The John Havlicek Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Thursday, October 18th,
2007
You played two seasons with Hall of Fame standout Frank Ramsey, who is widely regarded as the NBA's first great "Sixth Man". It's a role that you would make your own, and take to an even greater level of recognition. Were you comfortable coming off the bench during those early years?
Coming
off the bench
never bothered me, because basketball is a team game. It takes a total
team effort, and it takes everyone buying into their role and playing it to
the best of their ability. The sixth man role is very important to a
ballclub - it was back then, and it is equally as important today. I
had confidence in my game, and I knew that I had the ability to start, which
is something that evolved over time, but joining a team loaded with talent
meant that I would have to wait my turn. We had Tom Heinsohn, Satch
Sanders, Frank Ramsey, Jim Loscutoff and Gene Guarilia. All of these
guys played the forward position, and all of them had the NBA experience
that I lacked as a rookie. So coming off the bench didn't affect me in
a negative way. Like I said, I was confident in my ability to play the
game of basketball. Besides, one thing I learned from Red Auerbach was
that it's not who starts the game, but who finishes it, and I generally was
around at the finish.
You were involved in one of the greatest plays in NBA history, a play that
was instantly immortalized by Boston Celtics radio legend Johnny Most - the
steal of Hal Greer's inbounds pass in the 1965 NBA Eastern Conference
Finals. Your steal sealed the game and sent the Celtics back to the
NBA Finals, where Boston would win a seventh consecutive NBA Championship.
Please take me back, and give me your perspective on the greatest steal in
NBA history.
Well,
it's Game 7 against Wilt Chamberlain and the Philadelphia 76ers. We're
up by a point with five seconds to play, 110-109, and we have possession of
the basketball. Bill Russell takes the ball out of bounds and hits the
guide wire, and Philadelphia immediately regains possession. At this
point, everyone was concerned about the ruling because of the guide wire,
but we quickly learned that Philadelphia was going to retain possession of
the ball.
Red always said that you always needed to figure out some way to find an edge. Some of the things he would come up with were just ridiculous [laughs], but he really drove that into us from the very beginning. So, when I found myself on the court in that situation, I said to myself that the only thing that I could do to get a possible edge, is that when the ball is handed to Hal Greer, who was taking the ball out of bounds, I could actually try to time the pass and have a shot at deflecting or stealing the inbounds pass. I knew that as soon as he was handed the ball that he had five seconds to put in in play. So I counted. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three...
Most of the time the ball is delivered within the first three seconds. But I get to one thousand four, and the ball hasn't been inbounded yet. So at that point you're trying to keep visual contact with the man out of bounds with the ball, and with the person that you're defending. When I got to four a gave a little look, and it allowed me to see the play develop a little better. Had I had my back to the ball, Hal Greer would have lobbed the ball right over my head. But that little look allowed me to get a better perspective, and it convinced me that I could get a hand on this one. And I got up in front of the ball, and momentarily controlled it before kicking it out to Sam Jones.
Bill Russell acted as player/coach of the Boston Celtics following Red Auerbach's retirement in 1966, winning NBA championships following the 1967-68 and 1968-69 seasons. Several other teammates went on to coach in the NBA, including Bob Cousy, KC Jones, Tom Heinsohn, Paul Silas and Don Nelson. Were you ever interested in coaching?
No,
not really. I knew very early on that I wouldn't enjoy coaching, in
large part because I was such a disciplined player. I felt that I was
a very coachable player because of that, but that isn't always the case when
it comes to the relationship between the coach and the players.
Oftentimes, players don't get on the same page as the coach, and I would
have found that frustrating. I would have been very hard on myself.
The Celtics used to call me about coaching, but they pretty much knew what the answer was going to be, so they finally stopped calling. Whenever the Celtics were changing coaches in the 70's and 80's, Red Auerbach would call and say, 'Okay, for the record, do you want to coach?' I'd always say, 'No,' and then he'd say, 'Goodbye.' I think Red knew that coaching wasn't for me, but he wanted to extend the offer anyway. It was a show of respect on his part. The Celtics were a family, and for the most part he looked within the family when hiring his coaches. Russell, Heinsohn, Satch Sanders, Dave Cowens, KC Jones. Red hired his guys because he trusted them, and he knew that they were going to do their best to help the Celtics win another championship.
You had an up-close view of those great battles between Bill Russell and
Wilt Chamberlain. What stands out in your mind?
It
wasn't a matter of Wilt-versus-Russell with Bill. He would let Wilt score 50
if we won, and there were times when that was the case. The most
important things to Bill were championships, rings and winning.
He was never after the personal stats. Wilt could raise the level of
his game, he could do things that were eye-popping when you reviewed the box
score, but he could never figure out how to make his teammates around him
better. Bill was always there to win the important possessions, to
grab the key rebounds, to make the key blocks, to trigger a key fast breaks.
He played a completely different game than Wilt. It was a mental game,
a psychological game. And it was a big weapon whenever Bill went up
against Wilt, because in Wilt's mind, Bill already had Wilt's number.
The battle was already won before it ever started. Wilt would never
admit it, but Bill knew he was in Wilt's head. And he used that to his
advantage.
What makes the Lakers-Celtics rivalry so special?
Well,
it started in the 60s, with all of those great battles in the Finals.
Jerry West and all of those guys going up against Bill Russell, Sam Jones and
the rest of us. And then you had the Bird-Magic rivalry that increased the
intensity to a completely different pitch, because you had two great players who
basically saved the league from irrelevance and also took it to a new height.
In the nineties you had the Dream Team, with Larry and Magic on the same team,
and that added something to it. And then you had a renewal of the rivalry
with Paul Pierce and Kobe Bryant going at each other in the Finals. You
had Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen going for their first title. You had Paul
injuring his knee in that first game, only to come back and win the MVP award
while leading the Celtics back to the title.
Today everything has gotten so big. There is some much media coverage, in so many forms. Newspaper, radio, television, the Internet. Those things all help fuel the fire when it comes to great rivalries. I don't even think there were people who traveled with us when we won some of those early championships [laughs].
The continuity of those great Celtics teams is truly remarkable.
The
Celtics always had an older, more experienced person to pass along the team
philosophy. Bob Cousy and Bill Sharman were a great backcourt tandem,
and they passed that along to KC and Sam [Jones]. Frank Ramsey passed
the Sixth Man role to me. Russell retires, and along comes
Cowens. It's just the way we did things, and it was a big part of our
success.
With Red, he was very loyal to his players. The first eight or nine years of my career we never even made a trade. We picked people up off of waivers, but Red had this ability to see a player, and see the talent that he had, and basically mold that individuals talent into a team effort. It wasn't who scored the most points, or who did this or that. He always said it was about your value to the team. And everyone had a certain value. As I mentioned before, Tom Sanders and KC Jones were great defensive players. Of course there's no one like Bill Russell. He was the guy who made the Celtics great.