The Arnie Risen Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Wednesday, December 13th,
2006
Red Auerbach is considered by many to be a genius. Do you have a favorite
Red Auerbach story, and what were his training camps like?
Red
was a great coach who knew how to surround himself with the right people,
and who knew how to get the most out of his
players. He also knew what
players he needed to fit his system, and then he went out and got them.
This was especially true after the Celtics started winning all of those
championships, because they were always drafting last. Red would identify a
need, and he would go out and make a deal to fill it.
Of course, Red’s biggest move of all was the trade to get Bill Russell into
a Boston uniform. He knew how good Russell was going to be, because he got
that recommendation directly from Bill Reinhart – and Reinhart was the one
person that Auerbach trusted completely. Reinhart advised Red to draft
Russell no matter what it took, and that set into motion a series of events
that involved the Royals and the St. Louis Hawks.
The Royals had the first pick in the ’56 NBA Draft, and the Hawks had the
second pick. There are different stories about who Les Harrison was going
to take with the first pick. Les has said that he only saw Russell once, in
a college All-Star game, and that Russell played poorly on purpose because
he didn’t want to play in a small city like Rochester. The Harlem
Globetrotters were also in the picture at the time, and I think that pushed
up Russell’s asking price. And there are stories that [Celtics team owner]
Walter Brown promised the Ice Capades to Rochester if Harrison passed on
Russell in the draft. Whatever the case, Rochester drafted Sihugo Green.
Auerbach negotiated directly with Hawks owner Ben Kerner, and traded
Macauley and the rights to Cliff Hagan to St. Louis. That move allowed Red
to draft Russell, and the rest is history.
Red was also a genius in the way he dealt with people. He knew how to
relate to his players, and he knew who he could push in certain ways. He
knew he could be harder on Tommy Heinsohn, for example. He didn’t treat
Cousy or Russell the same as Heinsohn, because he knew that they would react
to it in a negative way. So Red was very smart when it came to how he dealt
with his players.
After your first year in Boston, Auerbach and team owner Walter Brown
engineered that famous trade for Bill Russell. With Russell joining the
team late, you held down the fort in the center position, and by the end of
the season the Celtics were rolling. When did you begin to think that this
team could win a championship?
I
didn’t really think about it that way – I can’t remember a time during the
season when I felt that we were going to win an NBA Championship. I guess
that’s because we were too busy preparing for the next opponent. During the
regular season we were concerned with winning the games at hand, and because
of that we really didn’t look that far ahead. And then once the playoffs
started, we were focused on winning each game in that particular series.
Don’t get me wrong – we knew that we were good. We not only had Russell,
but we had Heinsohn. That gave us two all-league rookies on the team. And
then we had the veterans like Cousy and Sharman, and the role players like
Jim Loscutoff and Frank Ramsey. But we were complete as soon as arrived
after playing in the Sydney Olympics. We knew that Russell was the missing
ingredient. As the season went on, we probably felt that we were the best
team in the league. Nobody really talked about it, though, because we were
trying to win that next game. This might sound immodest, but we were very
confident in who we were as a team.
The
Celtics and Hawks squared off in the 1957 NBA Finals, a series that was
punctuated by a double-overtime Game 7 thriller. Please take me back to
that series in general, and that game in particular.
It
was a hard fought series with a couple of blowouts and the rest tight
games. I remember losing the first game in Boston by a very close score – I
think it was 125-123, which also happened to be the final score of Game 7.
We won the next game at the Garden to tie the series, and then lost the
third game by two points in St. Louis. And then we won that fourth game,
also in St. Louis. That evened the series for us. We finally got the upper
hand, winning Game 5 back home. St. Louis won the next game to force that
Game 7 back in Boston. That is the game that everyone still likes to talk
about. It was a double-overtime game, and while it was a very dramatic
contest, I think that it has been built up a little over the years – and
into something that is bigger than it actually may have been at the time.
Heinsohn played a great game that afternoon. He scored a bunch of points
(37) and grabbed a lot of rebounds (23). Cousy and Sharman had a tough
afternoon – they had a hard time scoring from the field, which was not at
all like them at that point in their careers. I think Cousy missed a free
thrown with just a few seconds left that may have won the game. Sharman’s
jumpers weren’t going in, either. Russell blocked a shot by my former
Royals teammate, Jack Coleman, late in the fourth quarter – and that kept
the Hawks from taking a three point lead with time running out. Russell
then ran the length of the floor and scored. That was a big moment for us.
The play that everyone still talks about is the one involving Alex Hannum
and Bob Pettit. We had a two-point lead when Hannum called timeout, and
there wasn’t but one or two seconds left in the second overtime. Hannum was
the Hawks’ player-coach at the time. He devised an inbounds play where he
threw the basketball the whole length of the court, rebounding it off of the
backboard and into the hands of Pettit for a last second shot. It was a
perfect throw. The ball ricocheted off of the backboard and right to Pettit
at the foul line. He hurried his shot a little bit, because there was
hardly any time on the clock, and the ball hit the rim and fell out. And
just like that, we were the NBA champions.
Today, when teams win championships they are given championship rings. And
those are very important to the players – they all want to win a ring. Back
then, the rings weren’t such a big deal. We played, we won the title, and
then we all went on to other jobs in the offseason. Basketball wasn’t as
big. We didn’t get rings when we won the championship in Rochester, and
nobody really thought much of it when we beat the Hawks in ’57. I don’t
think championship rings became a big deal until the Super Bowl came along.
I think Walter Brown purchased the rings for our first championship.
A year
later it looked as if the Celtics would repeat as champions, but an ankle
injury to Bill Russell allowed the Hawks a measure of revenge. Had Russell
been healthy, do you think the Celtics would have won again in ’58?
I
don’t think there was any question. Bill Russell was that much better than
any other player at the time, and had he been healthy he would have retired
with twelve championships in thirteen seasons. Eleven wasn’t a bad number,
though [laughs]. The problem was that he sprained his ankle in the
playoffs, and he really wasn’t the same player the rest of the way. That
was the difference in the series.
