The KC Jones Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Sunday, August 4th, 2002
Walter
Brown founded the Boston Celtics. He also helped
found the Basketball Association of American (BAA) and
later merge it with the National Basketball League to
form the NBA. He was also a hockey man, and is the
only person to be enshrined in both the hockey and
basketball halls of fame. What can you tell me
about Mr. Brown?
Walter Brown was a great person. He was
a well-respected man who always made it a point to
speak. We weren’t close – our relationship
mostly consisted of small talk, but he was always very
cordial to all of the players.
Phil was highly intellectual. Very bright.
Very well read. He was also very communicative
with his players.
Red was highly intelligent as well, and arrogant.
I mean this in a positive way, because with Red it was a
good combination of intelligence and arrogance.
His record and his accomplishments stand as a testament
to that fact. Red Auerbach was a genius.
When you arrived in
Boston, you were primarily utilized as a reserve.
On the bench with you were Sam Jones and Frank Ramsey.
That’s three hall-of-famers coming off the bench for
the Celtics. I’m sure that other teams would
have given a king’s ransom for the talent sitting on
the Boston bench.
Other teams may have paid a high price for Sam and
Frank, but that wasn’t the case with me. Other
teams weren’t sitting there drooling over me.
But when you look at
those eight consecutive championships, there were four
constants: Red Auerbach, Bill Russell, Sam Jones
and KC Jones.
But don’t forget the other important pieces to the
puzzle. Bob Cousy was a great, great player.
Tommy Heinsohn. John Havlicek. Those guys
were special.
Editor's Note: At this point in the interview, news of Chick Hearn’s life-threatening condition appears on ESPN. Hearn was the legendary play-by-play man for the Los Angeles Lakers. Hearn’s condition clearly touches Jones, and after listening to the details we spend several minutes talking about Hearn and Johnny Most, the legendary radio voice of the Boston Celtics. It was Most who called John Havlicek’s steal of Hal Greer’s inbound pass that propelled the Celtics over the Philadelphia 76ers in Game 7 of the 1965 Eastern Division Finals.
Tell me
about Bob Cousy.
Cousy had a tremendous amount of confidence in
himself. Red didn’t want Cousy, and many people
tend to forget that. Didn’t want him at all.
Bypassed him in the 1950 draft, then got him when
Cousy’s NBA team (Chicago Stags) folded. They
(Stags) had three players everybody wanted, and the
three names were put into a hat. The Celtics drew
last, and Cousy’s name was the last name to come out
of the hat.
Bob Cousy had a great intellect. He was a
voracious reader. On the court he quickly became
famous for those behind-the-back passes and the fancy
dribbling. Red called the fancy stuff ‘French
pastries’, but Cousy was very successful with it.
He always had a high number of assists, and he had that
on-the-run, one-foot shot. That was one of his
trademarks.
Following
Cousy’s retirement, you were named the starting point
guard. How did you handle the situation, and how
did the fans respond to you in those early days as a
starter?
The fans responded by not coming to the games in
the same numbers. Attendance went down after Cousy
retired. Cousy was legend, a great player, so I
can understand the reason for the drop.
But these things didn’t bother me at all. There
was no nervousness when I stepped in and became a
starter. I’d been a part of two NCAA
championships with USF, a part of those 55 consecutive
victories. I’d won an Olympic gold medal.
I knew what it was like to be down by 16 to Holy Cross
and come back, and I knew what it took to become a
successful starter.
I was very confident in my abilities as a defender.
If you were a master of defense, then I was convinced
that you could match the offensive player at any level.
And the fear factor disappeared because of this
confidence.
