The Tom Heinsohn Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Friday, August 3rd,
2006
Right. You were a territorial selection in the 1956 NBA Draft, joining a Celtic
team on the verge of a dynasty. What was your first training camp like, and
what was it like to play with two of the greatest guards in the league, Bill
Sharman and Bob Cousy?
Well,
I watched the Celtics play. I really didn’t know Bob Cousy until I joined the
Celtics, even though he lived in Worcester,
where Holy Cross is located. He was
busy playing basketball for the Celtics and I was still in school at the time.
So I never really got to meet him. But, as I said, I did get to see Cousy and
the Celtics play. They were an up-tempo team.
So, I was a territorial pick by the Celtics. Back then, the territorial process was really the first round of the NBA Draft. You had the exclusive rights to a player if you wanted him, regardless of where you finished in the standings. It was based on a player’s proximity to the team, and it allowed teams to showcase players that were popular in that team’s market. So the Celtics executed the territorial rights to me, and they also made a deal to get Bill Russell, after St. Louis selected him with the third overall pick in the 1956 NBA Draft. The Celtics also got KC Jones in the second round of that draft, so they got three hall-of-fame players in the same draft. Russell went to the Olympics, so he didn’t join us until midyear. In the meantime, I learned to play with Cousy. And the reason we were so successful was because of the rebounding. Prior to my being there, and Russell being there, they really had a terrific offense but no rebounding. “Easy” Ed Macauley played underneath the basket for them – he was the key player that Boston packaged in order to get Russell from the Hawks – and he was too thin to really compete against the big guys inside. He was 6’8”, but he didn’t weigh 200 pounds. He was terrific scorer, though. He just wasn’t a rebounder. Russell and I provided that. Plus, I was a scorer. Russell came in around the middle of the season on. We were eight games out of first place by the time Russell came back from the Olympics and started playing with us.
We played well in the postseason, and we made it to our first NBA Finals. We beat St. Louis in double-overtime of Game 7, which I still consider to be the most thrilling game that I was ever involved in – and I’ve been involved in a lot of Finals series, broadcasting, coaching or playing. To the best of my knowledge, there has never been another seventh game that has gone into double-overtime.
Anyway, Cousy and Sharman, who were established pros at the time, were the experienced players on that 1956-57 team. Jack Nichols was a forward on that team. Arnie Risen was the center until Bill Russell showed up. There was Jim Loscutoff, who had been a rookie the year before. Andy Phillip, who ended up being a hall-of-fame player, was a part of that team. He was a great playmaker, and very steady. So it added up to a pretty savvy basketball team, and as the younger group started to mesh – KC Jones actually didn’t play that year, because he had to go into the service for two years – we became a legitimate championship contender. Later we added Sam Jones and Satch Sanders, and the Boston Celtics was well on its way to becoming a dynasty.
Team
founder Walter Brown was clearly the heart-and-soul of the Boston Celtics,
his faith in the success of his team never flagging, even during the lean
years in the late 40s and early 50s. Please tell me about the relationship
between Walter Brown and Tom Heinsohn.
Well,
I was the president of the NBA Players Association, and in 1964 the All-Star
Game was going to be held in the Boston Garden. And a really difficult
situation developed between the Player’s Association and the league with
regards to playing conditions – there were no trainers at that time –
pension plans, and playing games on Saturday night and then traveling all
night to try and play a game on television on Sunday. Those were some of
the things that we were trying to address. Well, the owners wouldn’t talk
to us when they promised that they were going to talk to us, and it all came
to a head at the 1964 NBA All-Star Game. I had told Walter Brown that I
didn’t know what was going to happen, but unless something was done with
regards to these issues, then something was going to transpire at the
All-Star Game. So I told him this maybe a month before the game was to be
played. The days passed, and the closer it got to playing the All-Star Game
the more it looked as if the players were going to boycott. You have to
understand, back then the All-Star Game was the most important national
exposure for the league. It was vitally important to both the players and
the owners, but especially for the owners because they were trying to grow
professional basketball in a big way. Well, minutes before game time, NBA
President Walter Kennedy gave his personal guarantee that adoption of a
pension plan would occur at the next owners meeting, that coming May. And
he was true to his word. The owners approved a plan in which they would
contribute 50% toward the purchase of a $2,000 endowment policy. That’s how
the NBA pension plan was started.
And after it all happened, Walter Brown called me the biggest heel in sports. He said that if the league had a team in Hawaii he’d send me to the team in Hawaii. He eventually calmed down, and by the end of the season we won the title. At the team’s breakup dinner he stood up, and he said that I was the main reason why the Celtics had won the title that year.
Believe it or not, at the same time all of this was going on, I was in the insurance business and I was handling the insurance side of Walter Brown’s estate planning. So I had a somewhat of a mixed relationship with Walter. He was a terrific human being, and a man of his word. Frank Ramsey used to send his contract signed completely blank, and he would have Walter fill in his figures. I can remember negotiating my contract standing in the bathroom at the urinal, and before I zipped up we had a deal [laughs].
