The Bob Cousy Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
February 9th, 2004
February 27, 1959 – You set a record by dishing out 28
assists against the Minneapolis Lakers. Two months
later you record 19 assists against the same Lakers
during the NBA Finals. How were you able to post such
staggering numbers against one of the best teams in the
NBA?
The first game was a meaningless Sunday afternoon
contest. We ran up and down the court and set
records. It was a lot different in the playoffs because
the intensity level was so much higher. The
championship was at stake, so both teams were playing
their best basketball on both ends of the court. So
staying out there and accumulating 19 assists meant a
whole lot more to me than the 28 that I had a couple of
months earlier.
In 1963 you became the head basketball coach at Boston
College. John Austin, a sophomore guard on that first
team, had this to say about you: “When Mr. Cousy
teaches you something there is no one like him, because
he does it so smoothly; he can explain it first and then
demonstrate it perfectly.”
That may be an over-simplification, because there
is a lot more to coaching than Mr. Austin’s quote. But
as a coach I wanted to keep things from being too
complicated. I think that helped to keep the pressure
from being too great. It was ‘do as I say’ and ‘do as I
do’.
As a coach, did any of Red rub off on you?
Certainly. We ran an up-tempo, transition-style
of game at Boston College – very similar to what we ran
when I played for Arnold. Arnold was a Bill Reinhart
disciple, and played college basketball for him at
George Washington University. It was a proven system.
My natural inclination was to emulate that style of offense, but success didn’t happen overnight. The players that I inherited weren’t really suited to play that type of game. But over time we got better players and ran the basketball as well as any team in the country.
Please tell me about the ‘Bob Cousy Humanitarian Fund’.
A group of 29 of my friends got together and
decided that I should be bronzed – they thought it would
be a nice gesture to the pigeons in Worcester [laughs].
Seriously, the fund is something of a sports Nobel
Prize, with awards given annually to those who have had
a positive impact on humanity. The fund will honor six
extraordinary individuals annually, four from the United
States and two from abroad. Candidates must use
basketball as their medium to have a profound impact on
the lives of young people. An example of someone under
consideration is a nun who runs a basketball league in
Belfast – a league composed of Protestant and Catholic
teams, which provides such a positive impact in that
corner of the world. We want to acknowledge these types
of contributions by awarding cash honorariums to ensure
that their work continues.
Final Question, one that I’ve been asking your former players: You’ve achieved great success in your life. You are universally respected and admired by many people, both inside and outside of the NBA. If you could offer one piece of advice on life to others, what would that be?
Do your best when no one is looking. If you
do that, then you can be successful in anything that you
put your mind to.
