Collision Course

by William Cook

  The 1956 NBA draft for the Boston Celtics had personified the axiom “Luck of the Irish” with Bill Russell and Tom Heinsohn joining the team. Their presence filled in the missing pieces needed to create the NBA’s second and most famous dynasty. The Celtics began 1956–57 with Tom Heinsohn at center. When Bill Russell finally joined the team in December, they were well on their way to winning their first division championship.

  Bill Russell played his first game for the Celtics on December 22, 1956, at Boston Garden against the St. Louis Hawks. It was a Saturday afternoon game attended by 11,000 fans. NBC even sent a TV crew to Boston for national coverage. Red Auerbach put Russell in the game with five minutes gone in the first period to guard Bob Pettit. Russell was amazed and exhausted by the pace of the pro game but he hung in there and hauled down 19 rebounds and scored 6 points in sixteen minutes of playing time as the Celtics defeated the Hawks 95–93. While Russell blocked three of Bob Pettit’s jump shots, he still scored 28 points for St. Louis. Bob Cousy scored 16 for Boston.

  From that point on, Bill Russell just got better with every game, and his style fit Red Auerbach’s game style perfectly. When he would come down with a rebound, he would fire the ball down court to Bob Cousy already streaking toward the basket. If the man guarding Cousy was covering the basket he passed off with lightning speed to Bill Sharman or Tom Heinsohn.

  Boston won the Eastern Division with a 56–37 regular season record and then advanced to the NBA Finals by defeating Syracuse 3 games to 0 in the Eastern Finals.

  As was expected by all the experts when Red Auerbach traded Ed Macauley and Cliff Hagan to St. Louis, thereby joining player-coach Alex Hannum, Bob Petit, Slater Martin, and Jack McMahon, the Hawks would win the Western Division Championship. But it wasn’t an easy road to the championship for the Hawks. They finished in a three-way tie for the Western Division championship with Minneapolis and Ft. Wayne, all having records of 34–38. The Hawks reached the finals by defeating both the Lakers and Pistons in one game match-ups.

  The 1957 NBA championship series would be a see-saw affair with each team winning a game, then losing a game until it was all tied-up three games each.

  In the first game of the finals at Boston Garden, the Hawks defeated the Celtics 125–123 in double overtime. Bob Cousy scored 26 points for the Celtics but with three seconds to go in the second overtime period, he missed a shot.

  The second game also played in Boston was won by the Celtics 119–99.

  Game three was in St. Louis at Kiel Auditorium and the bad blood between Hawks owner Ben Kerner and Red Auerbach reached a climax. The ongoing hostility between the two had begun when Red Auerbach quit as coach of Kerner’s Tri-City Black Hawks mid-season in 1950.

  Prior to the game, Red Auerbach complained about the beat-up basketballs that the Kerner had given the Celtics to practice with. Then, as Bill Sharman shot free throws, they all fell short. Bob Cousy tried a few shots and got the same result. So Sharman complained to Red Auerbach that the basket on the Celtics end of the court was not regulation height. Auerbach, in turn, complained to referees Sid Borgia and Arnie Heft. The referees measured the basket height and determined that it was regulation compliant.

  All the while, Ben Kerner had been watching the chaos from the sideline. He came to the conclusion that the whole affair was a cheap trick created by Auerbach to throw the refs off track. All at once, Kerner came running out on the court toward Auerbach incensed that he would accuse the Hawks of cheating. Auerbach’s response was to turn around and punch Kerner in the face, bloodying his lip and knocking a tooth out. Later, Bill Russell alleged that Ben Kerner’s tooth landed at center court. Immediately, both Auerbach and Kerner were restrained.

  The fracas had hardly been noticed by fans starting to fill the stands. Commissioner Maurice Podoloff was already in the arena and decided he couldn’t throw Red Auerbach out of the game because the game hadn’t started. Instead, Podoloff fined Auerbach $300.

  Recalling the Kerner incident, Red Auerbach stated, “Before the game, a couple of our players told me that the basket was too low, so I had the referees check it. The basket was actually at an angle. All of a sudden Kerner comes running out the stands screaming, saying I’m up to my old tricks. He started calling me every name in the book. I hit him with a left hook—boom.”5

  While the Celtics had created a lot of pre-game excitement, the Hawks won the game 100–98 to take a 2–1 lead in the series.

  The Celtics came back to take game four, played at St. Louis, 123–118, to even the series 2–2.

  In the next two games, both teams won on their home courts, the Celtics taking game five in Boston 124–109 and the Hawks taking game six in St. Louis 96–94. So, the stage was set for a deciding seventh game played on April 13, 1957, a Saturday afternoon in Boston, before a packed house at Boston Garden and a national TV audience.

  The seventh game turned out to be one of the most exciting NBA finals ever. The lead in the game changed 38 times and there were 28 ties requiring a double overtime to decide the winner. The game had been sent into the first overtime by two free throws made by Bob Pettit in the closing seconds of regulation time. Then, during the first overtime, a basket by the Hawks’ Jack Coleman forced a second overtime.

  The game was finally decided in the second overtime when the Celtics Jim Loscutoff made two shots to give Boston a 125–123 lead. Alex Hannum called a timeout and set up a play to get the ball to Pettit. Hannum threw a long pass that intentionally hit the backboard sending Pettit high for the rebound who then attempted a shot that bounced off the rim at the buzzer.

  Jubilant fans poured onto the court and Red Auerbach lit up a victory cigar. It was the beginning of the Boston Celtics NBA dynasty and the first of nine championship banners in the next eleven years that would be raised to the rafters and hang high over the aging parquet floor,

  Tom Heinsohn, a rookie, led the Celtics in the championship game with 37 points and 23 rebounds. Bob Pettit led the Hawks with 39 points while Cliff Hagan dropped in 24.

  There were no individual surprises in the series, everyone did their job as expected; Bob Pettit was the leading scorer with 298 points, Bill Russell the leading rebounder with 244 boards, and Bob Cousy was the assist leader with 93.

  Tom Heinsohn was named the NBA Rookie of the Year for 1956–57, an award that personally irritated Bill Russell, believing that the selection of Heinsohn had a whiff of racism connected to it. For Bill Russell to object to a teammate winning an award seems out of character for him, a player who always put the team ahead of individual performance, but the facts were that Russell had joined the team mid-year and Heinsohn’s scoring and rebounding had just as much to do with the Celtics championship as did the arrival of Russell. However, it seems certain that the Celtics would not have won the championship without having both players on the team. On the other hand, there remain many who believe that the award should have gone to Russell and it’s very doubtful that Tom Heinsohn would have objected if it had.

  Bill Russell would eventually receive more awards than he could count. One of the most prestigious was being named the Associated Press Player of the Decade, covering 1960–70. A golden decade for the NBA that saw such players as Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor, Jerry West, and Oscar Robertson compete on the hardwood.

  With the Celtics’ first NBA championship on the books, Coach Arnold “Red” Auerbach had a lot more than just bragging rights, he was about to establish himself as the John McGraw of professional basketball. In fact, the Celtics coach had much in common with the legendary manager of the New York Giants. Both had a fiery personality and didn’t give pep-talks but would berate you, for instance, for a bonehead play or a lack of hustle. He didn’t teach fundamentals to his players either. Like McGraw, he believed that if you were a professional player you should know how to play the game. Players either loved Auerbach and McGraw or they hated them. Bob Cousy and Bill Russell were two players that would always have great affection for Red Auerbach.


  5

  The Rochester Royals Move to Cincinnati & Maurice Stokes Suffers Career-Ending Injury

  By the 1954–55 season, the NBA was struggling financially and was forced to downsize to an eight-team league. In order to survive, toward the end of the 1950s, the NBA started to seek greener pastures and began to abandon its last small market cities that had been the genesis of the league. Small market teams started to move to cities that featured Major League Baseball.

  Following the 1957 season, Fred Zollner moved the Ft. Wayne Pistons to Detroit. The move immediately increased the Pistons fanbase from a metropolitan area population in Ft. Wayne of 216,853 to one in Detroit with 3,421,766.

  Then, the Rochester Royals were moved to Cincinnati at the end of the 1956–57 season, increasing their fanbase from a metropolitan area population of 487,632 to one of 1,051,605.

  The relocations of the Ft. Wayne and Rochester franchises left Syracuse as the last small market team in the NBA.

  The Rochester Royals had never been a profitable entity but owner Les Harrison had a passion for professional basketball and continued to operate the fledgling franchise in one of the NBA’s smallest markets. Even after the Royals had won the 1951 NBA Championship on the opening night of the 1951–52 season, attendance was only 2,316 at Edgartown Park Arena.

  In 1951–52, Royals games were televised for the first time, but only about one in four families owned a television set. By the time the Royals left Rochester for Cincinnati in 1957, the percentage of families owning TV sets in Rochester had jumped to about 80%. Les Harrison always blamed the poor attendance on the rise of television. “We played Tuesdays and Saturdays opposite Milton Berle and Imogene Coca,” said Harrison. “Attendance went down after our title year [1951]. It was just a matter of time before we had to give up.”1

  In 1954–55, the Rochester Royals had finished third in the NBA Western Division with a season record of 29–43. While the Royals’ record was good enough to get them into the playoffs, they were quickly eliminated by the Minneapolis Lakers 2 games to 1.

  The 1954–55 season had been a disaster at the gate with the Royals averaging just 1,633 fans per game which resulted in a net loss for the franchise of $34,600.

  But it seemed like there was hope on the horizon. The 1955 NBA draft was good to the Rochester Royals. The Royals drafted 6′7″, 240-pound center Maurice Stokes from St. Francis College (PA). At St. Francis, Stokes had become a small-college All-American. In his junior year, he averaged 23.3 points and 22.2 rebounds per game. St. Francis had a 22–9 record and played in the National Invitation Tournament. Then, in 1955, his senior year, he led St. Francis to a fourth-place finish in the NIT. In the semifinals, Stokes scored 43 points in a 79–73 overtime loss to Dayton and was named the NIT’s MVP.

  The Royals also drafted 6′6″ forward Jack Twyman, an All-American from the University of Cincinnati. Twyman led the Bearcats in scoring his sophomore year through his senior year and finished his college career as the school’s all-time scoring (1,598 points) and rebound (1,242) leader. In his senior year, Twyman scored 49 points against Western Kentucky and led Cincinnati to the semi-finals of the NIT where the Bearcats lost to eventual tournament champion Duquesne.

  With Stokes and Twyman on the roster, the Royals moved their home games into the 8,000-seat War Memorial Arena for the 1955–56 season, built by the city at a cost of $7 million. On November 5, a total of 5,723 fans showed up for the opening game of the season as Maurice Stokes put on quite a show scoring 32 points in his NBA debut in a 100–98 loss to the New York Knicks.

  But in the end, the Royals finished in fourth place (last) in the NBA Western Division with a record of 31–41. Stokes was selected the NBA Rookie of the Year, finishing with an average of 16.8 points and 16.3 rebounds per game. While attendance nearly doubled over the previous season, averaging 2,325 fans per game, once again the Royals showed a loss of $25,000.

  In 1956, the Rochester Royals had the first draft pick but due primarily to the team’s financial problems, Les Harrison passed on selecting defense-oriented Bill Russell, who had just led the University of San Francisco to consecutive NCAA championships, in favor of high scoring Sihugo Green, who had led Duquesne to the 1955 NIT title.

  Harrison had considered drafting Bill Russell but he didn’t look particularly good in a game that he had scouted. When confronted with the fact he had passed on drafting Russell, Harrison always maintained, “We found out later he knew we were watching him and did poorly so he wouldn’t end up in Rochester.”2

  The facts were that there was more to the Royals failure to get Russell than a poor scouting report. The super racially sensitive Bill Russell has always maintained that he didn’t want to play for Les Harrison after he had approached him with Dolly King tagging along. King was a black player who had formerly played for the Royals. Russell resented having another black man used as a pawn in an attempt to recruit him. Also, Russell supposedly had told Harrison that he would have to match the $25,000 plus that the Harlem Globetrotters were offering him. The figure caused Harrison to immediately abandon all hope of drafting Russell.

  In the 1956–57 season, although Maurice Stokes set a new single-season record with 1,256 rebounds for the second straight season, the Royals finished last in the Western Division with a record of 31–41. Attendance was slightly up with an average of 2,313 customers per game despite the fact that, for a time, the Royals were displaced in the War Memorial Arena by the ABC (American Bowling Congress) Tournament and had to play their games back at the Edgartown Park Arena that Harrison referred to as a glorified warehouse. So once again, the Royals lost money—$17,500.

  To add insult to injury, Les Harrison had to endure the fact that the Rochester Americans, a new professional hockey team in the city, outdrew the Royals in attendance at War Memorial by a ratio of two-to-one.

  With failing attendance in Rochester, Les Harrison had moved thirteen of the Royals home games to other cities for the 1956–57 season. Three of the Royals home games were played in Boston and three others in New York. Other cities included Albany, New York; Camden, New Jersey; Louisville, Kentucky; and Ft. Wayne, Indiana. Also, three cities in Pennsylvania hosted Royals games: Hershey, Johnstown, and Philadelphia. But the city that stood out above the others was Cincinnati, Ohio.

  Two of the Royals players, Jack Twyman (University of Cincinnati) and Dave Piontek (Xavier University), had played college ball in Cincinnati. The two approached Les Harrison and convinced him to schedule a Royals game in Cincinnati. On February 1, 1957, the Royals played the Ft. Wayne Pistons at Cincinnati Gardens before a sell-out crowd of 10,000. The Royals won the game 96–80 with Jack Twyman scoring 23 points and Dave Piontek, 7. Les Harrison was extremely impressed with the huge turnout for the game and began to consider Cincinnati as a possible new home for his Rochester Royals.

  Since 1951–52, the net losses of the Rochester Royals franchise had totaled $131,263. Les Harrison and his brother Jack, co-owners, decided they had to do something with the franchise. Harrison wanted to sell the Royals and was asking $240,000, the amount he believed that he needed to get even. He was committed to his hometown of Rochester so his first choice was to sell to a local group and stated he would take less to keep the Royals in the city.

  While the Royals had won three championships and five division titles in twelve years in Rochester, on March 14, 1957, Les Harrison issued a press release announcing that the Royals were definitely seeking a new home.

  Harrison had been in negotiations with several potential buyers and announced to the press, “I will check thoroughly into at least five possible buyers in Milwaukee, Cleveland, Chicago, Cincinnati, and Kansas City.”3 He added that he had been offered a job with a $25,000 yearly salary ($ 224,986 in 2018 money) by the Marty Marion-Milt Fishmann combine of Kansas City which was also interested in an NBA franchise.

  On April 4, 1957, Les Harrison announced that after being in negotiations with Tom Grace, the executive vice president of Cincin
nati Gardens, he had formally signed contracts moving the Royals franchise from Rochester to Cincinnati for the 1957–58 season.

  In moving from Rochester, Les Harrison stated that the Royals needed an average home attendance of 3,500 to break even. One of the attractive aspects of moving the Royals to Cincinnati was that the team’s home games would be played in Cincinnati Gardens. The arena, which cost $3 million to build, opened in early 1949 and consisted of 24,000 square feet with a seating capacity for basketball of 11,000. At the time the facility was opened, it was the seventh largest indoor arena in the United States.

  The inaugural event at Cincinnati Gardens had taken place on February 22, 1949, when 11,144 fans witnessed an exhibition hockey match between the Montreal Canadians and their minor league affiliate, the Dallas Texans.

  Six days later, one of the first major sporting events held in Cincinnati Gardens took place on the night of February 28, 1949, when local heavyweight boxer Ezzard Charles defeated Joey Maxim of Cleveland in a 15-round bout. The win for Charles set up a heavyweight championship bout in which he outpointed Jersey Joe Walcott on June 22, 1949, at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Charles retained the heavyweight crown until July 18, 1951, when he lost the title in a rematch with Walcott, held at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh.

  Prior to the Royals coming to town, Cincinnati Gardens had been used sparingly for minor league hockey, professional wrestling matches, several basketball games played each year by the University of Cincinnati and Xavier University, the annual visit by the Harlem Globetrotters, and such popular attractions as the Ice Capades shows and the Shrine Circus, so the lights in Cincinnati Gardens were frequently turned off. But that would change in the fall of 1957 when Royals came to town.