| | BOSTON -- Red Auerbach is partially responsible for each of
the 16 NBA championship banners hanging above the Boston Celtics'
famous parquet floor.
And now there's one because of him alone.
|  | | Red Auerbach, right, shares a laugh with Bill Russell during Wednesday's ceremony. |
The Celtics raised a golden silhouette of their cigar-smoking
patriarch to the rafters on Wednesday night to celebrate his 50th
year with the franchise he made the pride of the league.
Bill Russell, his greatest player, ushered the former coach and
general manager across the floor. Tommy Heinsohn, who like Russell
both played for and coached Celtics champions, introduced the
82-year-old man who came to Boston as a "spirited young coach"
and stayed for half a century.
And is still as feisty as ever.
"What's all the fuss about? Like they're putting me out to
pasture," Auerbach said at halftime of Boston's 112-101 victory
over the Washington Wizards. "This is no swan song. I'm not going
anywhere."
A scoreboard video showed highlights of the Auerbach years -- an
era that covers almost the entire history of the team. There was
Red lighting one of his frequent victory cigars, Red being carried
off the court, Red being drenched with champagne, Red holding the
championship trophy, and Red meeting President Kennedy.
Then there was the banner-raising -- a quite familiar scene at
past home openers.
"I never felt this way when I was on the bench," Auerbach
said. "I feel honored."
But he also credited his success to the players he acquired:
Russell, Heinsohn and Bob Cousy; Dave Cowens, John Havlicek and Jo
Jo White, and later Larry Bird, Robert Parish and Kevin McHale
brought titles to Boston in three separate eras.
"All these guys came in, and they personified Celtics pride,"
Auerbach said.
But he was the only constant.
"It's hard to believe that Red has been around the Celtics for
50 years," Mavericks coach and former Celtic Don Nelson said in
Dallas. "He deserves every honor and award he has received during
his career. It's been one of the highlights of my career to have
been associated with him."
Nelson is one of six former Celtics coaching in the NBA this
season. And that's not counting McHale, who is the general manager
of the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Ask them, and they'll tell you what it means to be a Celtic.
"A lot of skeptical players over the years have embraced our
mystique. They believed in it. And if they didn't when they came,
they did when they left," Auerbach said in an afternoon news
conference. "There's so many guys out there that when they left,
they still bleed green."
The Celtics have already retired the No. 2 for Auerbach -- No. 1
was for Walter Brown, the team's founder -- and there is a statue of
him and his everpresent cigar greeting tourists at Faneuil Hall.
When they auctioned off the remnants of the Boston Garden in 1996,
someone paid $500 for one of his half-smoked stogies.
At the news conference, Russell praised Auerbach for listening
to his players and said that he remembers being called for
goaltending for the first time. Auerbach drew a technical arguing
with the referee.
"From that day on, it was a lifelong friendship with you and
the Celtics," Russell said. " ... I don't think I would have been
as successful without him. And I know he wouldn't have been as
successful."
But Russell and Auerbach were more than friends. They were
simply the most successful coach-player tandem in basketball
history, winning eight consecutive championships from 1959-67.
Auerbach turned the coaching over to Russell in 1967 and moved
into the front office. Boston won two more titles with Russell as
coach, and five more since then as Auerbach twice rebuilt the
Celtics into champions.
Auerbach still stops by practices or games when he can and talks
to the players about what it means -- or should mean -- to wear a
Celtics uniform. He's content to have a diminished role now.
"At this age, you worry about getting up in the morning more
than you worry about coaching," he said. "I don't even buy green
bananas anymore." | |
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