The Sam Jones Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Thursday, October 11th,
2007
Please tell me about two of your fellow campers – Jerry West and Oscar
Robertson.
Oh,
Jerry West is something special. Just a tremendous basketball player. All
of these people who talk guards, they don’t
know about Jerry West and Oscar
Robertson. They were probably the two greatest guards to ever play the
game, at least until guys like Magic, Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant came
along. Jerry and Oscar, because of their athleticism and knowledge, could
still play the game at an All-Star level today. They could play with
anybody. Jerry West just came out wanting to win. He had that attitude,
the one that screams ‘I want to win.’ If it wasn’t’ for the Boston Celtics
he would have probably ended up winning six or seven rings. We went up
against the Lakers year-after-year-after-year and it was not easy beating
us. It didn’t happen very often, I’ll put it that way.
One more story about Jerry West – we were in the playoffs and preparing to play the Lakers for the championship. Jerry and the Lakers had the best team ever; really, they were just winning like mad and killing their opponents. That’s how much talent they had. Before we go out to L.A. I learn that I’ve got to guard Jerry West. So in practice I’m guarding John Havlicek, and I knew that Jerry couldn’t run like John. I say this because I knew I was going to need all of the preparation in the world to keep up with Jerry. He was that tremendous. Well, we get out to L.A., and we’ve a really good guy on our roster – and guy by the name of Emmette Bryant. He looks at Russell and says, ‘Russell, I’ve got Jerry West tonight.’ And I said, ‘Good – and thank God. You can have him.’ Russell put me on him anyway [laughs].
Red Auerbach retired following an eighth consecutive NBA Championship in
1966, and Bill Russell was Red’s choice to take over as player / coach.
Please tell me about this period in Celtics history.
I
had the pleasure of playing with Bill Russell for twelve years, and when I
first joined the Celtics I lived with Russell and his family – I stayed with
him until I made the team and knew that I could afford a place of my own.
We became great friends, but honestly, it was more like family. It was a
great chemistry that carried over onto the court. And then years later,
after I had moved out he had went on to become the head coach, I learned
that half of the time I could do nothing right. That’s what becoming a head
coach can do to a friendship [laughs]. Seriously though, Bill Russell was
the only man who could possibly follow Red Auerbach as head coach of the
Boston Celtics.
Bill Russell’s accomplishments are legendary. Everyone knows about his epic
battles with Wilt Chamberlain. Take me behind the curtain – what were the
practices like?
Bill
Russell was not a practice player. He never wanted to practice. So what he
would do – he would always come to practice, but he would block every shot
he could contest. And I mean every shot. A layup, a fifteen foot jumper,
it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t let anything go into the basket. Red did not
like that, and the players did not like that, so we’d put him off and let
him sit down while the rest of us went on to have a good practice [laughs].
What was it like playing for Red Auerbach?
Red
had a simple system that you had to adapt to. When you play under a coach
that doesn't make things hard, it truly makes things much easier. The one
thing that I liked about playing under Red was that he felt that you
shouldn't come to camp to get into shape. He felt you should stay in shape
all year so that the day training camp opens, you were ready to play the
first game. His training camps were much more demanding than playing the
actual games themselves.
As you’ve said, Bill Russell won 11 NBA Championships in thirteen seasons.
You won ten titles in twelve years. Many of those championships were won in
the tightest of games, and with the pressure dialed way up. How were the
Celtics able to thrive under such intense championship pressure?
I’ll
answer that with a story. We were in Game 7 of an NBA Finals, and Bill
Russell was the coach. The game was tight late in the game, and Russell
called timeout. We all gather together on the sideline, and Russell says,
‘Okay guys, we’re going to run a six.’ Now, the six play is for Bill
Russell – the worst shooter on our team [laughs]. So he calls the six play
and of course it doesn’t work, but we get the rebound and call timeout. Now
we’ve got about thirteen seconds left in the game. Russell says, ‘Okay
guys, we’re going to run the seven play.’ So we run the seven play that
that doesn’t work, either. We get another rebound and call our last
timeout. We get together in the huddle, and all of us realize that there is
a lot of pressure – we didn’t leave school early like kids do today. We
graduated [smiles]. To a man we knew that there was less than ten seconds
left and that we needed to score if we were going to walk off the court as
champions. Russell gathers us together and says, ‘Okay guys, we ran the six
play and that didn’t work. We ran the seven play and that didn’t work. Six
and seven equals fourteen. Let’s run the fourteen play.’ We run the
fourteen play and sure enough it works – we win the championship. We get
back to the locker room and all the media is swarming around. Someone asks,
‘Russell, what play did you run?’ He says, ‘Oh God, we ran the seven play
and it didn’t work, we ran the six play and it didn’t work – seven and six
equals fourteen, so we ran that play and we won the game.’ So the news
writers were scratching their heads – and one of them good-naturedly asks,
‘Russell, where did you graduate from?’ Russell hadn’t caught on. He says,
‘Oh, USF – the University of San Francisco.’ The writer smiles and says,
‘Well, where we come from seven and six equals thirteen.’ Well, let me tell
you something – Havlicek didn’t know it, I didn’t know it…nobody standing in
the huddle at that point in time, when that play was called, knew that seven
and six equaled fourteen. That’s what pressure is all about. We were so
focused on the play that was called, and on executing that play to win a
championship, that we weren’t aware of Russell’s little adding problem
[laughs].
The Celtics played the Lakers for the 1969 NBA Championship. What memories
stand out after all these years?
Probably
the fourth game of the series – there were seven seconds to go in the game,
and we were losing by a point. If we lost this game, we'd go to Los Angeles
down 3 games to 1. We called a timeout, and Russell called a play for me.
Later, he told me he almost didn't call it because it was my last season and
he said that people always remember the one you missed. 'But I made it, and
I knew it was good from the time it left my hand. It rolled right over the
cylinder. We won the game and went on to win the championship.
Final Question: 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?
God
gives everyone in this life a gift. Find out what it is, and use it well.
