by William Cook
Arnold “Red” Auerbach, born September 29, 1917, in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, was the son of Jewish immigrant parents from Minsk, Russia. He was a standout basketball player at George Washington University. Auerbach began his coaching career at the high school level at St. Albans Prep School in Washington, D.C. After serving in the U.S. Navy in World War Two, Auerbach became coach of the Washington Capitals in the BAA, winning division titles in 1947 and 1949. Red Auerbach would become an NBA legend coaching the Boston Celtics, and his rise to fame began with Walter Brown drafting Bob Cousy.
While Bob Cousy may have been the most popular player in New England, Walter Brown had been urged by Red Auerbach to get him a big man that could neutralize George Mikan.
The 1950 NBA draft was held at the Biltmore Hotel in New York and when it came time for Walter Brown to make his number one pick for the Celtics, he took a big man, 6′11″ Chuck Shares of Bowling Green State University.
The Boston press was outraged that Cousy had been passed up by the Celtics and blamed it on Red Auerbach. According to Bill Russell writing in Red and Me—My Coach, My Lifelong Friend, one reporter confronted Auerbach by saying, “You asshole! Don’t you realize you’ve insulted everyone in New England by not drafting Cousy! He’s the best player in the country! Anyone with brains knows that. Besides that, you’re a Jew, and we don’t like Jews either!”
The Celtics second draft pick was even more surprising as well as ground-breaking. Boston selected 6′5″ Charlie Cooper of Duquesne, a black player. The NBA was still an all-white league and there had been no discussion among the owners about integrating the league. The draft of a black player by the Celtics was especially concerning to Abe Saperstein who owned the Harlem Globetrotters. Saperstein had a monopoly on black professional players and his team was the biggest draw at the gate in the game. Those games were played in arenas owned by NBA teams and meant considerable revenue. Saperstein was keenly aware of what the integration of Major League Baseball in 1947 with Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby was doing to the sagging attendance at Negro League games.
Befuddled by Walter Brown’s selection of a black player, the NBA team owners called a recess and discussed the matter. They quickly came to the conclusion that there were no grounds to prevent the Celtics from drafting a black player and resumed the draft.
In the ninth round, the Washington Capitals took a black player, Earl Lloyd of Washington State University.
Later that summer, the New York Knicks convinced Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton to abandon the Harlem Globetrotters and sign an NBA contract. Abe Saperstein was furious and threatened Walter Brown with a boycott of Boston Garden. But Brown ignored him.
The racial integration of the NBA seems archaic today as the league is made up by an overwhelming majority of black players. By the 1970s, the demographics of the NBA showed that 70% of the players were black. In 2013, 76.3% of the players in the NBA were black and 43% of the coaches were black.
Bob Cousy was the number three choice in the draft and taken by the Tri-Cities Blackhawks. The Blackhawks consisted of three small towns (Moline, Davenport, and Rock Port) where Illinois and Iowa come together. They were one of the former NBL franchises that were merged into the NBA and are the forerunners of the Milwaukee Hawks, St. Louis Hawks, and Atlanta Hawks.
Blackhawks owner Ben Kerner had also seen Bob Cousy play for the College All-Star team against the Harlem Globetrotters, but unlike Red Auerbach, he was convinced that he had a lot of talent. Although very disappointed with not being drafted by the Celtics, Cousy signed a contract with the Blackhawks for $9,000. But before the season began, Cousy was dealt to the Chicago Stags for guard Frank Brian who had been the third leading scorer in the former NBL with the Anderson Packers team which had folded following the 1949–50 season.
Today, most writers offer a rather simplistic and almost magical account of how Bob Cousy became a Boston Celtic. They advance the notion that, during a meeting of gentleman club owners, Cousy’s name with two other players were dropped into a hat and his was pulled out by Celtics owner Walter Brown. Voila! The rest was history—right? Not exactly. The reality is that the process of Bob Cousy joining the Celtics is a little more complex.
Tri-Cities owner Ben Kerner also wanted Frank Brian for a reason other than his scoring ability. Kerner had owned the concessions program at Anderson, and Brian sold the advertising for him; Kerner was glad to bring Brian to Tri-Cities where they could continue their dual sports-business relationship.
But soon after the Brian-for-Cousy trade, the Chicago Stags folded before the 1950–51 season began. All of the Chicago players were put into a draft pool. But Ben Kerner was told that he could either keep Frank Brian or give up his number one draft choice, who happened to be Bob Cousy. He chose to keep Brian.
While all the NBA team owners were informed that Cousy would replace Brian in the player draft pool, Cousy himself, who was staying with his parents on Long Island, was never informed.
The draft pool meeting was held in October at the Park-Sheraton Hotel in New York. Boston Celtics majority owner Walter Brown and coach Red Auerbach attended the meeting and knew that Bob Cousy was available, but neither was interested in him as the first pick. It wasn’t that Brown or Auerbach had no regard at all for Cousy as a player; it was just that they had a preference for another player. The blue-chip player in the draft that most teams wanted was Stags guard Max Zaslofsky, a four-time All-Star. Brown thought that he would have first choice and Auerbach gave him instructions to take Zaslofsky.
The process for this draft turned out to be a little different than any that had previously taken place. Valuations had been placed on the players to help pay off the Chicago club’s debts. So, the regular draft order was dropped. Players were named almost at random and assigned to teams by general agreement. Everything went smoothly until the three top-priced players were left—the three Stags guards; Max Zaslofsky ($15,000), Andy Phillip ($10,000), and Bob Cousy ($8,500).
When Zaslofsky’s name came up Brown confidently asserted his claim. But he was immediately challenged by Ned Irish of the New York Knicks and Eddie Gottlieb of the Philadelphia Warriors.
Ned Irish attempted to establish ex-post facto territorial rights to Zaslofsky stating that he belonged to the Knicks because he had been born in New York, educated in New York and would be a huge favorite with the Jewish population in the city. But Irish’s territorial rights claim was weakened by the fact that Zaslofsky had been playing in Chicago for four years.
Eddie Gottlieb’s claim on Zaslofsky was a bit far-fetched. Gottlieb claimed that his good friend and minority partner Abe Saperstein, who owned the Harlem Globetrotters, had a phantom deal to take over the Chicago franchise. In anticipation of that move, Gottlieb claimed that Saperstein had traded Zaslofsky to the Warriors for Joe Fulks.
Brown, Irish, and Gottlieb argued into the night over their right to Max Zaslofsky. With all the other parties becoming extremely bored, at 10:30 p.m., NBA Commissioner Maurice Podoloff slammed his fist on the table and said enough is enough. “I’m sick and tired of all this,” said Podoloff. “There’s three of you and three players, all backcourtmen, so I’m going to put the names into a hat, and whoever you draw, that’s who you got.”4
Irish said OK, so did Brown, although he personally felt that he had just been jobbed out of getting Zaslofsky, believing he had the legitimate draft choice claim. Gottlieb was dissatisfied and screaming. He said that before proceeding he had to call the owner of the Philadelphia arena. When he returned, he agreed, and the drawing was on.
Maurice Podoloff wrote out the three names of the players and put them into the legendary hat that was supplied by Syracuse Nationals owner Dan Biasone.
As a consolation to Walter Brown, he was given the first pick from the hat, but he felt it was unlucky because previously he had the first pick in two other drafts and got a player that didn’t do too much for the Celtics. So, Brown asked Ned Irish to draw the first name. Irish put his han
d in the hat came out with Zaslofsky.
Well, Andy Phillips was still in the hat. He along with Bob Davies was considered to be the best playmakers in the NBA, so Brown thought he might still come out all right. “When I drew Cousy I could have fallen through the floor,” said Brown. “No there was no secret feeling that maybe it would all turn out for the best in the long run.”5 Brown was sure he had gotten the dirty end of the stick all the way around.
With one name left in the hat, Ed Gottlieb didn’t bother to draw. But the Warriors would do well with Andy Phillips as he would be highly instrumental in leading them to an Eastern Division championship in 1950–51.
That night, shortly after midnight, Walter Brown called Bob Cousy and told him to report to the Celtics office in Boston. Cousy was jubilant, but he still knew that he was going to have to convince Red Auerbach that he belonged on the Celtics.
The Boston training camp was tedious that year as Red Auerbach set about transforming the Celtics into a winning team. He traded players and cut two former Holy Cross players, George Kaftan and Joe Mullaney, that were both popular with the Boston Garden crowds, but Bob Cousy made the team.
The arrival of Bob Cousy, along with Bill Sharman, also new to the NBA, and center-forward Ed Macauley, picked-up from the defunct St. Louis team, would revitalize the Boston Celtics, a team that had been playing mediocre basketball for several years. It seems ironic that Bob Cousy as a player would be credited by many with saving professional basketball in Boston and later as a coach be accused by many of ruining professional basketball in Cincinnati.
The Celtics had not only been struggling in the league standings but also financially. Following the 1949–50 season, the board of directors of Garden Arena Corporation that owned both Boston Garden and the Celtics intended to get out of professional basketball. It was then that Walter Brown, who had been employed as the general manager of Boston Garden, saw an opportunity. Brown was a true sportsman from a family with a deep history in sports. His father George V. Brown had organized the Boston Marathon and for more than thirty years, Walter had fired the starting gun.
At first, Walter Brown didn’t think that professional basketball had much of a chance of succeeding. But after witnessing Holy Cross sell out Boston Garden regularly for college games, he changed his point of view. Now with the Celtics about to become defunct in 1950, Brown took out a mortgage on his home and solicited other investors, raising about $200,000. One such investor was Lou Pieri of Providence, Rhode Island.
Lou Pieri owned the Rhode Island Auditorium and had also owned the Providence Steamrollers in the NBA before the team folded in 1949. Amazingly, Pieri agreed to invest $50,000 in the Celtics. However, there was one condition, that Walter Brown hire Arnold “Red” Auerbach as coach.
According to Pieri, if it had not been for the support of Providence banker Clarence “Bud” Gifford who came up with additional loans, the Celtics franchise would have folded. “For three years when Walter and I were short of money and in danger of having to drop out, he came up with the loans that kept us in business,” said Pieri. “If we had been forced to quit, Cousy would have wound up in another city.”6
Bob Cousy would become one of the greatest playmakers and passers in NBA history. His dizzying behind the back and through the legs passes and ball handling would earn him the nickname “The Houdini of the Hardwood.” Albeit sometimes he was too much of a wizard for his teammates, and some of his passes would hit them in the head. In the early part of Cousy’s career, Red Auerbach thought he was too tricky for his own teammates. “He wasn’t that good for two, three years,” said Auerbach. “We were losing the ball; he’d make great plays but he’d lose the ball a lot.”7
On the other hand, Cousy believed that after a player played with him for a couple of weeks, there was no excuse for him being fooled. He told Celtics rookies to be ready for a pass anytime. Most players, even if they had been playmakers themselves on other teams or in college like Sam Jones and K.C. Jones, got used to Cooz, and when they started to score a lot of points from his passes, they liked him even better.
Of course, there were some in the NBA who were not impressed with Cousy’s showboating. For one, Les Harrison, owner-coach of the Rochester Royals who called Cousy’s ball handling bush league stuff. Harrison stated, “I’ve got Bob Davies who can do all those things, but I don’t let him. This is professional basketball and you don’t make a fool of other pros.”8
When Bob Cousy joined the Boston Celtics, he had a concern about his style of play as well. So, he asked Red Auerbach if he was OK with his style of passing the ball. Auerbach replied, “Cooz, I don’t care how you pass the ball. You can pass it through your ass if you want to. Just be sure somebody catches it.”9
Eventually, everyone, Red Auerbach included, came to realize that Cousy’s fancy ball flinging on the court put fannies in the arena seats. That was what the fans were coming to see. The Boston fans were familiar with Cousy from his days with Holy Cross and loved his style.
On December 9, 1950, Bob Cousy and Marie “Missy” Ritterbusch were married. But due to a schedule change, the newlyweds spent their first night together in Boston Garden as the Celtics were defeated by Syracuse.
In 1950–51, the NBA would drop some of the teams located in smaller cities and become more manageable with eleven teams playing in two divisions with Minneapolis, Rochester, and Fort Wayne reverting to the five-team Western Division. The Eastern Division would begin the season with six teams, but Washington, which had been on the brink of bankruptcy and lost Coach Red Auerbach at the end of the 1949–50 season when he left to become coach of the Boston Celtics, folded after going 10–25.
The first NBA All-Star game was played that season on March 2, 1951, at Boston Garden. There were 10,094 fans in attendance for the game that saw the East defeat the West 111–94. The East squad was led by Boston’s Ed Macauley, the game’s MVP, with 20 points. The Syracuse Nationals Dolph Schayes had 14 rebounds and Bob Cousy had 8 assists. For the West, Alex Groza of Indianapolis had 17 points and 13 rebounds, while George Mikan of Minneapolis added 12 points and 11 rebounds. Jim Pollard of Minneapolis and Bob Davies of Rochester each had 5 assists.
The Philadelphia Warriors, with Andy Phillips feeding the ball to Paul Arizin and Joe Fulks, won the Eastern Division by 2½ games in the 1950–51 season. However, Philadelphia was quickly dispatched 2 games to 0 by the Syracuse Nationals in the Eastern Division Semi-Finals.
Also in the Eastern Division, the Boston Celtics with Bob Cousy finished in second place and made the playoffs. From that point on, the Celtics would not be out of the playoffs until 1970. But the New York Knicks with Max Zaslofsky quickly dispatched the Boston Celtics in the semi-finals then barely got by the Syracuse Nationals in the East finals to reach the championship series.
In the Western Division, Minneapolis finished ahead of the Rochester Royals by three games. Still, it had been a solid season for the Royals led by Arnie Risen, Bob Davies, and Bobby Wanzer. During the regular season, the Royals had played a couple of memorable overtime games. On January 6, the Royals were edged by Indianapolis in a game that went six overtime periods, still the longest game on record in the NBA history. Then a little over two weeks later the Royals battled the New York Knickerbockers through four overtime periods before winning the game.
In the West Division Semi-Finals, the Royals defeated Ft. Wayne 2 games to 0 and then beat the Minneapolis Lakers 3 games to 1 to reach the finals.
In 1951, for the first time, the NBA Finals would require a seventh game to determine the outcome of the championship. The Rochester Royals proceeded to square-off against the New York Knicks for the NBA championship as well as bragging rights in the Empire State. The Royals would jump out to a 3–0 lead in the series. But the Knicks would fight back with determination and force a seventh game with the Royals played at Rochester’s Edgerton Park Sports Arena. With the score tied at 75–75 with 40 seconds left in the game, Bob Davies hit two clutch free throws to give t
he Royals the lead 77–75. The rules at that time mandated a jump ball after two successful free throws during the final three minutes of a game. The Royals controlled the tip and Jack Coleman’s lay-up made the score 79–75, sealing the victory and NBA championship for Rochester.
While the Rochester Royals would continue to play winning basketball over the next few seasons, their 1951 NBA Championship would be their last title in the twentieth century and beyond. Going forward, the Royals would be moved from Rochester and bought and sold in a transcontinental odyssey that would take them to new homes in Cincinnati, Kansas City/Omaha, and eventually in Sacramento, where the team remains in the new millennium.
Ten years in the future, the basketball lives of a kid by the name of Oscar Robertson, who was about to start to playing high school basketball in Indianapolis, and Bob Cousy, a player who had just finished his rookie year in the NBA, would collide in an attempt to revitalize the Royals franchise.
3
Scandal Revealed in College Basketball: The NBA Escapes the Fallout
Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, college basketball had been a ball hog when it came to coverage of its games in the newspapers, leaving minimal space to the pros. Then, just as professional basketball was getting a solid footing in the sporting world, a dark cloud was about to descend upon the collegiate game. In February 1951, a scandal was revealed that showed widespread game fixing in college basketball. The event made major headlines that threatened to undermine the entire legitimacy of the collegiate game and seriously damage the growing popularity of the professional game.
The City College of New York (CCNY) had won both the NCAA and NIT tournaments in 1950, a truly outstanding achievement. While most of the same squad returned for the 1950–51 season, the first two months, CCNY had only achieved a record of 11 wins and 7 losses. Something didn’t seem right.
