RIP Red Auerbach

[NFBuck]

RIP coach.

[Steve19]

Here's a cigar for the greatest basketball coach ever...


http://www.american.edu/TED/images4/cigar.gif

[OSUBasketballJunkie]

ABJ

Auerbach's legacy still felt in NBA

JIMMY GOLEN

Associated Press

WALTHAM, Mass. - Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers called his players together before practice to talk to them about Red Auerbach. It was too late to get to know him, but important that the players understood what he meant to the team, the city, the game.
Older players had seen Auerbach's fire for themselves - both the competitive one and the flame at the end of his ever-present cigar - but didn't know how he defined the game early on, then continued to dominate as his players became coaches and general managers running teams of their own. For the rookies, who never got a chance to meet him, it was a lesson about the franchise icon who traveled across New England to preach about the young NBA and build a mystique that would come to be known as Celtic pride.
"I wanted our young guys to hear those stories," Rivers said following practice Sunday, a day after Auerbach's heart failed him at the age of 89. "I don't think they knew a lot about him."
A young team with an average age under 25, several of the current players were infants when the Celtics won the last of their NBA-record 16 championships in 1986. None of them was born yet in Auerbach's heyday, when as coach and then general manager he led Boston to eight consecutive titles.
But what Rivers wanted to talk about wasn't what the Celtics did but what they looked like doing it; more precisely, it was the fact that Auerbach didn't care what they looked like. He drafted the NBA's first black player, hired its first black coach and fielded its first all-black starting five, and he did it in racially combustible Boston.
"Red did all that, but he wasn't doing that because he was trying to break ground," Rivers said. "His response was always: 'I'm trying to win a game and that's who I think gives us the best chance.' I think his example spread throughout the league."
The message got through, Celtics captain Paul Pierce said.
"I don't think a lot of these guys even knew that before Doc said it today," he said. "I think these guys really have to understand the history of the game. And Red is a big part of the history of the whole NBA - not just the Celtics, but the whole NBA."
Although he never played for Auerbach, Shaquille O'Neal said Sunday he remembers Bill Russell telling a story about the time the Celtics arrived at a hotel that was for whites only. Auerbach didn't just find Russell another hotel; he loaded the whole team back on the bus and left.
"He was an innovator in almost everything he did," said Jerry West, who played for the rival Los Angeles Lakers and now runs the Memphis Grizzlies. "He not only brought the black athlete to Boston; more importantly, he recognized the greatness of the athletes that he had.
"There were times I hated him and the Celtics. But when all was said and done, he was someone I admired greatly. He had a gruff exterior, but behind that was a very gentle, kind man."
Gary Payton, now with the Miami Heat, saved a cigar Auerbach gave him on his first night with the Celtics. Antoine Walker called it "the opportunity of a lifetime" to get to know Auerbach.
"Any conversation regarding the greatest coaches in NBA history should begin with Red Auerbach," said Golden State coach Don Nelson, who played for Auerbach before following his mentor to an NBA bench. "He was a pioneer, an innovator and, most notably, an incredible winner."
Indiana Pacers president Larry Bird said Auerbach was "one of the most influential people in my life."
"There could only be one Red Auerbach," the former Celtics star said. "And I'll always be grateful for having the opportunity to experience his genius and his dedication to winning through teamwork."
Another Auerbach protege who moved on to an NBA front office, Minnesota Timberwolves boss Kevin McHale feared the Celtics will never be the same.
And neither will the rest of the NBA.
"Red had come to be our basketball soul and our basketball conscience," commissioner David Stern said. "The void left by his death will never be filled."
Auerbach leaves a legacy of more than five decades in the NBA, but his influence extends throughout the league still. The Boston Globe counted at least 23 current coaches and five general managers who have a connection to the Celtics patriarch - including Rivers, who played for Pat Riley, who played for Bill Sharman, who played for Auerbach.
"It's a great honor to be called a coach when you sort of follow and studied men like him," Riley said.
Danny Ainge has been an Auerbach protege since being lured away from the Toronto Blue Jays to play for the Celtics. Now Boston's basketball boss, Ainge compared Auerbach to a grandfather who joked with him, nurtured him and challenged him to become a better player.
"Red is part of all of us, and I think that that will live on," Ainge said. "I think that I will never forget what Red has done for me and the opportunities that opened the doors for me through Red. And I think that Red lives on in each of us that he's had an influence on."
Auerbach joined the Celtics in 1950, when the soon-to-be mighty franchise was struggling for fans. He took the team to the outer reaches of the region for exhibitions; previous coaches advised him to make it a close game to keep things exciting.
"Well," Rivers recalled, "Red said he was having none of that: 'Were going to demolish them. Were going to beat them by 50 if we can, to show them that this is the Celtics, and that we are different.' So they did that.
"But then, after the game, they signed autographs for two hours."
From that, Auerbach built basketball's most prolific dynasty and one of the most dominant in any sport. But the Celtics haven't won it all in an unprecedented 20 years now, and when they open the season on Wednesday night, Auerbach will be absent for the first time since 1950.
The team has dedicated the season to his memory; plans for a more immediate tribute are still being formulated, Ainge said.
There's no doubt what Auerbach would want. He made clear at the last opener when he was asked what he thinks about at the start of a new year.
"What goes through your mind is, 'When the hell are we going to win another one?'" he said. "I mean, it's as simple as that."
---
AP sports writers Howard Ulman in Boston, Tim Reynolds in Miami and Janie McCauley in San Francisco contributed to this report.

[OSUBasketballJunkie]

ABJ

Auerbach remembered as surprisingly kind

HOWARD ULMAN

Associated Press

BOSTON - More than a decade ago, a reporter nervously approached Red Auerbach at a Celtics practice. He just wanted to say that his mother and the sometimes gruff Hall of Famer had been high school classmates.
Auerbach listened with a serious face. Then he smiled and chatted pleasantly about the old days at Eastern District High in Brooklyn, N.Y.
That side of Auerbach conflicted with his public image - a straight-talking, cigar-puffing guy who delighted in tweaking opponents verbally and outsmarting them in trades.
His players, though, loved him as much as he loved the Chinese food that was a staple of his diet.
At a Boston Celtics game on April 8, 1999, Hall of Famer Bill Russell explained why he decided to succeed Auerbach as coach for the 1966-67 season.
"That's the one time I could make sure that I have a coach I like as much as I like you," he recalled with his characteristic cackle, "maybe more."
Auerbach died Saturday at 89 in Washington, D.C., where he lived. The Celtics plan to dedicate the season to him.
Auerbach's Celtics won nine championships before he became general manager and then president and led them to seven more. But there were sad times.
Len Bias, one of Auerbach's counselors at a summer basketball camp, died two days after Auerbach drafted him with the second overall pick in 1986. Rick Pitino stripped Auerbach of the president's title when he became coach in 1997. And Auerbach's wife, Dorothy, died in 2000.
Still, Auerbach kept advising the team wisely.
But, as age took its toll, he showed up at Celtics games using a cane. Last April, he appeared at one in a wheelchair.
He had planned to attend next Wednesday's season opener in Boston on the 60th anniversary of his first NBA victory, as coach of the Washington Capitols. It would have been his 57th season with the Celtics.
"To this day," team owner Wyc Grousbeck said last week, "he's the sharpest mind I've ever met."
Before last season's opener, Auerbach traveled to Boston with one of his daughters and two doctors. He had been hospitalized just two months earlier. But it was another opening he didn't want to miss.
"I've been to, oh, about 50 of them," he said at the time. "It's always a great thrill, it really is."
As his role in the organization diminished in the 1990s, Auerbach still would watch from his seat in the loge, sometimes razzing the refs, always rooting for his players - some of them nearly 70 years his junior.
He would comment to reporters on players - Paul Pierce is a future Hall of Famer, he said - and he said that the age of the young Celtics wasn't a factor in the team's performance as much as the absence of outstanding veterans was.
Auerbach never was shy with his opinions.
He said Phil Jackson, who matched Auerbach's record nine NBA titles, was an outstanding coach but "picked his spots" in signing with outstanding teams.
But Auerbach wasn't afraid to make jokes at his own expense.
When he was honored 3 1/2 years ago with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Sports Museum of New England, he told the adoring crowd:
"Usually, these kind of affairs bore the hell out of me. I get fidgety."
Then he reminisced for 20 minutes, entertaining the audience with a comic's sense of timing.
Steve Grogan, the former New England Patriots quarterback, also was honored at the event. He couldn't wait to visit his family members the next day so he could deliver this message:
"I was at the same event with Red Auerbach. I'm going to be a hero in town."

[ScriptOhio]

Celtics to wear black clover leaf in honor of Auerbach

ESPN.com news services





The Boston Celtics will wear a black clover leaf on their uniforms for the upcoming season as a tribute to former coach and general manager Red Auerbach, who died Saturday of a heart attack at age 89.
The clover will appear on the right side of the jersey and will be inscribed with the word "Red" in green lettering.
The Celtics begin the season at home Wednesday against the New Orleans Hornets and are still formulating plans to honor Auerbach at the opener.
Auerbach's family announced Monday that his funeral will be Tuesday in Falls Church, Va.
Auerbach's 938 victories made him the winningest coach in NBA history until Lenny Wilkens overtook him during the 1994-95 season.
Auerbach's nine titles as a coach came in the 1950s and 1960s -- including eight straight from 1959 through 1966 -- and then through shrewd deals and foresight he became the architect of Celtics teams that won seven more championships in the 1970s and 1980s.
Auerbach was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1969. The jersey No. 2 was retired by the Celtics in his honor during the 1984-85 season.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2643735

[Best Buckeye]

Rest in peace Red, You were one helluva coach.

[OSUBasketballJunkie]

ABJ

Bird, Cousy pay respects to Auerbach

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Celtics legends Larry Bird and Bob Cousy were among several basketball luminaries who paid their respects Monday night to Red Auerbach, the NBA coach, executive and pioneer.
John Thompson and his son, John III, who brought his whole Georgetown University team, also came to the funeral home to honor Auerbach, the Hall of Famer who guided the Celtics to 16 championships - first as a coach and later as general manager. He died near his home in Washington at age 89 Saturday night.
"The world thought he was tough and mean and gruff and all that - and underneath he was really a pussycat, if you knew him well," said Cousy, a Hall of Fame point guard who played for Auerbach. "He'd be mad at me if he knew I said that."
Auerbach's nine titles as a coach came in the 1950s and 1960s - including eight in a row from 1959-66 - and he was the architect of Celtics teams that won seven more championships in the 1970s and 1980s.
Those whose lives were touched by Auerbach spoke about not just his success with the Celtics and his forward thinking, but also Auerbach the person.
"When you take the Celtic job and you get a relationship with Red, you realize why he won," current Boston coach Doc Rivers said. "No. 1, he taught family, but he taught it in an intense way, and he had great love and intensity for the game and toughness."
Auerbach was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., but he went to George Washington University, where the court is named in his honor, and lived in Washington.
"I know our guys have a feel for his importance to our sport, to the game of basketball, and to this city as well as Boston," said the younger coach Thompson, whose father played for Auerbach on the Celtics before coaching at Georgetown.
There will be a private funeral in Falls Church, Va., on Tuesday.

[OSUBasketballJunkie]

Dispatch

Auerbach was a link to NBA?s far distant past
Tuesday, October 31, 2006

TODD JONES



The beginning of the 61 st NBA season tonight will be rife with the usual thumping noise, flashing lights, dancers and other assorted gimmicks aimed at reminding everyone that they?re having a good time.
The salesmanship of the league is not really about basketball but about snagging everyone?s attention, even if for a brief moment, with a suffocating wave of sound and fury.
The game?s complexities
boiled down to easily digested highlight plays performed by individuals with long shorts and superhero monikers.
The NBA reflects our hyperactive culture, and so the requisite references to Red Auerbach will sound a bit stodgy and dated during tonight?s game between the Chicago Bulls and Miami Heat on TNT.
Auerbach, who died Saturday at age 89, will be dutifully lauded as an NBA pioneer, one of its greatest coaches and general managers, the patriarch and embodiment of the oncemighty Boston Celtics.
His accomplishments ? nine NBA titles as Celtics coach and seven more as their general manager ? will no doubt bounce harmlessly off the nog- gins of young viewers numbed by hyperbole.
This is, after all, a disposable age when every winning coach is dubbed a genius, every successful player the best ever, and every thrilling game an instant classic.
In such context, Auerbach is a scroll line on the History Channel.
With technological expediency reducing our sense of history to, oh, last week, it might seem to appreciate the significance of these facts: Auerbach was the first to draft a black player in the NBA (Chuck Cooper in 1950), first to start five blacks (1964-65 season) and first to hire a black coach in American sports (Bill Russell in 1966).
All kids see, especially because the Celtics haven?t been championship caliber in 20 years, are old films of a little, bald man firing up a cigar on the bench.
Ah, the cigar, it always gets back to the cigar with Auerbach. He would light one when victory was assured ? a pompous act by an arrogant man.
His detractors were right, and yet those cigars made people feel some emotion about basketball at a time when baseball, boxing and horse racing ruled and the NFL was just taking infant steps toward eventual dominance.
Auerbach, love him or hate him, was a true character. He spoke in the slow cadence of superior confidence, an inyour-face attitude reminiscent of frontier spirit and survival by wit.
Such arrogance is now commonplace, but so much of today?s bravado rings hollow, the honest essence choked by endless advertising slogans and marketing ploys.
With Auerbach, you knew what you were getting, right or wrong. He was authentic.
His smug persona fit snugly in a simpler era when teamwork was the norm and fans could hear the canvas Chuck Taylors squeak on the hardwood floor.
Of course, Auerbach?s dynasty based on loyalty came long before posses and free agency. Selling team discipline was easier when players had fewer dollars and less power.
None of this means basketball is worse now than in "the good old days" of Boston domination during Auerbach?s nearly 57 years with the Celtics.
If anything, basketball is much better today, at least in terms of athleticism and skill. Care to argue? Just imagine Bob Cousy trying to stop Le-Bron James on the break. Please.
Still, the passing of Auerbach is sad, for it is yet another lost link to a less complicated time, a time of permanence, a time when games were games, not events.
Boston will honor Auerbach at its home opener Wednesday. Then, for the first time in team history, the Celtics? dancers will take the floor, much to the chagrin of a cigar-smokin? ghost and anyone craving the artfulness of simplicity.

Todd Jones is a sports colum nist for The Dispatch
.
tjones@dispatch.com

[osugrad21]

Dispatch

To the end, Auerbach never big on ceremony
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Joseph White
ASSOCIATED PRESS
HARAZ N . GHANBARI ASSOCIATED PRESS Flowers cover Red Auerbach?s grave in suburban Washington.
FALLS CHURCH, Va. ? Red Auerbach was buried in a simple graveside ceremony yesterday, with Hall of Famers Bill Russell and John Thompson and commissioner David Stern among those paying last respects.
About 150 family, friends and special guests attended the private burial for the NBA great at the King David Memorial Gardens in suburban Washington.
Mourners chanted Psalm 23 and stood in silence as Auerbach?s casket was lowered, then chanted the Mourner?s Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead. Stern was among those who took part in the tradition of shoveling dirt onto the grave.
Stern said the service was appropriate for a man who was direct and often blunt, without much regard for fluff or ceremony.
"The utter simplicity was fitting for Red," Stern said. "Even the simplicity was more than what he would have wanted."
Auerbach, who won nine NBA titles with the Celtics as a coach and seven as a general manager, died after a heart attack near his Washington home Saturday at age 89.
"He had a great run," Stern said. "He fooled us into thinking it would never end."
At the family?s request, the ceremony was brief, lasting less than 10 minutes. Stern and Washington Wizards owner Abe Pollin walked arm-in-arm as the mourners followed the casket from the hearse to the graveside.
A flower arrangement bore the message: "You are in our thoughts and prayers. Love, Don Nelson and the Golden State Warriors."
Former Boston Celtics stars Kevin McHale and Danny Ainge also attended, along with several representatives from George Washington University, where Auerbach graduated in 1940.
A public ceremony also was scheduled in Boston today to honor Auerbach. The noon event at City Hall Plaza was to be led by Celtics officials, Mayor Thomas Menino, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Sen. Edward Kennedy, and attended by former Celtics players including Bob Cousy, Tommy Heinsohn, JoJo White and Robert Parish.
The Celtics are dedicating this season to his memory, and players will wear a patch with his name on their jerseys.
Some who could not attend the funeral, including former Celtics star Larry Bird, paid tribute to Auerbach during a visit Monday night at a Washington funeral home.