to trust one another. We trusted that if a guy got by one of us, that someone would be there to play help defense. If someone got past me I knew that Eric Williams was going to be there. If someone got by Eric, we knew that Tony Battie was going to be right there backing him up. Once we got that down, everything started to flow. It was a great experience for us, because we came within two games of reaching the NBA Finals.
You became close with many of the Celtic legends during your time in Boston. Guys like Red Auerbach and Bill Russell.
I've been so lucky, privileged and blessed. To get to know people like Bob Cousy, Bill Russell and Tom Heinsohn, I could never truly put into words what these people mean to me. And as much as I love Tom Heinsohn – he's a very special person in my life – his late wife Helen was one of the most special people I've ever known. God bless her – she passed away from cancer, and it was one of the hardest things for me to deal with emotionally. She was such a special lady, and meant so much to me and my family. I love her dearly.
It was so special to feel like you’re a part of the family, part of one of the greatest organizations in sports. You just don’t get that anywhere else. For me as a kid, to think that I would get to sit down and talk to guys like that – guys like Red Auerbach, Satch Sanders, Hondo – the list goes on and on, it was just remarkable. As a kid growing up in Evansville, I never could have imagined any of that to be possible.
Red was great to be around. No matter where you were, you could always smell those cigars in the gym. Bill Russell stayed close to the team while I was there. And I always called him Captain. Never Bill, never Mr. Russell. Always Captain, because he was the captain of all those Celtics championship teams.
Funny story about Bill Russell: At one point he came into the locker room, and at the time we were a pretty tough defensive team. But offensively, everybody know that Paul Pierce and Antoine Walker was going to take 90% of the shots. And I guess the papers were talking a lot about how much Antoine liked to shoot the ball, and how he never passed. It was a pretty big deal in the media at the time. Well, Bill came in, and he holds up a copy of that article, and he looks at everyone in the room but Antoine. And he tells us that the secret’s out, that Antoine is going to be taking a ton of shots, and that if we wanted to get our shots we shouldn’t wait for him to pass – we should wait for him to miss. And then he looks at Antoine, and he says, ‘From what I’ve seen out of your shot selection, there should be plenty of misses to go around.’ And then the whole room busts out laughing.
I don’t have grandchildren yet, but one of these days I’ll probably be setting down with them and telling them the stories about legends like Bill Russell, and what a privilege it was to even be associated with people like that.
