Deja Vu

“Did I Ever Tell You About Chamberlain?”

Tags:

basketball,

Boston,

Massachusetts,

Red Auerbach,

sports,

Wilt Chamberlain

“Back on Top,” by Dan Shaughnessy, Boston Globe, June 18, 2008.

They are not your old man's Celtics. No black canvas high-tops. No cigar smoke wafting toward the Garden rafters from the Boston bench. No behind-the-back passes from Cooz, and no Larry Legend smashing his face on the parquet floor.

But the 2007-08 Boston Celtics are champions of the world, worthy successors to the men your dad always told you about.

The Celtics returned to glory last night, winning their 17th NBA title - their first banner since 1986 - with a 131-92 Game 6 dismemberment of the soft-shell Lakers at the Causeway Street Gym.

No smoking laws were waived in the New Garden when NBA commissioner David Stern presented the Larry O'Brien Trophy to Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck at 12:03 this morning.

"Someplace, Red is lighting up a cigar," said Stern.

"This win is for Red Auerbach," said Grousbeck.

It felt like a restoration of the natural order of the basketball universe.

The finale, Boston's record 26th postseason game of 2008, was an homage to the 12-man selflessness, teamwork, and ferocious defense that marked the golden days of Green dominance.

Let Me Tell You a Story: A Lifetime in the Game, by Red Auerbach and John Feinstein, 2004.
If Arnold “Red” Auerbach, who died in 2006, is considered the Vince Lombardi of basketball, then surely the late Lombardi would have been honored if anyone referred to him as the “Red Auerbach of football.” As coach (1950-66), general manager (1967-84), and vice-chairman and president (1984-2006) of the Boston Celtics, Auerbach won sixteen NBA Championships, making him one of the most successful coaches and team executives in North American professional sports history. Between 1956 and 1966, Auerbach’s Celtics defeated the Minneapolis/Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA finals eight times; nothing gave Auerbach more pleasure than lighting (prematurely) his victory cigar after denying the Lakers yet another championship.

“Did I ever tell you about Chamberlain?”

The old man leans back in his chair, a smile creasing his face at the memory. Someone sitting at the round table has said something about Wilt Chamberlain and, as always, memories and stories flood back to him.

“Chamberlain,” he says, once the table has gone silent, “was the most unbelievable physical specimen ever. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do on the basketball court. One year he scored fifty points a game. Another year he led the league in assists. He was so strong it was frightening.”

He pauses. “But there was one thing he couldn’t do. He couldn’t beat us. Just couldn’t do it. Russell wore him out, running up and down the court, and you”—he points across the table at one of his listeners—“you drove him crazy. Remember how we ran that pick-and-roll play, where Russell would feed you the ball and Chamberlain had to switch? He’d always get there just as you released the shot, and you, you sonofabitch, you’d say in that high-pitched voice of yours, ‘Too late.’ And you made the shot every time.”

The man he is pointing at is Sam Jones, who, like Bill Russell, is in basketball’s Hall of Fame. Jones is cracking up at the story, at the memory, and at the shrill imitation of his taunting of Chamberlain.

“Remember the night he chased me?” he says.

“Oh yeah.” Now the old man is laughing too. “You ran down the court, grabbed a stool from one of the photographers, and used it for protection.”

“Protection?” Jones says. “I told Wilt, ‘Now I’ve got a chance. You come near me, I’ll swing the thing at you.’”

“He’d a still killed you.”

“No way. He’d never catch me.”

A dozen men are now convulsed with laughter.

“I ever tell you about the night Wilt tried to get at me?” the old man says.

For the next twenty minutes he talks about Chamberlain and all the times his Boston Celtics brought him grief, first as a Philadelphia Warrior, later as a San Francisco Warrior, then as a Philadelphia 76er, and finally as a Los Angeles Laker. “I actually liked the guy,” he says when he is finished. “He flew all the way across the country to come to my eightieth birthday party. After al those years, that meant a lot to me.”

For a split second, he is silent. Then he pushes back from the table. “Gotta go.”

A dozen men stand up as if the old man is a judge walking out of a courtroom. Red Auerbach is now eighty-seven years old, but there aren’t many down moments in his day. When it is time to leave lunch and get to his afternoon card game, he doesn’t linger. For everyone else at the table it is different. Most of them have jobs to get back to.

None of them are in any hurry. They would prefer to linger. But when Red says, “Gotta go,” no one argues. Arguing with Red is about as easy as beating his Celtics was for Chamberlain.

• Email /
• Print /
• Comment now