---

By:  Michael D. McClellan | The coolest cat on the Celtics’ roster is a bad-ass with a hot head and a childhood history of causing trouble. He grows up in Harlem, and is five years old when the infamous Harlem Race Riot of 1943 occurs, in which police are attacked, stores are vandalized and looted, and automobiles are destroyed. The unrest lasts two full days. By the time order is restored, six black residents are dead, nearly 200 people are injured, and 550 more are arrested.

To many, the events that begin in Harlem on August 1, 1943, remain a riot, pure, and simple. To others, they are a revolt, a rebellion, an uprising, a violent but justified leap into a future of black self-empowerment. If you’re black growing up in 1940s Harlem, you instantly understand how the potent combination of segregation, unemployment, and racial tension can explode when mixed with another senseless case of police brutality—especially when the black man is a respected member of the military, and the woman he attempts to rescue is being beaten and falsely accused of prostitution.

“History repeats,” Sanders says. “Sadly, these fundamental problems still exist today.”

In 1951, a 12-year-old Sanders is running with one of Harlem’s gangs. His time is spent making zip guns and threatening passersby in the neighborhood. Sanders, by his own account, admits that the younger version of himself is headed for trouble. He credits an appearance by Brooklyn Dodger star Jackie Robinson at his school for changing the trajectory.

“Jackie Robinson helped set me on the right course,” he says. “He came to my junior high school and spoke to the assembly. It felt like he was speaking directly to me. I was getting into trouble at this point in my life, so his message felt extremely personal. My behavior improved. As one might expect, being 12, my mother still had to keep me in line from time-to-time.

“Jackie Robinson owned a shoe store on 125th Street. We would hang around outside hoping to see him. He’d come out on occasion and say a few things to us, which was a thrill, and the words he spoke were always positive. Guys like Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe would drop by and we’d get to see them, too. They were black, and they were stars. It was inspiring.”

Sanders grows up on 116th Street and Lenox Avenue and attends Seward Park High School on the Lower East Side. He gets his nickname playing baseball at Mount Morris Park in East Harlem. People think he looks like Satchel Paige, the iconic Negro League pitcher. While he doesn’t stick with baseball, the nickname sticks with him.

“I pitched, but I didn’t stay with it because I kept getting hit in the mouth by the ball. I wanted to protect my teeth.”

Basketball becomes his new love. In New York City in the ’50s, Harlem is the ultimate proving ground, the place where ballers and would-be-ballers go to make names for themselves. They play pickup games on courts like Mount Morris, or in tournaments at Rucker Park. It’s here that players like Julius Erving, Connie Hawkins, and Wilt Chamberlain later strut their stuff, while hundreds crowd into the playground temple and hundreds more clamor to watch from the surrounding rooftops, overpasses, and trees, just to get a glimpse of the action.

“There was so much black talent that I aspired to when I was growing up—the Harlem Globetrotters, the Harlem Rens, and all of those great Eastern League players who were never blessed with the opportunity that I had,” Sanders says. “These were guys who I looked up to, that showed me the way to play the game. Guys that toughened me up and taught me to play defense. Guys who could play in the NBA but never had the chance because of the color of their skin.”

Basketball and a love of reading keep him off the streets and out of trouble, but growing up in 1950s Harlem is as dangerous for Sanders as ’80s Compton is for Eazy-E, Ice Cube, and Dr. Dre. He sees a drug dealer viciously beat a man on the sidewalk. Heroin claims the lives of several relatives, and some of the older boys in his school are already copping drugs. He hears about the little girl down the block who is raped and murdered. All of this shapes Sanders, but it doesn’t stop his shine.

“I grew up in Harlem, and I didn’t have much in terms of resources. I didn’t have much money at this particular point in my life. However, this did not prohibit me from learning, nor did it impede my growth as an individual. I was determined to make something of my life.”

The rule of the day allows him to go to any high school in the city. He chooses Seward Park High after two friends convince him to aim higher than the vocational schools.

“That singular decision changed my life,” Sanders says. “In those days you could pick the high school you wanted to attend, provided you could get there and they wanted you. I woke up every morning and rode the train from Harlem to Seward. I also played in various church and community leagues. It wasn’t until my eleventh grade year that I played basketball for Seward Park.”

Sanders is a good enough high school player to attract the attention of schools like Duquesne and Seton Hall, but Sanders stays local and accepts a scholarship to attend New York University. He leads NYU to the 1960 Final Four, developing a reputation as a rugged defender who plays with maximum effort. The Violets fall to eventual champion Ohio State, but Sanders is the NYU captain in his senior year and the recipient of the Haggerty Award as the metropolitan area’s most valuable player. A back-to-the-basket post player, he finishes his career at NYU as its second-leading rebounder. He dreams of being selected for the US Olympic team, but players like Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, Jerry Lucas, and Walt Bellamy are stacked in front of him. Still, Sanders’s senior season catches the attention of Celtics coach Red Auerbach, who’s looking for a defensive presence to eventually replace Jim Loscutoff. Auerbach selects him with the eighth overall pick in the 1960 NBA Draft.

“NYU was close to home, which in itself was an added bonus,” says Sander. “We played against a variety of topflight competition, such as the Harlem Globetrotters, and all of those fine Eastern League players. My junior year we did quite well in the NIT, and the following year reached the NCAA Final Four, which was quite an accomplishment for that team.”

Sanders, who graduates with a degree in marketing, prides himself on playing hard-nosed defense, and knows it’s his best chance to catch on with the defending champions.

“I worked hard on defense. My job was to guard the opposition’s best scorer at the forward position, such as an Elgin Baylor or a Bob Pettit, and this was something from which I derived a tremendous amount of satisfaction. I would also like to say that we had a number of great defensive players on those Celtics teams, the first and foremost being Bill Russell. As a team, our defensive philosophy began with Bill. He set the tone on the defensive end of the court. K. C. Jones was also a tremendous defensive player in terms of what he brought to the game. He drew the tough assignments in the backcourt and applied great pressure defense.”

Sanders brings a New York City edge with him to the Celtics. He goes hard in practice, often hammering his teammates to the floor. There are plenty of doubters who dismiss Sanders when he arrives in the pros, questioning his ability to play facing the basket, let alone take minutes from established forwards Tom Heinsohn, Frank Ramsey, and Jim Loscutoff. The chip on his shoulder doesn’t go away quickly.

“I joined the Celtics hungry. I was very combative. I felt I had to do whatever I could to make this team. I didn’t back down. That’s the way it was in Harlem. I was ready to bump heads and fight with Loscutoff every chance I could get. And anyone who knew Loscutoff knows that he was an ornery cuss in his own right, so we tangled quite often in the beginning.”

Sanders ultimately finds his niche with the Celtics. Focused and under control, he’s the consummate teammate, ceding the offensive spotlight to stars like John Havlicek and Sam Jones, crashing the glass and doing most of his scoring on put-backs. On the court he endures a mixed bag of hate, with road games sometimes marred by flying bottles, coins, and racial epithets. Away from it he encounters reluctant real estate agents who fear that the color of his skin will drive away business, and proudly moves into the predominately black Roxbury section of Boston.

“The misconception is that just Boston was racist,” he says, “but it was the entire country. We had problems everywhere we went. In Los Angeles, cops pulled guns on us for no other reason than we were black.”

During one exhibition tour that took the Celtics through the Heart of Dixie, the black players on the team are denied service at a coffee shop in a hotel in Lexington, Kentucky.

“All of the black players were denied service—not just the black players for the Celtics,” Sanders says quickly. “The hotel changed its stance when it discovered that we were members of the Celtics and Hawks, so this naturally begged the question concerning our status had we not been professional athletes. That scenario was posed to the hotel management, and their position was that we would have been denied service. So, as ordinary citizens we were looked upon quite differently. Based on this criteria, Bill Russell quickly decided that he would not play in the game. The other black players on the Celtics—myself, Sam Jones, K. C. Jones—felt the same way about the situation. It was an easy decision to make.”

Sanders’s new job description is simple, yet incredibly difficult: Shut down the opponent’s best small forward, players like Baylor and Pettit. He accepts the challenge, buckling down and doing the dirty work needed to keep the championship machine humming. The Celtics win it all in his rookie season, the team’s third consecutive banner and fourth overall. The titles keep coming: 1962. 1963. 1964. 1965. 1966. 1968. 1969. He retires following the 1972–73 season, his eight titles in 13 seasons the third-most of any player in NBA history. Which begs the question: Is there one that stands out from the rest?

“If I had to select one title, I would have to say the first. This was during the 1960–61 season, and we won the championship 4–1 over the St. Louis Hawks. In retrospect it’s easier for one to look back on winning a number of championships, but it’s a much different situation when you’re striving to achieve that goal. Back then, at any given point, it was always a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately sort of thing. By that I mean we were only as good as our last championship. So every title that we won was special in that regard.”

Those Celtics teams are stocked with talent and loaded with future Hall of Famers.

“Sam Jones, K. C. Jones, and Frank Ramsey were all part of the second unit at one point —three outstanding basketball players that could have started on any NBA team. John Havlicek is another. It was a great luxury to have players of this caliber coming off the bench, because the opposition knew that there would be no letdown. That was one of the components to the Celtics’ greatness, and a hallmark of Red’s coaching ability. He was able to find players who possessed starting ability yet had egos that could handle a reserve role.”

Following retirement, Sanders breaks new ground by becoming the head basketball coach at Harvard University—the first black head coach in Ivy League history. He briefly coaches the Celtics a few years later, and in the late ’80s heads up the NBA’s Rookie Transition Program. It’s a position he holds for 18 years; during this time, every other major sports league replicates Sanders’s workshops.

How ironic that one of the roughest cuss’s on those great Celtics teams becomes one of the NBA’s greatest mentors. Sanders, voted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a contributor—primarily for his work with the program he created—also remains the coolest cat to ever have his jersey retired by the Celtics. When the NBA champion Boston Celtics visit the White House in 1963—then occupied by John F. Kennedy, a big Boston Celtics fan – it is left to Sanders to deliver the memorable parting line to the commander in chief.

“Take it easy, baby,” Tom Sanders tells the president of the most powerful nation on earth. For a one-time troublemaker and reformed hothead, it doesn’t get much cooler than that.