The Bob Brannum Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Wednesday, April 7th, 2004
The Celtics tied a franchise record by winning 39 games
during the 1951-52 season, your first with the team.
You were a very big part of 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 Celtics won 46 games the following season, as well
as the first playoff series 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, defeating
Boston in the Division Finals. The playoff series is
best known for a wild player melee that interrupts Game
2 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].
