News 12/25 Merry Christmas

[FLCeltsFan]

www.bostonherald.com/sports/basketball/celtics/view.bg?articleid=1141213&format=text

Celtics downplay LA Lakers rematch
Focus on present

By Mark Murphy | Thursday, December 25, 2008 | www.bostonherald.com | Boston Celtics

Photo by Matt Stone
And the Celtics [team stats] think they’re put out by all this NBA Finals rematch talk.

At least they beat the Lakers last June.

Just imagine what it’s like for the team that lost heading into today’s Christmas showcase game at the Staples Center.

“I wish I had a dollar for every time someone asked me that question,” Kobe Bryant, who doesn’t need the money, said of the issue that has hung over every Laker’s head for the last six months.

After being adopted by virtually every pundit from New York to El Segundo, Calif., how could this team have lost in the Finals?

“It’s always the same answer - rebounding and defense,” the Lakers star said after his team won the last two games of a four-city road trip, capped by a 100-87 win in New Orleans on Tuesday.

“It’s good that we got a little bit of rhythm here, and we can get ready for the showdown on Thursday,” he said.

Remarkable, a player actually willing to talk about the most anticipated game of the regular season.

Then again, the Lakers have every reason to look ahead. This is their chance at setting their critics straight and stopping the two historic runs the Celtics are on - a franchise-record 19-game winning streak and a 27-2 start that is the best in NBA history.

“The only stock we put in it is to see where we stand, right at this moment,” Bryant said of today’s game. “It’s like a balance sheet. The Finals is the ultimate revenge.”

That’s a lot more than any Celtic is willing to admit.

Then again, the Celtics are on the upper end of the ledger with the best record, as well as the longest winning streak, in the league this season.

They don’t have to play up the rematch - at least not to a degree that anyone can detect.

Thus the deadpan reaction of Paul Pierce [stats] to tonight’s game.

“We look forward to playing them like we looked forward to playing Philly,” Pierce said, referring the C’s 110-91 victory over the Sixers Tuesday. “That’s just the mind-set of this team. If you all would just be around us and understand our mind-set every day, it’s not like we circled this game or anticipated this matchup.

“We wanted to play Philly, and now we want to play LA. It’s not any different than we felt (Tuesday night) coming into this game. It’s just another game on this schedule, and it’s a big road trip for us.”

Indeed, the road trip could be the Celtics’ first major test since November, when they easily had the league’s most difficult schedule.

The Celts will play at the Lakers, Warriors, Kings and Blazers on their annual holiday West Coast swing.

The toughest of those games will be the one that could push the streak to 20 - another subject that leaves them indifferent.

And then there’s Doc Rivers, who is pushing the envelope about as far as it can be pushed in terms of not looking into the future.

“I don’t see the magnitude (of the game vs. the Lakers) because I can’t understand it, if you know what I’m saying,” said the Celtics coach. “But I do understand that it’s a game a lot of people are looking forward to. So are we, and so are (the Lakers). We can say what we want, and that’s human nature.

“But . . . it’s just one of 82. If we win the game, does it mean anything that we can win? No. You probably get something from the NBA, like a pin for playing on Christmas.”

[FLCeltsFan]

www.bostonherald.com/sports/basketball/celtics/view.bg?articleid=1141214&format=text

Lengthy run not No. 1 for champs

By Mark Murphy | Thursday, December 25, 2008 | www.bostonherald.com | Boston Celtics

Photo by Stuart Cahill
Perhaps the greatest measure of a winning streak is whether it gets remembered by the players involved.

It’s now fashionable - probably even required by some team-wide dictum - for the Celtics [team stats] to claim they don’t even know how many games in a row they have won.

That holds even after they set a franchise record by winning their 19th straight game Tuesday night against Philadelphia.

They broke a record originally set by the 1981-82 team, which finally succumbed to the eventual NBA champions - the Philadelphia 76ers [team stats] of Julius Erving, Moses Malone and Maurice Cheeks.

Danny Ainge was a rookie that year.

“Really? Danny is that old?” said an amazed Doc Rivers.

So old, in fact, that Ainge remembers virtually nothing about winning 18 straight games.

He was able to achieve something better, with NBA titles in 1984 and 1986. That’s the point that today’s Celtics are attempting to drive home.

They don’t get so much as a $1 bonus for winning 19 straight games.

“I didn’t even know we won (18 straight) until someone later told me,” said Ainge, the Celtics executive director of basketball operations. “I know we had a couple of long ones back then. But it could have been 14 straight or 16 straight, for all I knew.

“What I remember are the big playoff games and the championships. When you come right down to it, those are the only things you should remember.”

Indeed, the 1981-82 season ended with the Celtics losing to Philadelphia in the East finals, with the Garden crowd erupting with the now-famous “Beat LA” chant once it became obvious the Sixers had their 120-106 Game 7 win nailed down.

A stunned Erving spread his arms and nodded in appreciation to the Garden crowd.

That scene is what was remembered from that season - not an 18-game winning streak.

But now it’s a different world.

“Now so many things are written and said on talk shows - people just want to talk so much about it now,” said Ainge. “Back then I don’t even know if the fans and the media got excited over something like a streak. I don’t think they were really caught up in things like that the way they are now.”

As it turns out, at least one player was indeed caught up in the streak.

Cedric Maxwell joked that he was rooting for the Knicks last Sunday because he didn’t want these Celtics to tie the record streak set by his old team.

Unlike Ainge, Maxwell can remember an uncanny amount about those games.

“I remember Philly ending the streak, and going through a stretch when Larry Bird got hurt,” he said. “Then we went to Texas and played San Antonio, Houston and Dallas. We were just playing lights out.

“Then Larry Bird came back and he had 44 points coming off the bench. We intimidated people just by them coming into our building. We struggled in the Philly game, but the fans gave us a standing ovation after the game because we had the record.

“The thing I like about this team now is that they’re trying to set their own footprint in the sand. This is a good team. My ’80s team was probably stronger on the inside. But this team wants to go beyond what we did.”

[FLCeltsFan]

www.boston.com/sports/basketball/celtics/articles/2008/12/25/going_for_the_green?mode=PF
Going for the Green
Lakers taking today's rematch very personally
By Marc J. Spears, Globe Staff | December 25, 2008

Sasha Vujacic acknowledged that hate is "a very, very strong word." But to truly keep it real about his feelings toward the defending champion Celtics, the Lakers guard felt such a strong word was needed.

"I don't want to hear their name whatsoever," said Vujacic after the Lakers' 100-87 win at New Orleans Tuesday. "I just want to play against them. I'm speaking in the name of all the Lakers fans, we dislike them more than anything.

"I'm not wearing green because of Boston. I don't like Boston at all. You can say hate, I don't care."

The oldest and bitterest rivalry in the NBA regained its heartbeat during last spring's Finals when the Celtics dominated the Lakers in six games. From Bill Russell vs. Wilt Chamberlain, to Magic Johnson's "Showtime" vs. Larry Bird & Co., to today's renewed rivalry that includes Kobe Bryant & Co. vs. "The Big Three," not one ounce of love has been lost between the Celtics and Lakers. In fact, Celtics fans chanted, "Beat LA," during the final minutes of a win over Philadelphia Tuesday.

With lots of media hype, trash talk, and words of respect, too, the first Lakers-Celtics meeting since the Finals will take place today at the Staples Center in Los Angeles in front of a national television audience. The Celtics arrive with a 27-2 record --the best start in NBA history -- and also have a franchise-best 19-game winning streak. The Lakers (23-5) own an 11-game home winning streak. Tickets have been sold for more than $10,000 and were available for as much as $8,000 last night on Stubhub.com.

With hopes of soothing the pain of the Finals loss and gaining some confidence against the detested foe, Lakers coach Phil Jackson said success today means more for his team, without a doubt. Jackson and Bryant have respectfully described this challenge against the red-hot Celtics as a measuring-stick game.

"If we can stop the winning streak, that would be a significant thing," Jackson said. "They're going to want to say they didn't get stopped by the Lakers. So they have a challenge here, too."

Said Bryant, "We get to see where we are in this moment in time and go from there."


Talking the talk
Bryant said the biggest Christmas game he's played in, including today, is the one that marked the return of Shaquille O'Neal to Los Angeles with the Miami Heat in 2004. Even so, the mention of the hype surrounding today's game evoked an immediate grin from Bryant, who expects an "electric atmosphere."

"It's good for the game," Bryant said. "Growing up in high school, you knew about the Bulls and Knicks and Lakers-Celtics. The hype creates the atmosphere and the energy for people who watch the game. It's enjoyable for us to be part of it."

The Celtics have a growing reputation as the biggest trash-talking team in the NBA, and they might be the most hated, too. There was definitely talk between the Celtics and Lakers on the floor during the Finals and even by the coaches through the media. Try as they might to just play basketball, Vujacic believes it will be tough for both teams to keep their mouths shut today, especially Boston.

"I don't like people that talk too much," Vujacic said. "They talk too much. I don't want to talk in the game whatsoever. We want to be quiet. I talk for all my teammates, we want to prove who we are on the court.

"It's going to be very tough. They're the type of team that likes to talk. We're going to put everything behind us, but the memories are going to come up and we'll see what's going to happen."

While the Celtics have focused squarely on the game at hand, no matter the foe, the Lakers have been talking publicly about today's game for nearly a month. As they watched the Celtics'122-117 overtime win at Indiana Dec. 7, Lakers players openly rooted against Boston. And before the Lakers' game against New Orleans Tuesday, video of the Hornets, Dec. 12 loss at Boston was shown in their locker room.

"They've become that team you pay attention to," Lakers guard Derek Fisher said. "You watch to see what's going on. Now they're your enemy. They're your rival. You want to try to outdo them in some ways. That's the position that we're in because we lost.

"They're the champions and everyone is looking to outdo them and knock them off of that throne. But as far as what happens on Christmas, I've been around 13 years and they aren't handing out no trophies on Christmas Day."


Learning from mistakes
As much as Vujacic might hate Boston, he pointed the finger at himself and the Lakers as the people he is really mad at for losing the Finals. The Lakers blew a 24-point lead at home in Game 4 en route to a 97-91 loss that gave Boston a commanding 3-1 lead in the series. The Celtics won their first NBA championship in 22 years by routing the Lakers, 131-92, in Boston on Game 6.

"It's personal for everybody," Fisher said. "You don't realize the pain and what you feel after losing in the Finals until you go do it. Everybody in this locker room, with exception of Josh Powell and Sun Yue, were here last year and remember how that felt. It’s personal in terms of playing against that team."

Said Vujacic, "A win is very important for our fans. I know I am speaking for everybody here, we want to win that game. We have to take it like just another game, but the emotions and memories of the Finals come out. You got to remember what they did to us."

The Lakers flew back to Los Angeles after the Finals knowing they needed to improve defensively and get rid of a reputation for being soft. They enter today 15th in the NBA in points allowed per game as 97.53. Bryant said he uses the Finals as motivation to play better defense.

"We talk about [the Celtics] when we're being lazy defensively or something like that," said Bryant. "When I sense that guys aren't pushing it like they should, I say, "You better remember what the hell happened. You better get in gear.""

As for the lack of toughness, Bryant said, "We got to get stronger. We got guys that are tough. Boston is stronger than us."

Center Andrew Bynum is back after missing the Finals because of knee surgery and agrees with the theory that he would have made a major difference if he played. Los Angeles has two 7-footers now in its starting lineup in Bynum and forward Pau Gasol. However, the Lakers were 0-2 in the regular season against Boston last year with Bynum. Also, Trevor Ariza (acquired from Orlando last season) has a training camp under his belt and is the starting small forward, which allows Lamar Odom to come off the bench.

But Fisher has had problems keeping up with Boston guard Rajon Rondo and speedy Lakers backup guard Jordan Farmar is expected to be out eight weeks after having left knee surgery yesterday. And four of the Lakers' five losses are against the Eastern Conference.

"We got a couple guys that weren't there for us last year that are there now," said Bryant. "That helps our depth tremendously."

Vujacic's hate for the Celtics is so deep that he hasn't worn green since the Finals. His friends, teammates, and Lakers fans have joined him in the green boycott. Adding to his ire was the Boston fans throwing rocks and rocking the Lakers'; bus when they departed from TD Banknorth Garden after the Celtics won the championship.

When asked what will it take for him to wear green again, Vujacic said, "You want me to be honest? When we kick their !!!GREENIAC!!!, I'll wear green."

[FLCeltsFan]

www.boston.com/sports/basketball/celtics/articles/2008/12/25/celtics_find_bench_is_giving_way?mode=PF
Celtics find bench is giving way
By Julian Benbow, Globe Staff | December 25, 2008

Flash back to last July. Second quarter. NBA Finals. Game 6.

The Celtics lead was 32-29.

Their lineup was Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, James Posey, Glen Davis, and Eddie House.

It all started when Posey hit a 23-footer on the wing. Then House found himself a shot from the same distance, only in the corner.

After House hit a pair of free throws, Posey came back to that same corner and drilled a 25-footer.

The Celtics went on a 10-0 run off bench points alone. The lead stretched from 3 points to 13 because of the reserves. The starters came back in and pushed the lead to 23 by the end of the quarter, and at that point, Lakers coach Phil Jackson said, he stopped keeping track of the scoreboard.

His team, he said, was "emotionally buried."

The Celtics had put their fists to the Lakers' feelings, and the bench got in the hardest blows.

Right now, the Celtics have the best record in the league, they've ripped off 19 straight wins, the closest team to them in their division is 12 1/2 games back, and the overwhelming feeling is that they can't get much better.

But the company line is that there are more than enough ways to improve.

After blowing out their third straight opponent Tuesday night, Kevin Garnett pointed out how.

Last July, the reserves were the ones who killed the Lakers when it mattered most.

Now, Garnett said, "We give teams life."

The bench started the season as the Celtics' bailout plan. They inherited double-digit deficits in seven of the first 10 games and in most cases they found a way to right the ship as the starters were finding their way.

Over the past month, they've come into games with double-digit leads and let them slip away. The second unit's top job is to protect a lead. It's something those players have struggled with over the past few weeks.

"We've got to get better," said coach Doc Rivers. "That's been no secret. We've had some games where our starters haven't played well and our second unit has come in and won games for us. Then we've had games where we've had big leads and lost them. We've just got to be more consistent, and that's what we're working on."

There's typically a point when Rivers decides to put five reserves on the floor.

Against the Knicks last Sunday, that point came with a 21-point lead and 11 minutes left in the half. Each time a starter checked back in, he found the lead was smaller and smaller. By the time Kendrick Perkins returned, it was down to 13, and by the half it was down to 8.

The consequences trickle down.

The goal is to get the starters as much rest as possible, but Rivers has had to put them on the floor to rebuild leads. Even though Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen are playing similar minutes to last year, memories of 36-minute playoff games are still vivid.

"I think come playoffs you have to rely on your bench," said House. "You can't have your starters playing heavy minutes, especially like we did last year playing seven with Atlanta and seven with Cleveland.

"You've got to try to get guys as much rest as possible, and that's our job, to come in and be solid and get guys rest when they build up a big lead or if they have a lead and we build up a big lead keep them on the bench and save their legs for the postseason."

The diagnoses vary. Brian Scalabrine said it's about finding an identity. Leon Powe said it's about chemistry. Rivers chalked it up to youth, and said it was mostly about finding consistency.

Pierce said it had to be a change in mind-set. And it starts with defense.

"When they come out here and they're offensive-minded, I think that's where their focus is and I don't think they play well," Pierce said. "I think a lot of times we get all offensive and when things aren't going all right with the second unit, it kind of carries over to where we're not playing defense, either.

"So if they can just concentrate on rebounding and defense and being able to just play solid basketball, that's all we really ask.

"I think they're making strides. I think they play well in stretches but just continue to improve like the starters. We're trying to improve and we're going to continue to encourage them."

Forward Glen Davis, who sustained a concussion and strained his neck in a recent car accident, made the trip and had a light workout yesterday. It's still uncertain whether Davis will play today. He has been bothered by headaches, according to team spokesman Jeff Twiss . . . The Celtics arrived in Los Angeles at 4 a.m. Pacific time yesterday and had the day off. The Lakers arrived in Los Angeles at 1:30 a.m. after playing in New Orleans Tuesday. They are coming off a four-game, five-day road trip and had a shootaround early in the afternoon.

Marc J. Spears of the Globe staff contributed to this report.

[FLCeltsFan]

www.boston.com/sports/basketball/celtics/extras/celtics_blog/

Celtics-Lakers update
Link|Comments (0) Posted by Marc J. Spears, Globe Staff December 24, 2008 06:10 PM
Celtics forward Glen Davis worked out today in Los Angeles for the first time since suffering a concussion and strained neck in a car accident last Sunday. Coach Doc Rivers will determine today whether the second-year forward will return to action after missing the last two games. Davis, however, has also been hampered by headaches lately. ... The Celtics arrived to Los Angeles from Boston at 4 A.M. PST on today and had the day off. The Lakers arrived in Los Angeles after playing New Orleans at 1:30 A.M. today following a four-game, five-day road trip and had a shoot around early in the afternoon. Lakers coach Phil Jackson and guard Sasha Vujacic also complained during the shoot around about Celtics fans throwing rocks and shaking the Lakers team bus in Boston after the Celtics won the title at TD Banknorth Garden. ... Lakers guard Jordan Farmar underwent successful surgery today to repair a torn lateral meniscus in his left knee. The surgery, which took approximately 30 minutes, was performed by Dr. Clarence Shields of the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Group. Farmar is expected to be out approximately eight weeks. Farmar suffered the injury in the fourth quarter of the Lakers game at Miami on Friday night. He is averaging 7.9 points and 2.4 assists in 19.6 minutes this season.-30-




Why the Lakers are better this season
Link|Comments (3) Posted by Gary Dzen, Boston.com Staff December 24, 2008 01:16 PM
Our friends at the LA Times Lakers blog, Andrew and Brian Kamenetzky, are offering us a couple of preview pieces as we head into tomorrow's Christmas Day matchup with the Lakers. Those guys do a great job over there, and I encourage you to check them out to see what the other side is saying about the game.

I decided to ask Brian Kamenetzky a question on the minds of many Celtics fans: How is this Lakers team any better than the one that got whooped by the Celtics in the Finals?

Here is his response:

The answer, much to the dismay of Lakers fans, has to be divided into two categories: Theoretical and actual. For the former, there were a few factors that were, in the dewy light of preseason, supposed to elevate an already top shelf purple and gold squad (they did make the Finals, you know?) to Larry O’Brien status:

Personnel: The return of Andrew Bynum from his knee injury and the injection of a healthy Trevor Ariza added depth to an already solid rotation, provided a defensive, shot blocking presence in the lane, and gave the Lakers a badly needed wing defender to shore up their own end.
Continuity: The Lakers lost only one significant rotation player, Ronny Turiaf, and he wasn’t a frontline presence for last season’s team. Yeah, they had to work Bynum back in with Pau Gasol, two guys who had never played together, but nobody needed the Advance Triangle Workshop in training camp. That meant more time for important things like taping commercials, signing basketballs, and, oh yeah, defense.
Experience: Yes, the Celtics were a newly assembled team last season with, technically, limited championship experience, but really Boston was a fully baked group led by three extremely hungry vets. Title favorites from day one. The Lakers, on the other hand, entered the season just hoping to make the playoffs and maybe win a round if things went well- enough to keep Kobe from bolting. Instead, they surprised people with a great start with Bynum in the post then really took off after Gasol was pilfered from Memphis. This season, LA could learn from the experience of the Finals (particularly the humiliation of Game 6) and return a focused, hardened, game-tough bunch of warriors.

In theory, these factors should combine to make the Lakers a better team than the version that went deep into the Finals a year ago. In practice, despite two straight wins to cap off their recent road trip and a 23-5 record, there are reasons to be nervous. First, the continuity on defense that was so impressive through the first 10 or so games hasn’t been nearly as consistent since, though they did do a nice job in New Orleans Tuesday night. Other teams are adjusting to the zone-trapping scheme and the Lakers have lost much of the discipline required to run it properly, instead looking for shortcuts like jumping passing lanes and reaching unnecessarily for steals.

Offensively, the Bynum/Gasol combo hasn’t jelled quite yet. The two don’t work well together on an instinctive level, and meanwhile Kobe has had problems finding paths to the basket with the two of them on the floor, leading to more jumpers than people like to see.

Bynum’s quality of play has been pretty spotty as well. He’s struggled mightily of late with foul trouble, picking up personals like Stephon Marbury does bad press. Offensively, he’s been oddly tentative, forgetting that he’s a 285 pound seven footer who can bull his way to the basket when need be. Defensively, in the half court he’s been successful in blocking and altering shots, but teams that pull him away from the basket (pick and roll, anyone?) have found success.

He’s still very much a work in progress.

I thought going in that it might take 35 games or so for the Lakers, who between the return of Bynum and the insertion of Lamar Odom into the second unit had some new things to learn. Instead, they came out of the gate red hot, seemingly proving that Rome wasn’t built in a day, but about 45 minutes. Now we might be seeing some of those growing pains.
The record is outstanding, but the Lakers aren’t playing like an elite team night in and night out on either end… right now. If the playoffs started today, they’d probably be screwed. (So would all of those people holding tickets for games in March.) Fortunately- and this is the important part- they don’t. There’s still ample time for the Lakers to recover, and I believe they will. Phil Jackson has traditionally constructed teams throughout the regular season so that they’re playing their best ball when the playoffs roll around. No reason to think this team will be any different.

Given that they haven’t played 30 games, I’m still very much on the Lakers bandwagon and believe they’ll be playing at a level that matches what will likely be a very gaudy record once the playoffs roll around. And once they’re operating at full efficiency, the ’08-’09 squad ought to be stronger than last year’s edition.

Check back later for a debate between myself and Andrew Kamenetzky on which team's fans this game means more to.

[FLCeltsFan]

www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081225/SPORTS/81224005/-1/SPORTS

Christmas Classic
Finals rematch a gift for hoop fans
By Tim Weisberg
December 25, 2008 6:00 AM


Merry Christmas, Boston Celtics fans. Although you can’t actually unwrap your gift until 5 p.m., it’s going to be worth the wait.


The Celtics and Lakers meet on Thursday for the first time since Boston won the NBA championship back in June, embarrassing Los Angeles to the tune of a 39-point loss in Game 6 of the Finals. And how big is the anticipation for this one?


While the Celts were still in the process of beating Philadelphia soundly on Tuesday night, a chant of “Beat L.A.” began ringing through TD Banknorth Garden.


“Classic Boston, that’s what’s up,” Kevin Garnett said of the chants.


It’s probably a good thing that the Celtics used another storied rival Tuesday night, the Sixers, to set a league record for the best 29-game start in NBA history (27-2) and a franchise-record 19th straight win. Now, all the hype can fall squarely on the Big 3 vs. Kobe and Company.


Celtics coach Doc Rivers said Tuesday that the Christmas rematch had been built up to epic proportions long before the season even started.


“I don’t see the magnitude because I can’t understand it, if you know what I’m saying,” Rivers said, reflective of the we-haven’t-won-anything-yet mentality. “But I do understand that it’s a game that a lot of people are looking forward to. So are we, so are they.”


“If we win the game, does it mean anything that we can win? No,” Rivers said. “And if they, same thing, don’t get anything after the game. You probably get something from the NBA, like a pin, for playing on Christmas.”


On a conference call with reporters this past week, Lakers great Magic Johnson talked about his excitement for the Christmas Day rematch, in which he will take part as an ABC studio analyst.


“The excitement is just like the old days, no question about it,” he said. “It’s all about the Lakers on Christmas Day. The Celtics know they’ve got something over the Lakers and when you know that, you come in with confidence.”


“The Lakers have to prove to the Celtics and to themselves that they can handle the physical play of the Celtics. That last beating they took by 39 points, that should have left a sour taste in the Lakers’ mouth,” Johnson said. “To me, that was an embarrassment for the Lakers. Those guys have got to come out and prove something to themselves and show the league that they are really ready to challenge the Celtics. Right now, the Celtics believe that the Lakers can’t beat them.”


While the Lakers have made improvements since the last time they saw the Celtics, especially on the defensive end, they’re still not up to par with what Boston does defensively. They’re still settling on just outscoring the opposition, often allowing the other team to reach 100 points or more.


“The Celtics are playing better on both ends of the court,” said Johnson, who also works as an ESPN analyst. “You can just tell that they really want to repeat. The Lakers have been struggling big time on the defensive end, so they’ve got a lot of work to do to come up to where the Celtics are.”


But even that criticism from one of the best ever to wear the purple-and-gold shouldn’t deter the fire of the Lakers, who are seeking redemption and have every reason to believe that at 23-5, they’re just as good as Boston.


“We know that they definitely are waiting for us, and they’ve been paying attention to what we’ve done, and what we’ve been doing all year,” Ray Allen said. “We prepare for every team the same way. We know every game for us has been a big game. I think we’ve been very particular about the smaller details and that’s what’s made us so good thus far.”


Even without last year’s epic Finals between these two rivals, a Celtics-Lakers game with the current casts would be worthy of a Christmas Day telecast. Especially when Kobe Bryant’s usual holiday opponent is whatever team Shaquille O’Neal is playing for. Now, the only meal O’Neal will ask his former teammate about is how the Christmas ham tastes.


“I totally appreciate the whole history of the Lakers and Celtics and the tradition, the competition and the players that have come through both teams,” Kevin Garnett said. “To say this is the game we circle, we circle all games, and if you’re on the schedule we don’t decline any shows.”


Teammate Paul Pierce echoed Garnett’s sentiments.


“This is for the fans. That’s why they put it on the commercials. That’s why they put it in the newspapers and that’s why they make it on Christmas day,” Paul Pierce said. “This is for the fans and for the media but for us it’s another opportunity to get better and build on what we’re trying to do because the ultimate goal is winning a championship. If we beat the Lakers, do we get anything for it? Do we win another championship? Do we get another ring? No. It’s just another game on the schedule that we have to play.”


But you can bet it’s going to be a Christmas classic.

[FLCeltsFan]

www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-heisler25-2008dec25,0,7278053,print.column

Rebirth of Lakers-Celtics rivalry is true gift for the NBA
The rematch of the Finals is perfect for Christmas Day.
Mark Heisler

December 25, 2008

They're back?

If last spring's renewal of the Lakers-Celtics rivalry seemed like a gift from the basketball gods -- at least until it started, if you're a Lakers fan -- it's six months later and they're still on.

With both teams atop their conferences, today's game is an actual event, as opposed to made-for-TV Christmas hypes like Shaquille O'Neal vs. Kobe Bryant I, II and III that paired the Lakers and Miami annually from 2004-2006.

Few rivalries in any sport can match the fervor and appeal of Lakers vs. Celtics. It's just as it was, with Celtics fans chanting "Beat L.A!" during Tuesday's win over Philadelphia.

Celtics fans hate the Lakers so much -- and Lakers fans so hate the Celtics -- that both live to see the other team lose, no matter who beats them.

Boston fans first chanted "Beat L.A!" in 1982, to the Philadelphia 76ers who were in the process of upsetting their team in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals in Boston Garden.

"Classic Boston," Kevin Garnett said of the Tuesday chant. "That's what's up."

Garnett has been in Boston for one season plus 29 games. When you're a Celtic or Laker, you're a Celtic or Laker all the way.

It took a miracle, or two of them, to re-start the ancient rivalry, with the Lakers coming off a No. 7 finish, the Celtics coming off a No. 15 finish two seasons ago.

Both were just trying to survive after that 2006-2007 season, with Kobe Bryant's days of rage, the Celtics' brass recoiling on camera at dropping to No. 5 in the lottery, and Paul Pierce close to asking to be traded.

Nor was it certain after their remarkable march to last spring's Finals that they could count on seeing each other, same place, same time, since one looked vulnerable.

Six months later, it's hard to remember that was the Celtics with their thirty-something Big Three and thin bench, even before they lost James Posey and P.J. Brown.

Coming off a harrowing 26-game postseason with Game 7s against Atlanta and Cleveland, there was no expectation the Celtics could come close to last season's 29-3 start.

So much for expectations.

Meanwhile, the Lakers, who were supposed to be: 1) a rising juggernaut, and 2) bent on revenge, spent recent weeks congratulating themselves on their record.

With notions of greatness and a 70-win season fading, Lakers fans actually booed their team off the floor at halftime of the New York Knicks game when it trailed by 15.

Suddenly, the question was: Who are you and what did you do with the Lakers?

The team wasn't just sloppy, it wasn't playing hard. Worse, the Lakers showed no sense of urgency, giving out reassuring "We're 21-3" updates.

Two weeks ago, Bryant acknowledged he had deliberately chilled out ("No, I haven't kicked over any coolers"), a tipoff to what was going on.

Because this was 180 degrees from Bryant's take-no-prisoners nature, and because the same sentiment was echoed by others who never said such things, like Derek Fisher, it was almost certainly coming from Coach Phil Jackson.

Jackson thought their struggle, especially on defense, was a result of their youth and just needed time to work out.

Time apparently ran out on the just-concluded 2-2 trip, with its meeting in which players and coaches had a frank and open discussion, as they say in diplomatic circles, not to mention a loud one.

Not that the Lakers are where they need to be, or even close.

The Celtics are already a great defensive team, with a scheme they've mastered and 100% commitment.

The Lakers have a new defensive scheme they haven't expended a lot of energy learning.

They finally played hard at the defensive end in New Orleans, keeping Chris Paul from running pick-and-rolls and holding the Hornets to 87 points.

Nevertheless, Lakers, who were supposed to be funneling Hornets to teammates, could still be seen funneling them to the hoop. Andrew Bynum yelled at Sasha Vujacic after one breakdown and Jackson yelled at Lamar Odom after another.

Of course, the Lakers might still be kicking back if they weren't facing you-know-who on Christmas.

As always, both teams have learned to hate the other for causes too numerous to name, like Jackson's memory of Celtics fans rocking their bus after Game 6.

"Maybe it was kind of like being bused as a kid in the '70s in Boston, if you remember that," Jackson said.

If you don't, he's referring to the riots in South Boston over integrating the schools.

Rocking the Lakers bus is an old rite of Celtics fans, who did the same thing after the 1984 series. If the Lakers are back next spring, they may have to consider alternate transportation, like evacuating everyone by helicopter from the roof of the TD Banknorth Garden.

In the meantime, this game will do. This is what the basketball gods made Lakers and Celtics for, to test each other.

[FLCeltsFan]

www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-rivalry25-2008dec25,0,7451685,print.story
Hate made Lakers-Celtics rivalry great
The current Lakers may not dislike the Celtics as much, but in the '80s, the teams agreed on only one thing: They couldn't stand each other.
By Broderick Turner

December 25, 2008

They are the standard-bearers of the NBA, the two teams with the most history in the league and the most championships.

And perhaps because of that, the contempt the Lakers and Boston Celtics long had for the other was palpable.

It started in the late '50s and stretched into the '60s and then again into the '80s, when the Lakers and Celtics met 10 times for the NBA championship.

The rivalry was renewed in June, when the Lakers and Celtics met in the NBA Finals for the 11th time, with Boston coming out on top for the ninth time.

Both teams remain the NBA's marquee teams, a big reason why the Lakers and Celtics will meet for the first time this season today on Christmas at Staples Center.

Even though the Lakers lost in the NBA Finals, there doesn't appear to be the same dislike toward the Celtics by the current Lakers team.

However, during the '80s, the series between the Lakers, with Magic Johnson, and Celtics, led by Larry Bird, took on a totally different tone as they met in the Finals three times.

"We just despised them and they probably despised us," said former Lakers guard Byron Scott, now the coach of the New Orleans Hornets.

Well, a former Celtic can answer that.

"If I saw one of those guys on fire and I had a glass of water, I would have drank the water before I would put it on them," said Cedric Maxwell, a forward on the '80s Celtics and now the team's radio analyst.

"It was just a healthy dislike both teams had for each other."

The games were always intense and heated, whether it was the regular season or the NBA Finals.

"I always looked forward to playing them," Lakers assistant coach Kurt Rambis said. "They were always good games. I don't know if it would get any better than that. Two teams, the intense rivalry, the history that the two organizations had, the success of the teams, the talent level, the matchups.

"I don't know if you'll ever see it like that again."

Scott remembered when the Lakers lost to the Celtics in the 1984 Finals and were about to play in Boston in Game 1 of the 1985 Finals.

"I'll never forget Larry Bird saying it's the Lakers and the Celtics and the Celtics are supposed to win, because 'We always win, we always beat the Lakers,' " Scott said.

Bird actually was right.

The Celtics had whipped up on the Lakers eight times in a row (including Minneapolis) for the NBA crown.

"He was going back to all the days, when they would beat the Jerry West Lakers, the Wilt Chamberlain Lakers," Scott said. "So we had that monkey on our back. But that statement right there made us like, 'Oh no. No more.' "

That wasn't all that upset Scott.

He recalled how Boston Celtics executive Red Auerbach took a shot at Lakers center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

"Red said in the papers: 'The reason we can beat the Lakers is because we don't have to double Kareem,' " Scott recalled.

It proved to be true in Game 1, when Abdul-Jabbar, then 38, was outplayed in his matchup against Robert Parish in a game Boston won, 148-114, in what became known as the Memorial Day Massacre.

But Game 2 was a different story.

Abdul-Jabbar scored 30 points, grabbled 17 rebounds, handed out eight assists and blocked three shots in a Lakers win.

He went on to average 30 points, 11 rebounds, seven assists and two blocks in the four Lakers victories, which earned Abdul-Jabbar the Finals' most-valuable-player award, as the Lakers beat the Celtics in six games.

"When the series was over, Kareem said, 'I guess they threw dirt on my face a little too early,' " Scott said. "I remember that like yesterday.

"And that's why I always want the Lakers to beat the Celtics. No, I don't like the Celtics -- still."

[FLCeltsFan]

www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-celtics25-2008dec25,0,7872473,print.story
Celtics go beyond the Big Three
The defending champions have upgraded from within, with Rajon Rondo and Kendrick Perkins getting rave reviews.
By Chuck Culpepper

December 25, 2008

Reporting from Boston — Somber, somber details keep popping up when studying the December 2008 Boston Celtics.

It's bad enough that the rest of the country and its ultra-hopeful Los Angeles had to worry about such hoop magnificence as Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, hoping maybe they'd just go ahead and get old, but now you get to Boston in a blizzard and everybody's talking about . . .

Well, they're talking about the Red Sox enough to induce nausea, but audible Celtics chatter goes pretty much Rondo-Rondo-Rondo.

You can hear Tom Heinsohn on the TV analysis raving how Rajon Rondo just discombobulated a defense, and you can hear about the Celtics after a game discussing whether Rondo could outrun arena visitor Usain Bolt, and you have Coach Doc Rivers saying, "He has the highest basketball IQ of anybody in my 24 years."

So holy mercy, let's pause to ponder the very idea that, six months after 131-92, people around the champions could coo mostly about a fourth player.

And then, let's add that a certain wing of New England basketball intellectuals, while extolling the gathering improvement of Rondo since June, touts even more the upgrade since June of a fifth, big man Kendrick Perkins, always using the moniker "Perk" in this process.

Cedric Maxwell, the former Celtic turned radio analyst, thinks the 27-2 December Celtics aren't necessarily superior to the duck-boat-parade June Celtics who mauled the Lakers, not without reserves James Posey and P.J. Brown. But still, there's this 22-year-old point guard and this 24-year-old center and, Maxwell said, "If anybody could say that Rondo was going to be this good or Perkins was going to be this good, please let them go and speak up right now" because Maxwell wants to consult that person for investment advice.

As Rondo darts prudently around the court, quick as a ghost for 11.6 points and 7.4 assists and five rebounds and 2.4 steals (second in the league) and about a bushel of those cherished nuances the box score hasn't figured out how to quantify, and as his shooting percentage stands at 54 up from 42 as a rookie, and as Rivers says, "I think the biggest thing is he's become a great finisher," it all has such a unique look that Maxwell strains his memory bank for a reminiscent player.

"Maybe Slick Watts," he said, recollecting Watts' style with the steals and assists.

So in Boston circa December 2008, it's possible to go to push through a blizzard to the Garden, see Garnett save a ball flying out of bounds and hurl it to Rondo, see Rondo tear downcourt against Chicago, fake a behind-the-back pass and lay it in, and see the city stand up all crazy.

You might see a black-swan jewel of a performance with 40 assists from one team, 15 by Rondo in basically two quarters, and the whole thing might qualify as dazzling, as if the rest of the country and Los Angeles want to listen indefinitely to descriptions of the Celtics as dazzling.

Then there's the detail that Rondo rebounds well, so Garnett jokes afterward, "I got one rebound tonight. Try to stay on this team with Rondo and Perk, you can't get rebounds. They're gonna trade me."

And then people such as Rivers mention the sheer size of Rondo's hands, which Doug Bibby said he didn't notice until Bibby, Rondo's coach at Eastern High in Louisville, Ky., took a 10th-grade Rondo to work out with Bibby's first cousin Mike in Sacramento, and Mike and his brothers said, "Look at his hands."

And as if all that weren't sobering enough, Rondo evidently qualifies among those people with, even for an elite athlete, an unusual adoration for toil.

"I don't like summertime," he said matter-of-factly the other day after a shoot-around, because of its leisurely trappings and "because I'm not on a schedule."

He finds himself "more confident in calling plays" than in June, when he went 21-7-8-6 in the 131-92 of Game 6. "I see the floor better. Better rebounder, better passer."

As he smoothly states his virtual desperation to occupy the Chris Paul tier of NBA point guards, Celtics non-fans might take some time out to curse the Phoenix Suns, who thought Kentucky's Rondo too small in 2006 and drafted him 21st overall in 2006 for Boston, shipping him there with Brian Grant on a day the Celtics also traded for guard Sebastian Telfair, who would join the multitudes sent to Minnesota for Garnett.

"He's just not one of those kids who says, 'Hey, I've got incredible athletic ability,' " Doug Bibby said by telephone from Louisville. "He looks at himself more as a guy who doesn't have a lot of athletic ability, and he does the things most guys as gifted as he is might not do."

Then, his partner in unnecessary workouts apparently would be "Perk," who calls them "best friends" in yet another nationally chilling detail.

By everybody's account, Perkins keeps turning up in more strategic places on the floor, setting better picks and embodying more post tips gleaned from the very serious Garnett, whom Perkins credits serially. Last Friday night, Perkins astutely rolled off picks to collect a career-high 25 of the easiest points you ever saw.

"He has evolved right now from K.G.," Maxwell said. "He has taken on a lot of his tendencies -- one of them, a tendency to be nasty. He has taken on that with pride."

While many a 24-year-old might misconstrue the blessing of four such fellow starters, Perkins, shooting 59% and averaging 8.6 rebounds, states his preference for overcoming the human fear of "looking into the mirror" and pinpointing faults. "You know, the biggest thing, I don't want to take any moment for granted," he said. "I want to cherish every moment. There's a lot of times I think about it like, 'Man, I'm part of something special.' "

That's really not very good news for everybody else either, so the nation really doesn't need to hear Rivers' reminder that nine of last year's 12 Celtics were in their first year on the team, or Allen's testimony to how the mingling works with increasing identity.

"And we argue a lot," Allen said, shortly after admonishing two teammates making too much clamor in the corner. "Honestly, I've been on teams where guys don't say two words to each other and you like each other, everybody gets along, but when something goes wrong on the floor, nobody says anything."

In Boston, the distinct joy of family infighting "makes us as good as we are, it's one of the things," Allen said, later adding, "I always say, 'Look, don't take anything personally on this team.' The first thing we did, we all humbled each other by picking apart each other's character early. You got a chance to see who was what, early."

This got going in Rome, in fall 2007, on the preseason trip, he said and, "I don't think we realized how good it was for everybody," Allen said.

So in December 2008, here come some Celtics who have a title and 27-2 and even have Rome. What's a vast elsewhere to do?

[FLCeltsFan]

hoopsaddict.com/2008/12/23/a-conversation-with-bob-cousy/
A Conversation With Bob Cousy
Published by Amy O'Loughlin on December 23, 2008


Bob Cousy, the legendary play-making point guard for the Boston Celtics from 1950 to 1963, celebrated his eightieth birthday this year. In July, I was privileged to interview “The Houdini of the Hardwood” to commemorate this momentous milestone. I came to the interview with a fixed list of questions, and my goal was to find out what life was like for this former Celtic, who retired 45 years earlier as the highest paid player in the NBA and still holds the league’s single-game playoff record set in 1953 for the most free throws made (30) and attempted (32). We met at Cousy’s office at his home in Worcester, Mass.—a four-acre residence where he and his wife, Missie, have lived for 43 years. Within minutes of the start of our interview I knew that it would be unlike any other that I have conducted. Formality and adherence to a routinized Q&A script vanished and was replaced by Cousy’s cordiality, warmth of spirit and graciousness. Our interview quickly turned into an afternoon of effusive, candid and free-flowing storytelling, and the subjects of which we spoke etched a wide-ranging path through history and Cousy’s 80 years of life-experience.

Robert J. Cousy was born on August 9, 1928 in Manhattan, New York. Raised by his French immigrant parents Cousy’s first language was French; he spoke it exclusively until he learned English at age five. Cousy experienced the deprivation and poverty that typified The Great Depression during his childhood. Its impact remained with him throughout his life and molded an instinctive drive to be successful, which when applied to playing basketball translated into the insatiable hunger to win no matter what the cost. The Cousys lived in tenement housing in New York’s East End. In 1940, they left behind the city’s squalor and moved to a house in St. Albans in Queens, where there was trees and green grass and clean air to breathe. There was also O’Connell Park—the playground where the teenaged Cousy learned the game of basketball.

By the time Cousy finished high school his athletic skills were primed enough to play college-level basketball. In 1946, Cousy enrolled in Holy Cross College in Worcester, the oldest Catholic college in New England, but a school that had no gymnasium and no discernible basketball tradition. Within the year, however, Cousy and his teammates shifted Holy Cross’s standing in the world of collegiate sports. The Crusaders won the 1947 NCAA Championship, making Holy Cross the first school in New England to win a national basketball title. And when Cousy graduated in 1950, he was regarded as the best college basketball player in the country and recognized for his distinctive style of play: his behind-the-back dribbling; his no-look passes; his quick-footed court speed.

Even though Cousy had become a superstar college athlete and enjoyed the thrill and force of competition, pursuing a career in professional basketball was not an all-consuming aspiration. And going pro in the 1950s, for that matter, didn’t necessarily guarantee a life of fortune and fame. Professional basketball as a spectator sport suffered in popularity and appeal and lacked the national audience that college basketball enjoyed. The NBA, having formed only four years previously, appeared to be a disorganized entity with an uncertain future, and there were few successfully structured and long-lasting franchises. For Cousy, earning a living upon graduation stood as his main objective. If that meant doing something other than playing basketball, then that suited him fine.

As we know, Cousy did indeed choose to become a professional basketball player. Yet, joining the team that would soon be the most triumphant franchise in NBA history was an absolute act of fate. In the spring of 1950, Cousy received a telephone call from a sportswriter who told him that he’d been drafted by the Tri-Cities Blackhawks of Iowa—and passed over by the Boston Celtics and their new coach, Arnold “Red” Auerbach. Cousy made it clear to the Tri-Cities franchise that he had absolutely no desire to play in Iowa. He was then traded to the Chicago Stags, but maintained his stance: he had no intention of playing in Chicago, either. Before the regular season began, however, the Stags disbanded and allocated all but three of its players—Cousy being one— to other teams. The New York Knicks, the Philadelphia Warriors and the Boston Celtics were each slated to select one former Stag. As the storied legend in sports history goes, representatives from the three teams had squabbled and wrangled for hours and could not reach consensus on who was to go where. Maurice Podoloff, the first president of the NBA, tossed each player’s name into a hat. Walter Brown, owner of the Celtics, pulled Cousy’s name. In that instant and by the luck of the draw, Bob Cousy became a member of the Boston Celtics. He ended his 13-year career with the Celtics as one of the NBA’s greatest and most influential players of all time, and he is credited with revolutionizing the game of basketball.

In addition to 2008 being a significant year for the now-octogenarian “Mr. Basketball,” it was an astounding one for his former team. The Celtics had just won the NBA Finals— the franchise’s first World Championship title in 22 years—when I met with Cousy, which made the timing for our interview even more ideal. Who’d be better than the “Cooz,” a six-time world champion himself, to discuss the team’s winning strategy; Doc Rivers’s coaching techniques; and the commendable performance of “The Big Three”: Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce? I can state emphatically that listening to Bob Cousy talk openly about the Celtics and today’s game of basketball was an exceptional delight.

As one may expect, a conversation with the NBA’s MVP for the 1956-1957 season would focus on all things basketball-related. And ours did. But whether it was the topic of basketball about which we spoke or the myriad of other subjects that comprised our conversation—religion; current events; racism; his health; golf; his beloved alma mater (which erected on its campus this summer a bronze, life-sized statue of Cousy and in November lifted to the rafters his basketball jersey); being part of this year’s “rolling rally” victory parade in Boston to honor the NBA champions; his family; or politics—Cousy demonstrated that he’s far from being a one-dimensional character.

He is a thinking person, who once believed that bigotry was the biggest problem in the world and who nearly succumbed to the imprisoning demands of his celebrity and the unrelenting pressure of his role as basketball’s unanimously acclaimed individual player. He is a man who realized in the mid-1950s that he had frittered away some of his chances for self-improvement during college, and so started to read regularly and began a ritual of learning five new words from the dictionary every Monday morning and using them in sentences throughout the week. In 1956, he marketed his name to PF Flyers for the manufacture of custom-made basketball shoes—it was the first-ever affiliation between a professional basketball player and a sneaker company. (Go to www.pfflyers.com/cousy and watch inspiring videos of the Cooz at play and learn the history of Cousyy’s collaboration with PF Flyers.). He broadened his sphere in the world of professional sports and became Commissioner of the American Soccer League from 1974 to 1979. He is a contented and wise lover of life, who today is more apt to read the latest best-selling nonfiction book or watch cable television news shows than he is to watch a game of basketball until the final buzzer.

Here is “The Magician,” Bob Cousy. Enjoy him in all of his loquacious grandeur and captivating charm.

Amy O’Loughlin: Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed. I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to speak with me. You have a beautiful home here. I take it that this is your office?
Bob Cousy: Yes, we’ve been here forty-three years, and it’s worked out very well. Our two daughters [Marie and Ticia] went to school next door at Notre Dame Academy and walked through the bushes to go to school. We have about four acres of land behind us and we’re just five minutes from downtown and we’ve got the isolation and privacy we need. We’ve done well. It’s a little big now for [my wife], me and our French poodle. During the [Holy Cross] statue dedication, we had a houseful. We had eleven guests and it came in handy.

O’Loughlin: Yes, congratulations on the statue dedication. Did everything go well?
Cousy: It went very well. It’s unusual when you plan something for two years—I wasn’t involved in that part of it, but the committee was—and everything goes off pretty flawlessly. Everyone was happy. It had drizzled for three days prior, but the weather cleared up. So I told two of the priests involved that they were the two who got us through with flying colors.

O’Loughlin: The timing for this interview with you is perfect. Not only as a way to honor you and your achievements—which, I think, is a very important story—but also to learn about your involvement and sentiments regarding the Celtics’ big win. What was it like to be a part of the Duck Boat parade that wound through the streets of Boston?
Cousy: The Celtics won on a Tuesday, and I went [to the Garden] on that Thursday not knowing what to expect from the parade. Because when we’d win a championship —six times in a row—two days later we’d have a breakup dinner at the local hotel and about a dozen fans would show up. We’d all kiss and say “Good-bye” and “See ya’ in November.” And we’d all go off and play golf. This [parade] thing, as I said I had no idea what to expect, I have never seen anything like it. There had to have been a million-and-a-quarter people on a Thursday morning throughout that whole route! There were green people everywhere! They were hanging from the trees and the poles. I asked our Duck Boat driver after he took us back, “Did you work the Red Sox and the Patriots parades?’” He said that he worked both and that there were more people there that day than the other two [parades] put together. I’m sure weather had something to do with it. . . . But the point is, basketball, historically, had been in New England, at least, so far behind other sports. And in the fifties and sixties, [the Celtics] were the low men on the totem pole. Every other sport, including hockey, was way ahead of us. [Basketball] hadn’t been established in New England. So, it’s caught up. I’d say eighty percent of the people were young people, so [basketball] is capturing the younger generations.

O’Loughlin: It must have been an amazing experience for you as a former Celtic to see that kind of enthusiasm.
Cousy: Oh, yeah! It was! I told [John] Havilcek—he was on our Duck Boat—that I wasn’t going to smile for a month. We stood there for two hours waving and smiling. My shoulders started hurting. But it was very interesting to be part of it. And, as I say, I couldn’t believe the number of people. No matter how you look at it, it’s a great time to be a fan in New England.

O’Loughlin: And for the Celtics, it maybe seemed like it’d be a once-in-a-lifetime win?
Cousy: Yes. Well certainly thank goodness for [Paul] Pierce, who looked like he was going to go through a spectacular career individually, but never getting the brass ring. It was great for him, for all three of them for that matter. [Kevin] Garnett looked like he was going to be buried in Minnesota. No one would ever know anything about him.

O’Loughlin: Garnett brought such passion to their game . . . .
Cousy: Yeah, he did. And it was contagious. And [Coach Doc] Rivers did, I thought, a hell of a job of exploiting and selling them on “ubuntu,” which is just another word for sacrificing for the whole. They bought it, and they sustained it pretty much the entire season.

O’Loughlin: The one-year turnaround that was accomplished is just unbelievable. How do you think Doc Rivers was able to make such a turnaround?
Cousy: Obviously, the talent was provided for him. And as they say on a professional level all the time, if you don’t have the horses, it doesn’t get done. You could be the best manager or coach in the world, but rhetoric doesn’t do it if your talent’s not there. If you’re mediocre, you can get them to perform as well as that standard will allow, but obviously they’re never going to overcome great odds. In college, you can do that sometimes because you’re dealing with younger people. But on a pro level, it’s a lot different. I dropped Doc a note afterwards saying basically those of us who’ve been through it know that it is much easier to coach mediocre talent than it is superior talent, and even though you need the superior talent you still have to draw them together. And now especially when they’re all zillionaires, getting enough money for this life and the next one and all, you have that added challenge. You’ve got to bring twelve egos together, too. So this is where [Rivers] sold him on this village idea; and the fact that Pierce, Garnett and Allen wanted the championship so badly, they all sacrificed and made his job a little easier.

Then, the key was Ainge, I thought. Having “The Big Three” is fine. They were going to perform because they’re all outstanding talents. But he filled in a couple of empty spots that I thought is what made the difference, frankly. Pat Riley found out two years ago in Miami that even with Shaq and [Dwayne] Wade you’re not going to win [unless you lift up the other talent on the team.] And then, you let that that other talent get away and they went literally from first to last. They did the reverse of what the Celtics did. In basketball, unlike other sports as much, you need the complete participation of eight or nine or ten people, and they all have to be on the same wavelength. And Doc put it together. I, frankly, shared your skepticism. And I would say to people last fall that I didn’t think it was possible. Plus, it was compounded by the fact that they didn’t stay here to train. They went to England and their training period was cut short dramatically. So, they had less time to put everything in, but it still came together almost from day one . . . . [Doc] made believers out of them. He deserves a great deal of credit.

O’Loughlin: Controlling the personalities too is a difficult task. . . .
Cousy: Oh yeah, at the professional level it’s almost impossible. And if those guys all had a couple of rings, I don’t think it would’ve happened, frankly. I don’t think they would’ve had the sustained motivation or been ready to sacrifice the way they did. The timing—everything—was right. And now, they may do it again. I don’t know if they’ll repeat it, but at least they’ll be in the hunt for the next couple of years.

O’Loughlin: It’s been so painful to watch Celtics basketball the last couple of years. It was so obvious that Paul Pierce needed somebody. He was always out there trying to do it all on his own.
Cousy: I never knew he could play defense the way he did. He worked hard. My own belief in terms of his Hall of Fame credentials were suspect before this year. In fact, I dropped him a note and said, “Paul, if there was any question about whether or not you belong in the Hall of Fame, your work this year, especially defensively, proved all your critics wrong.” It is difficult when you’re the man, but you’re the only man and there isn’t a lot of help [on the court]. Last year and the season before were such long seasons for Pierce. It’s easy to put your tail between your legs. But this year was a piece de resistance for him. It was nice to see him—to see all three of them—get their due.

O’Loughlin: Do you know the players on a personal level?
Cousy: I used to, Amy. Up until five years ago I was [part of the broadcasting team that called the games] and we were doing fifty games and lots of on-the-road games, so we used to travel on the plane with the players. So, you got to know them reasonably well. We wouldn’t go out and have beer with them after the game or anything like that, but some of those plane rides can be pretty long. So, you’d interact with them and see how they’d interact with their contemporaries. I had a much better idea of them then than I do now. But I do hear from [Jeffrey] Twiss, our PR guy, and a few others who deal with the players all the time and what they tell me is that there are no badasses at all on the team. We used to say the same thing about our teams in the fifties and sixties. Even if we drafted a badass, the situation was so positive: the key guys were all on the same wavelength and wanting to do it the right way that those [types of] guys would never get a chance to influence or penetrate the atmosphere.

There’s been some talk about the three kids the Celtics just drafted. One kid, I guess, has got some negative history. But some people are saying that none of that will get [publicized] here, especially coming into the team the way it is now. The team leaders have been established. Garnett seems to be for real. His passion has been infectious. Pierce is a pretty passionate player, though not quite as demonstrative as Garnett. And Allen is Mr. Cool, but he’s got his moments, too. They are all on the same wavelength emotionally and defensively. That’s what won it for them . . . . People were asking me before the final round started who I thought was favored. Obviously Los Angeles, I said. They’ve got the best player in the league and they scored whatever it was by the numbers. But, I hadn’t seen them play all year long and after the first game I did a flip-flop and said: oh, hell, this’ll be over in five games or six because LA couldn’t play any damn defense. I wrote to my friend, Billy Sharman, who’s still their honorary president, and said, “Billy, that bunch of turkeys you had couldn’t have guarded you and me. What the devil happened out there?” Their heart wasn’t in it, and the Celtics wanted it so badly. That combination is how you end up with a forty point victory, which is so unusual at a championship level and when two teams are fairly evenly matched. The answer is that emotionally the Celtics were sky-high and the Lakers came out flat.

O’Loughlin: How does it feel when you are at a game? Do you look at the court and say to yourself, “I would have played that pass this way . . . ?” Or, “I would have taken the ball to weak side just then . . . . ” Do you find yourself thinking of plays?
Cousy: I’m not a “yesterday” person at all, Amy. I’m a “today/tomorrow” person. I don’t dwell a lot, maybe every now and then. But this year, especially, I got lured back to the past for obvious reasons. Those of us who played in those years can relate to what a great feeling it is for these kids. You’re king of the hill. You can walk into places and get instantly noticed. Basketball is the number two sport in the world, with soccer being the only sport ahead of it. More kids play basketball than any other sport in this country. Someone told me that the NBA Finals were televised in one hundred and seventy-seven countries in the world. Basketball is huge now from the standpoint of participation. Spectator-wise in this country football and baseball are still ahead, but basketball has made such strides in the last twenty to twenty-five years. And with the [Larry] Bird years, that’s when it turned in Boston.

For the first time, really, I can say that . We called the games for the Bird years. We were part of that, and it was nice. But I didn’t have the same passion for it that I did this year. This year, I got very emotional. I don’t go into the games anymore. I’m the Howard Hughes of the sports world. I avoid large crowds of people . . . . Any games that start after my bedtime, I don’t go to. My wife and I watched most of the games from the living room couch. My wife, I think, thought I was going into early senility because I’d be jumping up and throwing things at the television set and screaming. I haven’t done that since, I don’t know, since I played, I guess. I got much more emotionally attached to the outcome. Everything was in place this year . . . so it was easy for this old-timer to get attached to it.

And as far as thinking about play-making when I’m watching, if I’m [broadcasting] the games and the team is running transition or something, I have a habit of going ahead of the play in my mind’s eye, trying to will the point guard to dip his left shoulder to move the defender to go to his right. I used to do it almost instinctively. I don’t do that much anymore . . . . And now, they don’t run transition like we used to. The coaches are more conservative, and there’s more walk-the-ball-up-the-floor. We did some running this year though, and [Rajon] Rondo did a reasonably good job—although he’s insecure about his shooting, which affects his play-making. But, he did come to the floor in the last game. He shot and scored twenty points or whatever it was. He has all the talents to run an up-tempo game; it’s Doc who’d I’d like to talk into speeding it up more. It’d be easy for them, because they have young players and the players who have the speed and athleticism to run more transition. [Tommy] Heinsohn and I have been flailing away at that one for years and nobody listens to us . . . . . Unless you’ve got four or five big Frankenstein monsters and no point guard, obviously you’re not going to run transition. But, that’s unusual. Every college team in the country has a guard—he may not be Steve Nash, but they call him a point guard and he’s the best passer they have. The fun part of the game for basketball players is running up and down the floor, especially offensively. And so, if a kid likes to do something, it becomes more effective. It’s a component that I think ought to be part of every agenda at whatever level of play and certainly in the pros. But I bet there are three, four, maybe five teams out of thirty that rely on any kind of transitional game even the ones with good point guards . . . . My skills were all geared toward the transitional game. If I had to play for a walk-the-ball-up-the-floor coach, we wouldn’t be sitting here. I’d have been bored to death. You would never have heard of me.

O’Loughlin: Do you watch college basketball?
Cousy: No. I guess as you get older a lot of your attitudes and preferences change. Part of that is television viewing. Believe it or not, my wife and I have become addicted to Fox News Channel. And I do a lot of reading, but I’m behind by five books. I did Woodward’s [Bush at War], I did Bernstein’s . . . I’m doing Obama [The Audacity of Hope] now . . . . And good old Bernie Goldberg. I just got through Wimps. . . [Crazies to the Left of Me, Wimps to the Right: How One Side Lost Its Mind and the Other Lost Its Nerve]. My interest has sheered toward current events and politics, which Fox answers for me. We’ll sometimes start at four in the afternoon with Cavuto and go to Gibson and Brit Hume. Then we go over to MSNBC for Matthews because Chris Matthews went to Holy Cross. I like Chris. I’ve met him a few times. I know he’s on the other side. Fox leans to the right. Chris leans to the left. I’ll be honest with you, though; I don’t watch a lot [of college basketball]. After The Final Four, we give out the [Bob Cousy] Point Guard Award. We’ve done it for the last five years or so. The Award is given to the best point guard in the country. I’m kind of ashamed because I have to do some homework before I give it out to find out who these kids are, because I don’t see them during the year . . . . Even watching an NBA game—of course with the exception of this year—I’m not really into as opposed to watching Fox. But I was mesmerized watching the tennis finals at Wimbledon. I have an interest in golf, so I watch the Masters, the Open, and so forth . . . . ”

O’Loughlin: Do you golf everyday?
Cousy: In the winter I do, if I can get out of bed and get on my bike and ride to the first tee and make it safe and sound. In the summer, I play two to three times a week. But I generally hit balls. I’ve reached a point where I prefer hitting balls than playing for four hours. I’ve found that it’s a good way to keep the blood flowing and get a little physical activity in. I play Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. And if someone calls and really twists my arm, I may do it Sunday. Two to three days a week is enough to get the juices flowing. I’m just coming off of a three-day tournament from this weekend, so I’m satiated. I enjoy golf, but I’ve had a terrible swing for years and years and years and I’d never go out and hit practice balls. I jump out of the car, head to the first tee, and start hitting away. So for the last twenty-two years—ever since we got to Florida (The Cousys reside in Palm Beach County during the winter)—the course there has a pretty nice practice area and I’ve gotten into the habit of practicing and targeting balls every day. Although, I noticed this year that the degree of urgency was a little less than it has been, so I’d take a day off here and there.

I had a hip replaced in 2000. It didn’t affect golf, but I had to give up tennis even after all the rehab . . . and even with the “exies” (exercises) that I’ve been doing for thirty years. I hurt my back playing racket ball about twenty-five, thirty years ago, and I got someone to put me on [an exercise] regimen. Every morning I lay right there (Cousy points to the floor of his plush-carpeted foyer), or if I’m in a hotel—it’s almost like brushing your teeth—I’ll get down on the floor and do some “exies” . It takes me twenty minutes to work and warm the blood down to the quads and hamstrings, and then I do the full range. During the rehab for the hip it progresses through stages, and [when you're stable enough] they put you on the machines in the gym. I continued that three times a week. I’d go to Holy Cross where they have a nice health club. I’d go in the mornings at seven-thirty, when there wasn’t a boy in sight. But, there were always nine or ten coeds. The girls would be working off an all-nighter and the boys would be sacked out. The girls would look at me and say “What’s that old fart doing busting in at seven-thirty?” But, this year I stopped doing that, not for any reason but your body tells you what it can do and what it can’t. I’m still with the “exies” every morning on the floor, but I’ve stopped going to Holy Cross. In Florida, we used to go to the Bally’s nearby and my wife would join me. This year she’d say, “‘Do you want to go to Bally’s?” I’d just be back from golf and [having already done] the “exies” and say, ‘Well, I’m just going to lie down for half an hour, and then we’ll go.” Well, we’d never end up making it. That was the end of Bally’s.

For tennis, the lateral movement is okay, but the up-and-down is not. And the barracudas that I play with, if they know I can’t go for the drop shots or the lobs, that’s all they’re going to hit to me. So, I packed it in. In the next life, I’ll come back as an athlete or something. Knowing my competitive nature, my fires are banked, but they’re not out completely. They’re smoldering, and every now and then a small spark will flash up. But, if I went out and played and they kept hitting drop shots, I’d be trying to get to them and I’d fall and hurt myself and wouldn’t be able to play golf. Then, they might as well put me in a pine box. I decided the better part of valor was to forget tennis for this life.

O’Loughlin: Were you pleased with the way the statue at Holy Cross came out?
Cousy: Yes, very much. The twelve committee members worked very hard for two years to put this thing together. Usually when you plan for something [years in advance] nothing turns out right. But, my goodness, there wasn’t a thing out of place, and everything went very well. The flowers even bloomed. My Seattle daughter did a hell of a job with her two or three minutes [of speaking]. It was well received, and the pigeons were all happy with their depository program.

O’Loughlin: I read in the newspaper that you stated in your remarks that one day you’d like to see your statue flanked on one side by an African-American athlete and on the other by a female athlete.
Cousy: The power behind the throne on the committee was Father John Brooks, who was the former president of Holy Cross and who is my hero. He and I have remained close, close friends over the years. He was the one responsible for breaking the color line at Holy Cross. He hand-picked three or four kids from Philadelphia to come to Holy Cross. He was so concerned and anxious to do it effectively, so that everyone was satisfied that academically and character-wise these students would be the first [who'd succeed at college]. He borrowed my wife’s station wagon himself—the President of the school!—and drove all the way to Philadelphia, put them in the car and drove them all the way back [to Worcester]. Incidentally after those forerunners, one student from Holy Cross ended up being Clarence Thomas. And when Anita Hill was doing her thing, I remember I was so proud because at the hearings there were at least three black lawyer-types or businessmen-types all Holy Cross graduates, who testified on Clarence’s behalf. They were magnificent, and it was such great PR for the school. And then, a few years later about seventy-six, [Father Brooks] broke the gender barrier and brought in girls.

[There was a time when] I almost gave up my religion, literally. They made a big fuss out of the fact that I roomed with one of the first African-American players in the league, Chuck Cooper. He was a basketball player and his color was academic. He was high-class and intelligent. We shared similar things: we both liked soft jazz and we used to go to clubs and listen to Earl Garner if he was in town and we’d hang out until two in the morning. The story’s been told about when [Cooper] couldn’t stay in a hotel in Charlotte. We went to Auerbach and said, “Arnold, let’s not make a fuss. After the game we’ll bring our bags and we’ll take the train and sleep the way through.” We got to the platform. Now, I grew up in New York and Chuck went to school in Pittsburgh, and we were fairly sophisticated and we knew there were a lot of bad people out there. We ran into colored and white signs at the platform, which meant we couldn’t even be together. It was the first time I ever saw such a thing. It was so embarrassing. I was embarrassed to be white, and I didn’t know what to say [to Chuck]. And it was at that time that I found out that there were segregated churches in the South. I wasn’t aware. I must’ve been naïve in that regard, because in my mind I could not relate that to religion at all. And in fact, I said in my remarks—and maybe it stemmed from that [realization]—that if a belief system or a philosophy or a religion doesn’t have as its basic tenet the equality of the human, then anything else they tell me to believe becomes irrelevant. So, as I said, I could’ve [given up my religion]. I came very close to it. Maybe it’s not necessarily the church, but it’s certainly bigoted priests. For me, at twenty-three-years-old or how ever old I was, to try to rationalize segregated churches while they preached to me since I reached the age of reason that God loves all of his creation didn’t make any sense. But, getting back to Father Brooks, he was the man who made Holy Cross gender-blind, color-blind and ethnically diversified, which is the way any Catholic Jesuit or non-Jesuit school should be . . . . And that was the point I was making in my remarks, that inclusion is what the Jesuits should reflect: a minority; a female; and a male.

O’Loughlin: Do you see your grandchildren often?
Cousy: No, that’s the problem. My Seattle daughter is the one who produced the two grandkids. My Florida daughter didn’t have any children. The kids and the grandkids used to come home for three weeks in the summer, so we’d see them for that period. And we’d go out [to Seattle] occasionally for special events. And now, one granddaughter has graduated from Santa Clara. They’re both good kids and they’re both geniuses. My granddaughter was summa cum laude. She was National Honor Society, the whole nine yards. We tell our granddaughters that obviously they took after their grandparents. But, unfortunately, we don’t see them as much of them as we’d like.

O’Loughlin: I have here in my notes a section called “Fate, Luck and Destiny.” It pertains to the incredibly well-timed series of circumstances that shaped you into becoming one of the best basketball players in the NBA. At age 12, you and your family moved to St. Albans. You met Morty Arkin, Director of O’Connell Park, where you and your boyhood friends played. He introduced you to the game of basketball, opened your eyes to a whole new world of competition and became your earliest basketball mentor. In your 1957 book, Basketball Is My Life, you tell the story of when you were a boy and you fell out of a tree and broke your right arm. You were in a cast for weeks, so you started to play handball with your left arm. You write: “And although no one told me, somehow or other I got the idea that I had something good going for myself. I made up my mind to play with both hands after my right was O.K. again so I wouldn’t lose the use of my left.” You instinctively developed dexterity as a two-handed ball handler when you broke your arm—an indelible skill that would come to characterize your game. You came to the Celtics in 1950 by virtue of Walter Brown picking your name out of a hat.

How do you interpret these coincidences? Do you believe it was luck, destiny, fate or perhaps an amalgamation of all three? Do you think you would have risen to the level of your career choice if one of these factors had not occurred? And if you had never discovered the game of basketball, what do think you might have done?
Cousy: In my case, my career started with a lot of God-given athletic talent. I was fabricated overseas. I was born six months after the boat landed at Ellis Island. It was 1928, in the heart of the Depression. We went back to the farm my father left—thank God!—which was in a little farming community in northeastern France. This was in the mid-sixties, and I had my two daughters with me—they were eleven and twelve—and I was doing public relations work in France for Gillette, which was one of the few companies doing sports marketing in those days. They hired me, and we went out and did twenty-two cities in twenty-four days and did the whole periphery. We kicked it off with a press conference in Paris. L’Equipe, the big sporting newspaper over there, found out about the human interest story. They said when you get here, we’ll detour and we’ll visit [where your father is from].

I’d had no communication with the family. Family dysfunction breakdown and all that. My father’s three brothers were still mad at my father for leaving the family farm, for leaving them to go where the streets were paved with gold. So we get there, and I found the parish priest and asked him where the Cousy farm was located. We walked up to the door— and of course they don’t expect us or anything—it was [this little house] with earthen floors. No electricity. They had to go out and milk the goats and bring us bread, cheese, and milk.

At that point, I’d been told over and over for twenty years, “Hey Cooz, ole boy, your timing sucks. You were born twenty years too soon.” Because I was the highest paid player in the league when I quit, making thirty-five thousand during my last year. I used to go out [and make speeches] and when I spoke, I’d say: “The highest paid player fifteen years ago was Michael . . . ? What’s his name? Michael . . . ?” And someone from the crowd would yell out: “Jordan!” And I’d say: “Yeah! That’s the sucker! He made thirty-five million during his last season!” So now I’m sitting there [at my father's family farm] and I’m saying to myself: “Oh, boy! If I were born twenty years sooner, I’d be here on the farm picking potatoes all day!”

And so, my uncles are saying to me: “Comment va le bon vivant?” referring to my father, which means “How’s the playboy?” My poor father. From the minute he got here in 1928, he had two jobs, worked eighteen hours a day, died penniless. He was certainly no playboy. It took him twelve years to save five hundred bucks to get us out of that terrible ghetto on the East River and get us out where there was fresh air and hoops. And so, that was the first stroke of pure good luck. I was thirteen when I started to play basketball, which was kind of old even then. Now, it’s ancient—kids start playing basketball these days when they jump out of the womb. Then, seventeen years later I ended up at Holy Cross. Most of my contemporaries never went to college. We didn’t have the wherewithal to even think about college. So, I’d say first, it was the God-given athletic talent, then somehow finding my way to Holy Cross. There was no recruiting done [in those days]. I had a letter from the coach that said essentially “Hey Kid, we need a hotshot. If you want a scholarship, fill out this form.” Which I did. So, I wandered off to school. Ten of us—most of them GIs—wandered in the same way, and we win the damn NCAA! In fairness, the NCAA was not the big deal that it is today, but still. The funny thing about going to Holy Cross was that they had given up their basketball program—it was so low on the totem pole. They had given it up during the war years and resurrected it in forty-five/forty-six— one year before —and now in the second year, we win the NCAA! It was incredible! Again, good fortune. And then, we did well in New England tournaments and went to the NCAA twice more.

After Holy Cross, [my co-captain, Frank Oftring, and I] were going to go into business because we had some notoriety. We’d gone to see some bank presidents and asked them how do we capitalize [on our notoriety]. They said, “Where it’s at is gas stations! Open up a string of gas stations!” Well, we opened up an auto driving school along with [the gas station]. The gas station went down the tubes quickly, but the auto driving school took off like gangbusters. By the middle of the first summer we had three cars going around-the-clock. We were doing the teaching ourselves and we’d hired a couple of other guys, and that’s probably what would have been my career: Cousy and Oftring. We would have had a bunch of auto driving schools until I learned that I’d been drafted by some place called Tri-Cities.

The NBA wasn’t a big deal, and I really didn’t aspire to play on a professional level. I’d never seen an NBA game while I was at school. I had just gotten married and I wasn’t about to move to a tri-city and play for the Tri-Cities Blackhawks. I said, “Geez, I was a pretty good student. I must have slept in class or something. What the hell is a tri-city?” They put that in the headlines of the Tri-City Bugle, which didn’t endear me to the good folk of Tri-Cities. The owner [Ben Kerner] was in Buffalo, so I went up [to meet him] and he said, “What’s it going to take [to get you to sign with the team]?” I said, “Ten thousand, Mr. Kerner.” “Oh God, Cooz, I can’t!” he cried for half an hour. So, I said, “What can you pay me?” He said, “Six thousand.” Well, hell I knew I could do better than that. We had a road tour around New England with all the college players and we’d all made well over ten thousand and I knew I could have done that for another ten years. And The Globetrotters series had just begun, so when [Kerner] said six thousand and I’d have to pick up and move to someplace called Tri-Cities, a place I never heard of, I shook his hand and said, “Thank you very much.” I went home and continued teaching ladies to drive. I guess [Kerner] decided I was serious because he traded me to Chicago [to play for the Stags]. I said it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to Chicago, either. The team disbanded. They dispersed the players, and there were three of us left: [Max] Zaslofsky; [Andy] Phillip and I. New York [Knicks] picked first and they got Max Zaslofsky and they were ecstatic. Philadelphia [Warriors] got Phillip, who became a Hall of Fame point guard. And the only thing left in the damn hat other than the lining was moi. [Celtics owner] Walter Brown called me the next morning and said, “Bob, we picked you out of a hat. Come on in. We’ll talk.” I got there and he said, “What do you need?” And I said to him, “Mr. Brown, I needed ten thousand.” He said, “Would you settle for nine?” I said, “Yeah, not a big deal.” And the rest is history.

Six years later we win the first championship, and I’m around for six of them. Yes, luck had everything to do with [my success]. And I said that in my remarks [at Holy Cross], too. You’ve heard so many jocks over the years get up and say they’re the luckiest jock in the world. I’d put my history up against all of them put together. I can’t imagine things working out any better. So yeah, you need a lot of luck. You need a lot of God-given talent, but you have to be in the right situation, too. I think moving out to St. Albans, which at the time was a hotbed of basketball—that’s all the kids wanted to do—getting to Holy Cross; coming to Boston with Auerbach the same year he joined the Celtics: it was a whole series of fortunate events.

But in fairness also to the idea of continuing success, you also have to exploit opportunities. A lot of people sit on their !!!GREENIAC!!! and just never activate things. I’ve never been aggressive about it, but I’ve always been aware of exploiting situations that develop if they’re available to me. So, to be successful is a combination of all of those things.

O’Loughlin: When you first picked up basketball when you were young, did you know, or could you tell, instinctively that it would become such a huge part of your life?
Cousy: Not really, no. But I do remember the first “organized” game I played was for the Long Island Press League. The Long Island Lindens, we were. We won the game, and I was the high scorer with fourteen points. I wasn’t expected to do much—I wasn’t a good shooter—but in terms of a competitive nature, most good athletes will respond to the moment, even if you are only fourteen-years-old and playing in your first organized game. Good athletes will respond to the high pressure situations better than those with mediocre talent, because when they’re faced with that kind of stress, they generally underachieve. But the good athletes need that kind of motivating factor. Just the fact that you’re all nerved up and you think you’re going to fall apart, but if you’ve got the God-given skills, you don’t. You respond to the moment, and then you overachieve. And after that, the sky is the limit. You’ve got to be practical about it and realistic about it. I was five-ten, five-eleven; and until my senior year in high school I landed All-City as a scorer, I never thought of myself as being a scorer. I thought of myself as more of a passer, so I kind of surprised myself. By nature I’m not a cocky person at all, but I’m also not insecure about the things I know I’m no good at and the things I am. I’ve never been plagued by thinking better—and that’s good—than . Because that always instills the fear factor in whatever it is you want to do in terms of sports. When you’re a little frightened going in to it, you’re always going to overachieve as apposed to thinking, “Well, all I’ve got to do is show up.” Because that’s when you get burned. I suppose if you’re Wilt Chamberlain and you’re seven feet, if you’re towering over everybody, it’s hard to be insecure about your game. But, as a five-ten or eleven guard in high school—in college I eventually got close to six-two—it was the same situation for me as it was for Magic Johnson, who was six-nine as a point guard, and even Steve Nash at six-four—these guys [take into account their size and know their performance level]. So, being a little taller and stronger, I guess, you could fall into that trap of becoming overconfident about your game. But that never happened with us. Me and my contemporaries, we were just out there working at it as hard as we could.

During my first six years with the Celtics, we did pretty much as well as we could, which is the criteria for achievement in anything. If you work hard and do the best you can and get to be as good as you possibly can be, that’s what it’s all about. Auerbach had a lot to do with that [philosophy]. His first six years with the Celtics we all knew we were never going to win anything, but every day of every season we probably always overachieved. That’s how you do it, though, in professional sports. You’ve got to have the talent. You can overachieve one day, but you won’t continually do it if the skills aren’t there. And then, you’ve got to have the temperament to complement those skills. For me, I’m assuming my ghetto experience honed whatever killer instinct I needed.

O’Loughlin: It is certainly challenging to face that pressure of having to get geared up physically and mentally for that next game, night after night. That pressure to perform. What would you do to manage that demand?
Cousy: Yes, it’s difficult, but it’s a motivating factor, too. The last two or three years [before I retired] when I knew that every father had his kids at the game saying, “There’s the best basketball player in the world! Watch and see what he does!” Once I started to recognize that and also to recognize that my skills were starting to fade, that’s the kind of pressure that no longer becomes a motivating factor. I was lucky, however, because I really dodged that bullet, because by then I was surrounded by these five or six Hall of Famers. My getting-on in years—I was thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, whatever it was when I quit—were kind of hidden behind them. I could do my play-making skills and I could fake it in playoff competition when the pressure does become so magnified. In my mind I’d do it as if I was going to do it myself. I’d pass off to one of the five teammates that I was playing with: Sam Jones; [Bill] Russell; [Tommy] Heinsohn; [Frank] Ramsay; [Bill] Sharman. I was surrounded. I couldn’t have done it if I’d been like Paul Pierce had been— all by myself out there—knowing my skills were eroding and having reached certain pinnacles and knowing the parents were saying, “There was the greatest player in the world!” The fear of falling off the pedestal gets so big and it gets you to wonder. But, up until that point I knew what I could do. I knew my limitations.

I think [how you handle the pressure] though depends on your makeup. I listen to [the commentators] and they’re always saying, “Boy, is that guy a competitor!” Well cripes, they’re all competitors! You don’t reach that level [of professional play] unless you’re competitive! But, there are degrees of preparedness. I’ve said it often and I still believe it today, today’s jock will work every bit as hard as the Celtics did this year to get to the top of the hill the first time—because they’re just as competitive as we were. But, I don’t think any of them today will work as hard to stay on top of the hill as we did forty years ago. Because what they have today works against them. We were making two or three times what the average [professional] was making at the time. Now they’re making so many millions of dollars that it’s difficult to maintain this killer instinct. When you’ve got everything you want, you’ve got limos waiting to take you anywhere, you’re behind armed guards, you’ve got [surveillance] monitoring your property—it’s a distraction.

I’ve said many times that they’ll never be dynasties again. As I’ve said I don’t go out in public much anymore and I didn’t used to boast. I’m not a yesterday person, but whenever I’m interviewed I assert the past and say that what I’m most proud of is having played a role in the greatest team sport dynasty that this country will ever produce. I understand that records are made to be broken, but that one [winning eleven NBA championships in thirteen years] will stand forever because of the circumstances. When Michael’s team a few years ago won three in a row, I’d be getting these phone calls: “Is this the best team that ever was?” I’d say, “Wait a minute! We’re eleven out of thirteen! They won three in a row. Wait a few years, and then ask me the question!” Well, you know, people always obviously remember the present better than do anything else. But, that’s something that will never be done again. Eleven out of thirteen years in a team sport at a time when it was tougher to do. The players today are bigger, stronger, more athletic—I’m not saying they’re not. But, there wasn’t the number of teams then that there are now, and the talent level was much more concentrated. That was the time when the old cliché about the last place team beating the first place team used to happen frequently. There wasn’t that much difference [between the teams]. So, it was a lot harder to dominate the way those units did. To win eleven out of thirteen years, that will never be replicated. I don’t care what the conditions are—unless, of course, they revert back and start paying these guys a normal wage and year-to-year contracts. That’ll never happen. So, I’m very proud to have played a role in that, because that’s going to be forever. It’s never going to be surpassed.

O’Loughlin: You visited the White House several times during your career. You met Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Reagan. What was that like?
Cousy: Yes, we were invited six times. Eisenhower was the first. He was kicking off his physical fitness program, and I represented professional basketball. In fact, Russell was there and he represented college basketball. What struck me about the Eisenhower visit was that everything was done on a minute-to-minute schedule. There were about fifteen or eighteen of us and we waited in the green room. An aide came in and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, would you please form a semi-circle. The President will be down in exactly a minute-and-a-half.” And in exactly a minute-and-a-half, Eisenhower showed up. Of course, with his military background he would anyway. I was impressed because he went around and shook everyone’s hand and had appropriate remarks, so you knew he’d been briefed a little bit. “Bob, how’s your basketball?” or whatever it was. He had something appropriate to say. That was impressive as opposed to [President] Johnson. I went back twice for Johnson. In those days, The Big Brother of the Year Award was presented at the White House. Johnson was the recipient the year before, and I was the recipient that year (1965). You could tell [Johnson] didn’t know why he was there. I had both of my daughters with me—they were nine and ten— and he was nice to them. Everyone else he was terribly rude to; and the press, he’d be screaming at all of them. The press jumped in as we entered the Oval Office. They were jockeying for position and falling on each other, and he got pissed off and screamed at them again. I went back the next year because Billy Graham won [the award], and they always asked the former recipient to come back [to present the award to that year's winner]. We sat for twenty minutes, maybe a half hour waiting for [Johnson] to arrive. As far as punctuality goes, I remember Eisenhower was the [best at it]. John F. Kennedy was like one of the boys. It ended up being fun to be with him and, of course, he had his Massachusetts connections. It was cute—the story that came out of that visit. [Tom] Satch Sanders was our rookie that year and Satch was so nerved-up. As the President was saying good-bye to all of us on his way out, he said to Satch, “Tom, thank you for joining us this morning. Congratulations.” And Satch said, “Yeah. Take it easy, baby.” And the President looked up, and it was just hilarious! That phrase was just coming into use and that’s all Satch could think of. Sports Illustrated did a story on it. It was real cute. My wife and I went back for Reagan when we had a small exhibit—I don’t know if it’s even still there—in the Smithsonian. They did some updating of ornamentation or whatever, but the focal point was anyone who’d been involved with the Smithsonian was invited [to the White House]. Reagan spoke to the group, but I didn’t have any personal contact with him. We were invited by Nixon, but that was during the [Vietnam] War years, when I coached the United States against the big, bad Russians. In the spring of nineteen seventy-three, the AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) brought the Russian (Olympic) team back to make some money. They asked me to coach, and we played six games and won four out of the six. We played in Baltimore. Nixon invited us to the White House for acknowledgment. All of my guys were anti-Nixon and they politely declined. So, we didn’t go . . . . But, the other five visits were great. It was interesting to get a glimpse of how the political world runs. It’s a nice experience to look back on.

O’Loughlin: In 2000, you sold a lot of your memorabilia. Were there any specific pieces that you held on to?
Cousy: We used to have it all in the cellar. [When we decided to sell, the auction company] was here for three days inventorying everything. I said to them a few times, “Guys, this is junk. You’re not going to get . . . .” “Oh, no, no!” they said. “This is your junk. You’ll be amazed [at how much things will go for!"] My wife used to sneak down in the middle of the inventorying and she’d grab little pieces when they weren’t looking. So, she’s saved a few and we’ve accumulated a few more since then. There’s enough left. The only time I used to go down to the cellar was when a friend or someone would bring by his twelve-year-old son and I’d say, “Okay, come on down. Let’s look at the old days.”

O’Loughlin: So, you had no real attachment to your collectibles?
Cousy: Well, I don’t know. I probably would have kept it. We split the proceeds and gave them to our daughters. [Selling] came at a timely fashion, especially for my Seattle daughter because the grandkids were just starting college. To me, it was done for a good cause. As I’ve said, I’m not a yesterday person. I can’t say I had an emotional attachment to the stuff. It was going to sit there. The jacket they gave the fifty best players ever—the jacket was just going to hang in the closet. Some of the laminated plaques when I retired—there were about eighteen of them—my wife snuck only one away. Eighteen of them we had on the wall and they depicted my career of thirteen years with the Celtics. They were well-preserved and they were nice. If I brought someone downstairs, I used to like to point out the different years. [Parting with the memorabilia] wasn’t traumatic. I wouldn’t have sold it just for the sake of selling it . . . . [The reasons for selling] far outweigh, in my mind, hanging on to old relics. How much do you need of the old days to focus your attention?

O’Loughlin: Do you have a favorite piece?
Cousy: Well, I don’t know. The [Bob Cousy] Point Guard trophy is nice and [giving out the Award] has worked out very well. Hopefully, it’ll last for a few more years. By the way, they used the same sculpture for the Holy Cross statue. That’s a seven-foot five replica of this trophy.

O’Loughlin: That piece has an interesting–looking sketch of you. It reads: “Presented to Bob Cousy. Player of the Decade.”
Cousy: Oh, yes. That’s from the Philadelphia Sportswriters. Player of the decade [from the fifties]. Fifty-seven was, I guess, my piece de resistance. We not only won our first championship, but I won the MVP award. An MVP is a big man award, and I was the first point guard to win it—now there’s been about five others and Steve Nash has won it twice. He almost won it a third time.

O’Loughlin: I was beyond privileged this March when I had the chance to meet Steve Nash when Phoenix played the Celtics. A dear friend who works for the NBA gave me tickets to the game. I brought to the game a friend who works in marketing for the Boston Breakers, the women’s professional soccer team. She had some promotional materials to give to Steve Nash, who is heavily investing in women’s professional soccer here in the U.S., as well as in Canada. After the game, we were introduced to him. He was kind and so friendly.
Cousy: He’s a good guy. I dropped him a note when he won the first [MVP award], and he wrote me a nice note back.

O’Loughlin: You’ve been interviewed hundreds, maybe thousands of times. Is there a question that has never been asked of you that you’ve always wished had been? Or a topic that you would have liked to discuss, but never had the opportunity to do so?
Cousy: Oh, I don’t know, Amy. There’s a kid in the pro shop [at my golf course], one of the assistant pros. He’s a sports fan. He’s always asking, “Mr. Cousy, of all the people you’ve ever met, who are the most . . . ?” You’ve caught me by surprise with the question, and I haven’t been asked that question. I just don’t have a good answer. I haven’t had time to think about it. But, I said to the kid that probably the private audience with the Pope was a very significant moment for me. That one’s up there [on the list]. Arthur Ashe has always been my kind of hero, because I thought he handled the race situation with dignity and class; he helped his cause because he wasn’t inflammatory. He wasn’t Al Sharpton. He wasn’t my good buddy Bill Russell or even my friend Jesse Jackson, who’s come here to Worcester once or twice to help us out. But, the way they handled it is fine, too. If you’re under that kind of pressure, well . . . we all react differently. Sometimes when I do something I’m ashamed of and when the pressure’s on, I revert back to my roots. Instead of shaking the guy’s hand after losing, you want to kick him in the groin. Those things stay with you. But, with an issue like [race], I’m sure Arthur Ashe in the privacy of his own thoughts used to say, “Those white SOBs!” and I don’t blame him. I can empathize with Russell. He was king of the hill after I left. When I got into Worcester Country Club I found out years later that the secret committee [only asked one thing] when my name went through. It was: “If we let him in, do you think we’re going to have Russell up here?” When you’re sitting on top of the sports world in Boston and you can’t play at the local country club and people are breaking into your house, how would any of us react? I don’t know. But, what I’m saying—from a distance—Arthur Ashe’s approach I respected because he didn’t turn off the moderates, he handled it with dignity, he didn’t become an Uncle Tom. He fought the good fight. I think he did his cause immeasurable good. It’s easy to tell the other guy to turn the other cheek when it’s not your cheek. It takes a lot of willpower and discipline to do what Arthur Ashe did—and, as a result, I think the benefits are far greater. Therefore, I have great respect for Arthur Ashe. And I mentioned [Arthur Ashe] to the kid, too. And, as I’ve said, meeting the Pope was “pretty cool,” as the kids say today.

O’Loughlin: I think we’ve come to the end of our time together. Is there anything you’d like to say in closing?
Cousy: Well, as far as the Celtics win, it’s capped not only my year, but it’s made me ready to go off to the big golf course in the sky now a happy camper.