The Gene Guarilia Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Monday, September 26th,
2005
The Celtics won their second consecutive NBA championship – and third overall –
following your rookie season. What was that first Celtics' training camp like
for you?
It
was brutal [laughs]. It was two weeks of two-a-day practices, and after it was
over I felt like a different person – I felt like I could run faster, jump
higher, and move quicker. I said to myself, ‘Boy, why didn’t I do this in high
school and college?’ A lot of times, you may dog it a lot in practice,
especially when you’re the kingpin. The kingpin knows he has the team made –
but when you get to the pros, all of that goes out the window because you have
to prove yourself all over again. If you’re a rookie, and you’re fighting for a
roster spot, then you’re going to be out of work pretty quick if you dog it in
practice. With the Celtics, Bill Russell and Bob Cousy were the ones doing all
the dogging, because they were the kingpins [laughs]. They knew they were going
to be playing the big minutes when the season started. They knew they had the
team made. Me, I was just a rookie trying to make it.
In Game 7
of the 1960 NBA Finals, Bill Russell pulled down 35 rebounds and scored 22
points as the Celtics defeated the St. Louis Hawks, 122-103. Please take me
back to that series – what was one of your most memorable moments in that
series?
The
game before that, we were leading 3-2. In those days, the format was
2-2-1-1-1, and we were playing the sixth game in St. Louis. We were down by
28 points going into the fourth quarter. I guess Auerbach gave up on
winning that game, because he pulled his starters and inserted me, KC Jones,
Sam Jones, Gene Conley and Jim Loscutoff. We tied the score with two
minutes to go in the game – we couldn’t miss, and they couldn’t make a
basket. St. Louis called timeout with two minutes to go. Auerbach says, ‘I
don’t know if I should leave you guys in there, or put the first team back
in.’ So he decides to put the first team back in there, and we end up
losing the game in overtime. Afterwards, Auerbach apologized. He said, ‘I
should have left you guys in there. That was my mistake.’
Cousy and Sharman were the starters at the guard positions, but at that point in their careers KC and Sam were probably a little better – they were younger and had fresher legs. Cousy and Sharman were fabulous shooters. Sam was a fabulous shooter. KC was a tremendous defensive player. He had several big steals during that comeback. I was guarding Sihugo Green, who had been an All-American at Duquesne, and I had a couple of big blocks against him. That was at Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis. It was quite a game.
Former
Celtic “Easy” Ed Macauley was a member of that Hawk team. Boston had traded
him to St. Louis for the draft rights to Bill Russell, primarily on the
advice of your college coach, Bill Reinhart. Please tell me a little about
the biggest trade in NBA history.
George
Washington went out to play San Francisco in the Oklahoma City All-America
Tournament. I was red-shirting at that time, but I went out with the team
because I was like the manger – it allowed me to keep my scholarship. So
when we went out there, Joe Holup had the reputation of being one of the
greatest scorers in college basketball. He was averaging 27
points-per-game, and Bill Russell just dominated him. He held Joe Holup to
10 points, and blocked twelve-to-fifteen shots. So we lost that game. We
came back to George Washington, and we were having breakfast in the athletic
dormitory. I was with my coach, and Red came in. Reinhart turns to Red,
and he says, ‘Red, I’m going to tell you something – I just saw the greatest
player in the world. His name is Bill Russell. That guy is phenomenal.
Whatever you’ve got to do, get the draft rights to him.’ And that’s how
Cliff Hagan and “Easy” Ed Macauley – two All-Pro players – were traded for
the rights to draft Bill Russell. The rest is history [laughs].
I know this for a fact – when Bill Russell was a rookie, he signed for $20,000. Then he went up to $60,000, and then he went up to $100,001. He had that extra dollar written into his contract because Wilt Chamberlain was the highest paid player in the NBA at the time, and he was making 100 grand. Russell wanted to make sure that he was making more money that Wilt, so he insisted on that extra dollar. I found that to be quite interesting.
The
Celtics selected Satch Sanders the following season, and the rookie
responded by playing the rugged, hard-nosed defense for which he is famous.
Bill Sharman also finished the season by leading the league in free-throw
accuracy for the seventh consecutive year. Please tell me a little about
each of these men.
Well,
when Sanders came in I knew that my playing time was going to go down. I
played quite a bit my rookie year. I remember Sanders coming to his first
practice wearing big knee pads and big glasses, and I’ll never forget
Auerbach telling me, Frank Ramsey and Jim Loscutoff to grab Sanders’ knee
pads and throw them away. Auerbach didn’t want that extra weight, and he
didn’t care how secure they made Sanders feel – to Auerbach, extra weight
was not good. The kneepads might only weigh three or four ounces each, but
Auerbach didn’t want Sanders lugging those things up-and-down the court all
game long. So we hid his kneepads, and he ended up getting a pair of
contact lenses. That’s when he really started playing good ball. He was a
great leaper.
A lot of people mistook Sanders on the planes for Bill Russell, because Sanders was 6’-7” or 6’-8”, and Russell was about 6’-9”. Russell always told people that he was 6’-9” and fifteen-sixteenths [laughs]. That was his running joke. But Sanders was a great defensive player. He had a wingspan like you wouldn’t believe. It was a wingspan of someone who was seven-feet tall.
Sharman was an unbelievable free throw shooter. He used to challenge you in practice – he’d say, “Come on, I’ll shoot fouls [foul shots] with you. I’ll spot you two and shoot you twenty-five fouls.’ He’d beat you every time. Even if you made twenty-one out of twenty-five from the line, he’d still beat you – and that’s counting the spot [laughs]. He was a great shooter, and a great competitor.
