The Bob Brannum Interview
Written By: Michael D. McClellan | He played basketball in an era when fists flew as freely as the two-handed set shots that defined a generation. Think John Wayne on hardwood, and you begin to feel the essence of Bob Brannum. A man’s man, Brannum was a blue collar warrior who approached the game with reckless abandon, diving for loose balls and detesting the effort of those who did not follow his example. Equally adept and taking a charge or delivering a hard foul, the gritty Brannum simply let his game do the talking. And while his contributions to the team often flew below the public’s radar, they were never lost on those fortunate enough to play alongside him.
Plucked from the farmlands of his native Kansas, Brannum traveled east to play collegiate basketball for the legendary Adolph Rupp. How many hoopsters can say that they’ve been coached by the two biggest names in the business? Brannum can. He can tell you stories about Rupp, an ornery cuss if ever there was one, and then, without missing a beat, recount what it was like to play professionally for a burgeoning genius in Red Auerbach. He can also tell you about a collegiate career interrupted by military duty, a subsequent transfer to Michigan State, and about barnstorming exhibitions played in high school gymnasiums all over New England. Imagine Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls coming to your hometown to play the Los Angeles Lakers. Then imagine them doing it again the next night, in the next small town just down the highway. Unfathomable today, but Brannum can tell you what it was like to be basketball’s ambassador at such a grassroots level. Want to talk NBA games played at the stroke of midnight? Bob Brannum knows a little something about that, too.
Fierce, loyal, competitive; Brannum was the quintessential teammate, a rugged, raw-boned player willing to do the dirty work so vital to winning basketball games. He was aggressive on the court – the great Bob Cousy flourished in large part because of Brannum’s relentless, hard-hitting style – and his reputation as both protector and enforcer was league-renowned. Brannum, in fact, was all of these things and more – the youngest collegiate All-American in NCAA history, bodyguard to the game’s incomparable pass-master, and later, the longtime coach of golf and basketball at Brandeis University.
Brannum’s odyssey from Depression Era youth to NBA pioneer began in Winfield, Kansas. He graduated from high school at sixteen, a year too soon for military action, thus postponing an inevitable date with World War II. Rupp, in Kansas on business, came away from his visit intrigued with Brannum’s basketball skills – so much so that he invited the tough-as-nails post player to Lexington for an official tryout. A scholarship to play for the mighty Wildcats followed. Brannum was quick to validate Rupp’s belief in him, concluding a sensational freshman season by being named a consensus All-American. Kentucky’s Baron had struck oil yet again.
The military came calling after his sophomore season, yet this didn’t stop Brannum from honing his basketball skills. He played in a league on his base, battling with fellow Kentucky star Alex Groza, unaware that the two players would later be pitted against each other in an historic confrontation on Michigan State’s campus. The more they played, the more they learned about each other – and about themselves. Groza, later indicted in a point shaving scandal that rocked the sports world, was the more natural pivot. Brannum was more comfortable at forward.
Brannum returned to Kentucky following his discharge only to find that the basketball landscape had shifted dramatically during his absence. While Rupp was as ornery as ever, the UK basketball program was suddenly overrun with talent. So stocked was the Wildcat roster that two All-Americans, Brannum and Jim Jordan, had to earn their way back onto the team. This didn’t sit well with Brannum, who later transferred north, to Michigan State University, where he led the Spartans against his ex-mates in a game for the ages. Playing before a packed crowd at Jenison Fieldhouse, Brannum thoroughly outplayed Groza and the rest of Kentucky’s Fabulous Five. Scoring more than half his team’s points, Brannum and the underdog Spartans fell just short of a major upset, losing 47-45. Brannum finished with 23 points, while only one other Spartan cracked double-figures. No other MSU player had more than five. Said Rupp afterwards: Michigan State has a fine team, and they were keyed up for us tonight. This huge crowd tonight showed how badly they wanted to beat us. Rupp’s failure to credit Brannum directly was, in the Baron’s own perverse way, praise at the highest level.
The Sheboygan Redskins of the National Basketball League came next, followed by a brief stop with the Fort Wayne Pistons. From there Brannum was traded – along with future Hall of Famer Bill Sharman – to the Boston Celtics. Auerbach liked Brannum’s toughness, something he thought the team sorely lacked. Cousy benefited almost immediately. With brawls breaking out in nearly every game during this era, Brannum’s presence made the opposition thing long and hard about roughing up the game’s greatest showman. As an added bonus, the Celtics were suddenly a perennial playoff team.
“It was a great luxury to have Bob on the team, and to have him playing the role of protector,” Bob Cousy remarked years later. “It definitely made my job a lot easier.”
You were born on May 28th, 1926, three years before the stock market crash. What memories do you have of the Great Depression?
I don’t remember the crash itself, but I do vividly remember my dad and his brothers being out of work, and unable to get anything but part time jobs. My dad had a Model T, which really wasn’t much more than four wheels and an engine, and he attached the belt from that old car to a saw so that he could cut wood. He worked on my uncle’s farm, cutting wood for two dollars a cord. I remember one time when he went into town to cash his check, only to learn that the bank had gone under and closed its doors. That was in 1930. He also worked on a farm. He’d walk four miles, make a dollar a day, and walk four miles back home.
Please take me from your hometown of Winfield, Kansas to Lexington, Kentucky.
I graduated from high school at sixteen. World War II was in progress at that time, but back then you weren’t eligible for the military draft until your seventeenth birthday. During my senior year, a gentleman from the army base in Winfield saw me play. His name was Major Boxley. He came to several games, was impressed with what he saw, and figured I’d make a pretty good college player. He was friendly with Adolph Rupp. He called Rupp and told him that there was a prospect in Kansas he might want to take a look at. Two prospects, actually, because my twin brother also played on the team and was a pretty good player himself.
Rupp had a trip planned for Halstead, which is about thirty-five miles north of Wichita and eighty miles north of Winfield, so our mother packed us into the car and drove us up there. We met Rupp, and he asked us if we’d consider going to the University of Kentucky. At that point we hadn’t considered college. We both figured we’d find jobs or go into the military, but he convinced us that we should try out for the team. Rupp gave us twenty dollars apiece to pay for the train ride to Lexington. We could only afford tickets in the standing section of the train, which meant we were on our feet from Kansas to Chicago. From there we caught a trolley to Lexington. I was scared to death.
Rupp worked us out two-on-two, and we were impressive enough that he offered both of us a scholarship. I went to summer school and took the necessary classes to get in. I wasn’t a bad student, but I wasn’t a good one, either. I joined the team in late September, started working out with them, and immediately got married. Rupp was flabbergasted. He thought we were too young. We got into the women’s housing for three dollars a week rent.
In 1944, you were named a consensus first-team All-American. Hall of Fame NFL quarterback Otto Graham and NBA legend George Mikan were also selected. Did you know either of these gentlemen?
I didn’t know Otto, but I knew Mikan well. He played for the Lakers, so it was natural that we fought a lot. We played against each other on those [barnstorming] exhibitions between the Celtics and Lakers, and then met several more times during the regular season. There were plenty of battles. But I did know Leo Klier from Notre Dame, and Bob Kurland from Oklahoma A&M. I never dreamed of becoming an All-American, and I would have thought you were crazy for suggesting it.
Where were you when you found out you were an All-American?
Back then there wasn’t March Madness. The NCAA didn’t pay anything, and Rupp wasn’t going to send his team to a lesser tournament, so we were getting ready to go to the NIT when I found out the news. We went to New York City for the awards ceremony, had a nice dinner, and received a watch to commemorate the event. It was quite an honor. A lot of people don’t know this, but I was the youngest player ever to be selected as an All-American. Paul Walther of Tennessee was the youngest ever nominated. They called him ‘Lefty.’ He was a great guard, but he never made it through the selection process. I was seventeen years old at the time of my selection.
Your college basketball career was interrupted by World War II, when you served two years in the military. During your tour of duty, you were teammates with Alex Groza on an armed forces team at Fort Hood, Texas. What stands out most in your mind about this period in your life?
The damned army, that’s what stands out [laughs]. As far as playing basketball with Groza, we had to figure out who was going to play the pivot. Alex was taller and a lot smoother than me – I was what you’d call a fifty percent shooter, because I’d always miss my first shot and have to follow it up to make a basket – so he ended up in the middle and I ended up playing forward.
You returned to UK but didn’t stay.
I went back to UK after being discharged. There were plenty of players on the roster, but there was more to it than that. Adolph Rupp was a great basketball coach, a Vince Lombardi-type, but he wasn’t a nice man – at least not in the gymnasium. Outside of basketball he was pleasant enough. When it came to coaching he was going to win at all costs, and before the SEC tournament he decided to remove me and Jim Jordan from the traveling squad. Looking back we should have known what was going on. Rupp didn’t like us, for whatever reason, and he wasn’t too subtle about showing it. That year he had the entire team rooming on the same floor, except for me and Jim. Our rooms were two floors above the rest of the team. We were treated like outcasts and then left off the traveling squad, so I decided to transfer to Michigan State.
How did you end up at Michigan State?
Michigan State had a graduate who was a doc in the military. He got passes for us to play ball and to get off the base, things like that – he could get around the military brass where we couldn’t. While I was still in the service he asked if I wanted to go to MSU. I turned him down at the time, but he said that the invitation was open if I ever changed my mind.
On January 10th, 1948, UK traveled to East Lansing, pitting your new team against your old one. Though heavily favored, the Wildcats only won by two, 47-45. You outplayed Groza in that contest, outscoring him 23 to 10. What did it mean for you to play so well against your former team?
I tried to play well against everyone, regardless of the competition. I was hard-nosed and didn’t like to get beat, so anytime we lost was very disappointing. That game was bigger than most. It was the biggest crowd to ever watch a basketball game in Jenison Fieldhouse, mostly because Rupp brought the Fabulous Five with him and everyone wanted to see an upset. Kentucky had things going their way until Rupp decided to freeze the ball. I scored two quick baskets to tie the game at 43. The crowd was loud all game long, but it was even more so after we tied the score. We came up on the short end, which was extremely disappointing. I really wanted to stick it to Rupp.
Groza won back-to-back national championships while at UK, as well as an Olympic gold medal. His achievements were forever tarnished because of his involvement in a point-shaving scandal during the 1949 NIT tournament (then the premiere collegiate basketball tournament, and determiner of the national championship), and the NBA banned Groza for life. Where were you when you heard the news?
I was in a car, driving with Red Auerbach, when he turned to me and said, ‘They picked up Groza and [Ralph] Beard last night.’ My first thought was that [Celtics owner] Walter Brown had pulled off some kind of deal to sign those guys, and that I was going to be out of a job. Then Red explained that they had accepted $2,000 apiece to shave points in a game against Loyola University. Kentucky was the favorite in that game, but they ended up losing by seven or eight points [67-56]. But they hadn’t planned on losing. They just wanted to keep the score close enough to cover the spread. Dale Barnstable was the third player caught up in the scandal.
Any idea why the mafia would target Groza?
Alex liked money. He liked pulling a couple of hundred dollars from his wallet and showing it around. His brother, Lou, was a place-kicker for the Cleveland Browns. He always kept Alex flush with money, so I can see where he would have been tempted to shave points. It was still a shock, and it made me mad to know that he’d been involved in something like that.
Your first three NBA seasons were spent with the Sheboygan Redskins and, briefly, Fort Wayne. Please tell me about this period in your career.
I was drafted by St. Louis and Sheboygan after my junior year at Michigan State. Back then the class had to graduate to be eligible, so I had to wait. It was tough. My wife was expecting our second child, I was getting $110 per month from the government, and I had a mountain of doctor bills to pay. I ended up signing with Sheboygan. That first year we were a really bad team – there were a couple of decent basketball players on the roster, but we started a 5’-10” guard and a 6’-2” forward. These guys really weren’t basketball players, but that’s all we had.
Sheboygan was a member of the NBL – the National Basketball League – and I remember traveling all over the place. There were always exhibitions to play. Anything to promote the league. We’d pile in DeSotos and Suburbans, six of us in a car, and we’d head off to play those damned exhibitions. We did that for two years. During my second season the NBL and the BAA merged to form the NBA. The new league kicked out all of the little teams, the ones that weren’t profitable, and kept the few that made money. Sheboygan was gone. Fort Wayne played its games in a high school gym, but the team later moved to Detroit and became the Pistons. The league also absorbed Syracuse and Rochester. That last season we must have played Waterloo ten times. I led the league in scoring and became something of a fair-haired boy to the franchises being absorbed into the NBA. I averaged 20 points per game and ended up on the Fort Wayne roster.
You became a Boston Celtic on October 14th, 1950, when Red Auerbach sent the draft rights to Charlie Share to Fort Wayne. Bill Sharman was also a part of the deal and joined you in Boston. Please tell me about Bill Sharman, and what it was like to play with him.
It was just like playing with any other player. I wasn’t in awe. He was a great foul shooter, probably the best ever, and he wasn’t afraid to mix it up on the court. People remember me for being a brawler, but Sharman would take a swing with the best of them. He protected himself. He took a swing at Jerry West during his rookie year, and West wasn’t the same player the rest of the game. West went from making everything in sight to hardly taking a shot at all.
Mr. Sharman was a scratch golfer, and you were once the golf pro at Barre Country Club in Vermont. You were also the longtime golf coach at Brandeis University. Did the two of you ever tee it up, and if so, who usually came out on top of those battles?
Bill wasn’t a scratch golfer! He couldn’t hit the ball, and when he did it was with that sideways swing of his and you never knew where the ball was going. He got that swing from playing baseball, which was the other sport he excelled in. Bill was always trying to hit the golf ball like he was trying to hit a baseball, so I didn’t have much trouble with him whenever we played [laughs]. His son was the scratch golfer in the family – he could really play.
I started out taking lessons at Yale Country Club, and later on I started teaching. I’m not saying that I was a great golfer, because you can teach people the proper way to swing a golf club without being great. I was giving lessons for $2.50 and $3.00 an hour, and when I wasn’t teaching I was going to Boston University in the evenings to earn my college degree. I needed five credit hours, which I got, and then I received my diploma from Michigan State University. All of that, in one way or another, had something to do with me coaching golf at Brandeis.
Celtic legend Bob Cousy had this to say about you: “Bob Brannum was my bodyguard on the court. Teams learned pretty quickly not to pick on the 5’-11” skinny kid from Holy Cross.”
I was a rough type of player. I just played, and I played hard. Cousy wasn’t going to pick many fights, so I just made sure that no one picked a fight with him. The word ‘great’ is overused – just look at some of the players they call ‘great’ today – but Cousy was a great basketball player. He was also unselfish. He’d give you the ball every time down the court, unless you missed, and then he wouldn’t give it to you for a week [laughs]. As a person Cousy is the best. He’s been right there during my recent surgeries, coming up from his home in Florida, even though there have been times when I didn’t know who he was. You can’t ask for much more than that.
What was it like to play for an owner like Walter Brown?
Walter Brown was the salt of the earth. There wasn’t another owner as generous and as kind as that man – unless you screwed up, and then he’d let you know about it [laughs]. I remember coming back from one of those exhibitions in Maine when a state trooper pulled us over for speeding. It was my car, but Bob Harris was driving it. The trooper didn’t give us a ticket. He called Walter instead and told him about the situation, and Walter jumped all over me for doing something that he thought was stupid. He was right, so there wasn’t much I could really say about it.
Bob Cousy told me that Red was a scary driver in his own right.
Red was one of the craziest drivers in all of New England. He was a maniac behind the wheel. There was another time when we were on the road and got stuck behind a log truck. There was snow all over the place, which made the truck even slower, and Red was going nuts. He was driving and honking, and trying to get around that big truck. Of course Red’s car was loaded down with basketball players 6’-5” or taller. Big guys. The car could only do so much. Charlie Cooper was in the front seat beside him, scared to death. Finally Red busts around the truck and runs it off the road. He’s still steaming, but he’s smart enough to know that the trucker’s mad, too. He knows he’d better wait for everyone to get out of the car before any words are exchanged. So Cooper gets out first, and before you know it we’re all out there in the snow with him. Red pops off at the guy, “Don’t think we won’t…” and that was all it took. The guy was back in his truck before we knew it [laughs].
The 1952-54 Celtics reached the playoffs for the first time in team history. What was it like to defeat a bitter rival like Syracuse to reach the Division finals?
We went onto the court determined to win every game. Win or lose, we went in knowing that there were going to be scuffles. The Syracuse fans hated us. I thought that was wonderful, because it was great to be able to go into their gym and come away with a win.
There was one altercation between me and Dolph Schayes – Schayes belted me, cut my eye. There was blood everywhere. I said, “Oh hell…” and I went right after him. The refs threw us both out of the game, and afterwards a journalist wrote that it [the ejection] was Red’s smartest move of the game. It sure wasn’t a fair deal for Syracuse, because Schayes always gave us fits. He was hard to handle. I wasn’t going to score a bunch of points like him, so it hurt Syracuse a whole lot more than it hurt us.
The Nationals returned the favor a year later in the Division Finals. That playoff series included a wild in Game 2, stopping the action for 30 minutes. Syracuse stars Dolph Schayes and Paul Seymour were forced from the contest by brawl-related injuries. Were you involved in any of the festivities?
Believe me, there weren’t many fights that I didn’t get into. I may have had something to do with Seymour going out of that one [laughs].
What was the “Milkman’s Matinee?”
It was a promotional that Walter Brown dreamed up – the game was played at midnight because the circus had contracted to use the Boston Garden. It was the only time that the court was ever turned 90 degrees – again, because of the circus – and it was the only time that we ever wore white sneakers. Brown was a very superstitious man, so when we lost that game he made us switch back to black. It stayed that way for as long as I could remember.
Please tell me about “Easy” Ed Macauley.
He was moral person, a good Catholic, a fine young man. He was a Walter Brown favorite. We were roommates during my last year with the Celtics, but it’s hard for me to give you an estimate of his playing ability. We were different types of players.
Then describe yourself – your style of play.
If I saw a loose ball I was flying on the floor for it. That’s the way I believed you played the game. I always believed that the harder you went after a ball the less likely you were to get hurt.
Adolph Rupp and Red Auerbach; what was it like playing for each of these legendary coaches?
Both men were great coaches, but to me there was no comparison between the two. Rupp was an intimidator. He wasn’t a bad person outside of the gym, but he was a win-at-all-costs coach. He didn’t care who he stepped on. I was scared to death of Rupp, but it was a completely different situation with Red. I loved Red dearly. I was more afraid of being released than anything else. As a player you didn’t want to let him down because he would do anything for you. And Red was so damned smart – he knew exactly how to handle his players and get the most from them.
The twenty-four second shot clock was introduced during the 1954-55 season, your last with the Celtics. Having played in both eras, what impact did the shot clock have on the NBA
It made a big impact. I think it hurt the big guys the most, guys like Mikan, who couldn’t stay planted in the pivot.
You were the basketball coach at Brandeis University from 1970 until 1986. Please tell me about this part of your life.
It was a difficult situation. By that I mean in terms of recruiting. Brandeis is a Jewish school with very high academic standards. It’s very hard for non-athletes to get into the school, so it was difficult to get good players. I enjoyed the rest of it.
You were inducted into the New England Basketball Hall of Fame.
I was in the hospital at the time, and don’t remember much about it. One of my former players nominated me. I’m still waiting for my plaque [laughs].
Final Question: You’ve achieved great success in your life. If you could offer one piece of advice on life to others, what would that be?
Work like heck. And never leave with an enemy – always do your best to get along with people.
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