The Red Auerbach Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Wednesday, August 28th, 2002
How
were the two of you alike?
You
coached at Roosevelt High in Washington, D.C.
It was there that you talked future Major League
Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn to try out for the
team. How
did that go?
When
I interviewed Frank Ramsey, he told me an interesting
story about you and Sid Luckman (the NFL quarterback).
He said that Sid stopped by before a game in
Chicago and, at some point during the conversation,
asked to borrow twenty dollars.
You gave him a hundred instead.
Why did you give Sid a hundred instead of the
twenty?
One
of your masterstrokes was
drafting Larry Bird as a junior-eligible in 1978.
This may surprise some, but you first applied this
strategy in the 1953 NBA Draft.
You
were famous for negotiating contracts directly with your
players. Where
did you talk contract with Frank Ramsey?
As
a coach, what do you think was your strongest attribute?
Did
you communicate with all of your players in the same
way?
Bill
insisted that his players be in top physical shape –
if you were in better condition that your opponent then
you had the edge. I took that with me. The
fast break, that was something that stuck with me. The way he ran his practices, the control that he had over
his team, those things.
Bowie
Kuhn was a big kid, something like six-five.
He was clumsy, though, wasn’t a basketball
player. I
saw that as soon as I got a look at him in practice.
I cut him after a few weeks.
It’s
simple human nature – you give a man twenty and both
of you might forget about it.
You give a man a hundred, and neither forgets.
I
did that with Frank Ramsey in ’53.
I drafted Ramsey, Cliff Hagan, and Lou
Tsioropoulos, all of them from the University of
Kentucky. They
were juniors who had been redshirted.
Fenway
Park, in the Red Sox dugout.
We talked, came to an agreement, and that was
that. See,
back then you didn’t have the agents that you have
today, and the contracts weren’t anywhere close to
what you have today.
Things were much simpler, and you could get
things done without lawyers and agents.
My
ability to communicate with the players.
That was the thing that I took the most pride in.
There are a lot of coaches out there that know
their Xs and Os, but a lot of what they say doesn’t
translate once the player gets out on the court.
The player gets out there and forgets what was
just said. I prided myself in my ability to communicate, to get my point
across in a way that the player could understand.
No, you can’t be
successful doing that.
It doesn’t work.
There were some players who could take getting
balled out, and who responded to that type of
communication. I
never balled out Cousy or KC Jones because that
didn’t work with them.
I could scream at a Russell or a Ramsey.
I could get on [Tom] Heinsohn and [Jim]
Loscutoff. Those
players were able to take that type of approach.
