Collision Course

by William Cook

  Even Cousy’s father, Joseph, and mother, Juliette, who suffered from arthritis had flown in from New York—it was only the second time she had ever flown. She told Gloria Negri, a reporter from the Boston Globe, that after attending a farewell tribute for her son the previous week at Madison Square Garden she had spent all the emotion she had.

  Boston Mayor John F. Collins read an emotional proclamation proclaiming “Bob Cousy Week,” then walked off the court red-eyed.

  Red Auerbach read a tribute from President John F. Kennedy to Cousy and then started to shake hands with Cousy, but suddenly dropped his hand and embraced him while weeping on his shoulder.

  But the waterworks in the stands were really opened up when 12-year-old Martha Grady, the poster girl for the cystic fibrosis drive, came onto the court and gave Cousy a hug to the thunderous teary-eyed applause of the crowd.

  Bill Russell and Red Auerbach were standing next to each other as the love fest ensued. Bill Russell was a complex, sometimes moody man, and he began thinking about the taunts he had received from the Boston fans in his early years with the Celtics. He felt that a lot of the abuse he had taken was because of his various stands on civil rights issues. Furthermore, he was of the opinion that the Boston fans had not endeared him with the same affection they had shown for some of his white teammates.

  But the fact was that at various times, Bill Russell had made himself the center of controversy with his remarks that were contradictory and taken as an insult by Boston fans. Early in his career Russell publicly remarked, “I don’t play for Boston, I play for the Celtics.”5

  On another occasion, Russell had publicly stated that he didn’t like white people, although going forward in 1977 he married a white woman, Didi Anstett, Miss USA 1968. It was Russell’s second of three marriages.

  As the excitement and nostalgia over Cousy’s retirement continued that night, Russell turned to Red Auerbach and told him that when he retired, he would never do this. He was not going to miss the Boston fans. Several years later, in 1972, Red Auerbach arranged for Russell’s number to be retired. Bill Russell was immediately cold to the idea and maintained that he had played for the Celtics, not personal trophies. Nonetheless, Russell was in town doing color commentary as a broadcaster and half-heartedly agreed out of his respect for Red Auerbach to participate in his number retirement festivities by standing at center court with a few of his former teammates.

  Eventually, Bill Russell would soften and be present when his number was re-retired in 1999 during a huge celebration attended by 10,000 fans at the Fleet Center, the Celtics new arena. The occasion was a benefit for the National Mentoring Partnership and the Massachusetts Mentoring Partnership, programs very dear to Russell’s heart.

  As Bob Cousy stepped up to the microphone, he stood holding on to the lectern at center court flanked by his daughter Mary, wife Marie and daughter Missie, all teary-eyed, Cousy found it hard to speak. Then, apologizing for reading from handwritten notes, he began. He thanked his parents, his teammates, Red Auerbach (whom he still called Arnold), the Celtics management, the kids that attended his basketball camp—he even thanked the visiting Syracuse Nationals.

  When Cousy began to choke back tears and bury his face in a towel, his daughter Marie gave him a handkerchief and then covered her eyes. There were approximately ten seconds of silence in Boston Garden and then one of the most iconic tributes in sports history came ricocheting down from high in the stands and could be heard clearly throughout Boston Garden. From up in the balcony a man with a loud raspy baritone voice yelled out, “We Love Ya Cooz!”6 Immediately, the capacity crowd rose to their feet and broke into a loud applause of affirmation. Later, the fan who had yelled the tribute was identified as Joseph Dillion, a 32-year-old city worker.

  Cousy finally concluded his farewell speech by stating with a sob, “If I had to do it all over again, I can’t imagine doing it any other place than Boston.”7 His speech was scheduled for seven minutes but by the time Cousy finished twenty minutes had passed.

  The ceremonies continued with Cousy receiving a boxcar load of gifts including a black Cadillac. Even Dolph Schayes presented Cousy with a set of chinaware from him and his Syracuse Nats teammates. Then, Schayes, Cousy’s long-time contemporary and rival, only a few months older and also New York City raised, added a little St. Patrick’s Day flavor to the occasion when he placed his hands on Cooz’s shoulders and bellowed into a microphone, “To Bob O’Cousy from Dolph O’Schayes,”—“Erin go braugh” and “Mazel Tov”8 (Hebrew for good luck).

  Among all the tributes to Cousy, Celtics owner Walter Brown probably said it best. “If you fans have a sinking feeling in your stomach imagine how I feel,” said Brown. “I’m the guy who didn’t want Bob Cousy in the first place. What a genius.”9

  After 40-some minutes of tribute to Cousy, the game was eventually played and the Celtics defeated the Nationals 125–116 led by Tom Heinsohn’s 28 points and 19 each by Bill Russell and John Havlicek.

  Red Auerbach felt that Cousy was emotionally spent from the pre-game hoopla and played him only 18 minutes in which he scored 8 points. After the game, Cousy remarked, “It took so much out of me that when I had played a minute, I felt as though I had played ten.”10

  When Cousy was taken out of the game with two minutes remaining the crowd chanted a deafening continuous roar of “We want Cousy!”11 as play on the court continued nearly unnoticed.

  The Boston Celtics won the 1962–63 Eastern Division Championship in a landslide with a record of 58–22. The Syracuse Nationals finished second with a record of 48–32, ten games behind. The Cincinnati Royals finished in third place with a record of 42–38, 16 games behind, and the New York Knicks occupied the division cellar with a pitiful record of 21–59, 37 games behind.

  The Royals’ third-place finish qualified for the playoffs. The format for the postseason at that time was that three teams in each conference made the playoffs. The semi-final round was played between the second and third place team. The division champion or leader then played the winner in the second round to determine the teams that would meet in the NBA Finals.

  As for the money, the league ran the playoffs and the players shares were determined long before the season ended. The players did not get a share of the gate receipts so it was to their advantage to win each series and get on to playing the next opponent.

  Game one of the Eastern Division Semi-Finals was played on March 19 in Syracuse with the Nationals defeating the Royals 123–120. Hal Greer paced the Nats with 32 points while both Oscar Robertson and Jack Twyman scored 29 points for the Royals.

  Game two moved to Cincinnati where the Royals, led by a triple-double performance by The Big O, 41 points, 18 rebounds, and 12 assists, defeated the Nationals 133–115 to even up the series.

  Back at Syracuse for game three on March 23, the Nats got by the Royals 121–117 thanks to Hal Greer who scored 30 points while holding Oscar Robertson to just 16. Lee Shaffer, the Nationals 6′7″ forward drafted out of the University of North Carolina, had 34 points.

  The series returned to Cincinnati on March 24 with the Nationals holding a 2-games-to-1 advantage in the series needing just one more win to advance to the Eastern Division Finals. But the Royals, led by Oscar Robertson’s 29 points, defeated the Nats 125–118 to even up the series 2 games each.

  The deciding game in the 1963 NBA Eastern Division Semi-Finals was played on March 26 in Syracuse before 7,418 fans at the Onondaga War Memorial. While Lee Schaffer scored 45 points for the Nats, it wasn’t enough as the Royals, led by The Big O with 32 points, won in overtime 131–127 to win the series.

  Oscar Robertson had been the leading scorer in the series and for the Royals with a 29.9 points-per-game average. Jack Twyman averaged 25.2 points per game.

  For the Nationals, Lee Schaffer was the leading scorer with 27.2 points per game followed by Hal Greer with 23.4 points per game. Aging superstar Dolph Schayes had contributed 10.2 points per game.

  No one
knew it at the time, but game five of the 1963 East Semi-Finals would be the last game in the history of the Syracuse Nationals. The Nats were averaging about 4,000 fans per game. Ticket prices were $5.00 and were the only major source of the team’s revenue. Nats owner Danny Biasone, the man that had brought the 24-second shot clock to professional basketball, was unable to negotiate a new lease with a lower rent for Onondaga War Memorial, so he sold the team to two buyers from Philadelphia, Irv Kosloff and Ike Richman, for $500,000. Biasone had bought the franchise for $6,000.

  On May 22, the NBA approved the franchise shift that would return professional basketball to Philadelphia, and on August 6, the team name was changed from Nationals to 76ers. With the franchise shift of Syracuse to Philly the last of the NBA’s small cities that had been the genesis of the league would fade into history.

  From that point forward, basketball fans in Syracuse would embrace the Syracuse University Orange, and college games played in the Carrier Dome would become legendary.

  Now that the Cincinnati Royals had eliminated the Syracuse Nationals, by virtue of being transferred to the Eastern Division before the season began, they would have to face the daunting challenge of getting by the perennial champion, the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Division Finals, to make it to the NBA championship series.

  The 1962–63 Celtics were a balanced team, no player had averaged more than 20 points a game, and they were not overly concerned with playing the Royals; they had met them eight times during the regular season winning seven games and losing one. The one Celtics loss to the Royals, 130–133, had come on December 3 while playing on a neutral court in Providence, Rhode Island. Red Auerbach and his players knew that Oscar Robertson or Jack Twyman could get hot and the Celtics could lose a game or even two in the series, but they really expected to dispatch the Royals in five games.

  Maybe the Boston Celtics were overconfident. Maybe the Cincinnati Royals were eager for the challenge and perhaps underrated. But no one in basketball was ready for what almost happened. The 1963 Eastern Division Finals would turn out to be one of the NBA’s best playoff series during the decade of the 1960s. The Royals starting five of Oscar Robertson, Jack Twyman, Wayne Embry, Bob Boozer, and Arlen Bockhorn supported by Tom Hawkins, Hub Reed, Dave Piontek, and Adrian Smith coming off the bench were a determined group. They played intensely, dragging a Boston Celtics team that included seven NBA future Hall of Fame players Bob Cousy, Bill Russell, John Havlicek, Sam Jones, K.C. Jones, Tom Heinsohn, and Frank Ramsey, and a future Hall of Fame coach Red Auerbach, to the full seven games before losing the series three games to four.

  The first shockwave in the series came in the opening game of the series at Boston Garden on March 28 when the Royals, after being down by 22 points led by Oscar Robertson with 43 points, came back to defeat the Celtics 135–132 and stun the Garden crowd of 11,162. Red Auerbach, as he often did, blamed the loss on the officiating, and the fact that his team hadn’t played a game in a week.

  The second game played on Friday night, March 29, at Cincinnati Gardens was witnessed by 11,102, the largest crowd to ever watch a Royals game in Cincinnati. The game was very good for the Royals’ management’s bottom line with gross at the gate at $22,000. At that time, the financial arrangements were that the host team and the league split the playoff gates with the league paying the expenses. If the series went an odd game then there was a three-way split. The Royals had cut into the Syracuse Nationals gate in the fifth game of semi-finals but still didn’t make enough to pay their expenses for the games in Cincinnati.

  In game two, the Celtics took charge and, in a blowout, beat the Royals 125–102. Bill Russell with 26 points and 24 rebounds led the way. Tom Heinsohn added 22. Red Auerbach used his bench and it produced with John Havlicek scoring 17 points and Frank Ramsey, 15.

  When Bob Cousy had been introduced prior to the game, the huge Cincinnati Gardens crowd booed him loudly. Even the Cincinnati Gardens organist got into the act blaring out a low-key cord when Cousy was introduced that enticed the rabid Royals rooters to extend a Bronx cheer. The Boston newspapers responded that the Royals fans booing of Bob Cousy was bush league. While it was surprising to some, others felt it was warranted for Cousy roughing up Royals reserve guard Adrian Smith with a hard foul in game one in Boston. Coach Charlie Wolf hadn’t helped Cousy’s popularity either by making a charge that he played dirty basketball.

  Bob Cousy responded to the hazing by scoring just 4 points, but he also had 13 assists, which led both teams. He had asked Red Auerbach to play him more in game two. “I was afraid we’d stop running,” said Cousy. “I wasn’t shooting well. I knew that. But I felt my floor game could help the club.”12 Cousy had played 56 minutes in the two games in the series, scoring a total of 20 points with 22 assists. Only Bill Russell, 92 minutes, Sam Jones, 65, and Tom “Satch” Sanders, 63, had played more than Cousy.

  With the Celtics and Royals knotted at one game each, the series returned to Boston Garden for game three, Sunday evening, March 31. Despite that fact that The Big O was the leading scorer in the first two games averaging 31.1 points per game, sportswriters covering the series were suggesting that the Royals had caught the Celtics napping in game one, but in game two they had stopped the Royals momentum and could now sweep the next three games to wrap-up the series.

  That didn’t happen. The Royals defeated the Celtics at home again, 121–116, to take a two-games-to-one lead. A huge sellout crowd of 13,909 turned out at Boston Garden and they witnessed the Bob Cousy of old playing 36 minutes scoring 26 points with 7 assists. It was his biggest offensive output of the year. Bill Russell played another great game scoring 19 points and grabbing 24 rebounds, while Sam Jones and Tom Heinsohn both added 21. The Celtics went down not because of The Big O, who scored 23 points, or Jack Twyman, who added 18, but because of the great performances of two Royals subs coming off the bench in the second period—Adrian Smith and Dave Piontek.

  The Celtics came out running and raced to an 11–2 lead. But the Royals fought back and were trailing after the first period 27–26. Then, in the second period, Royals coach Charley Wolf sent Smith and Piontek into the game; they shot the ball as if it had just come out of a hot oven getting rid of it fast. Smith hit four of five shots in the period and had 11 points while Piontek hit four in a row and had 9 points during the period.

  The Celtics were down 67–60 with seconds to go before the half when Bob Cousy arched a hook shot from midcourt to cut the Royals lead to 67–62.

  Over the course of the game Smith wound up with 13 points and Piontek, 11, and the two grabbed 8 key rebounds. Wolf didn’t stop the substitutions with Smith and Piontek, he also sent in Tom Hawkins and Hub Reed who scored 12 points each. Both helped the Royals out-rebound the Celtics 73–70. The Royals subs were performing so well that Wolf kept Jack Twyman out of the game for the final 15 minutes and 45 seconds.

  Red Auerbach kept the door to the Celtics locker room locked for fifteen minutes following the game. The Celtics had only made 45 of 115 shots in the game and had 18 turnovers that resulted in 15 points for the Royals. The Royals’ bench, considered by some the worst in the league, had beat the Celtics, scoring 48 points, 21 rebounds, and 4 assists.

  Bob Cousy’s analysis of the Celtics’ current circumstances in the series was, “we just relax too much at home. We think all we have to do is put on our uniforms and go out there and play. On the road we’re worried and play better.”13

  The Royals seemed to be in the driver’s seat with a 2–1 advantage coming home for game four. But the Royals were about to lose home-court advantage as a result of a faux pas by the Cincinnati Gardens management.

  The Royals’ majority stockholder, Thomas E. Wood, had died in 1961. Since that time, the team had been run by the Thomas E. Wood Estate. In the spring of 1963, the Wood Estate sold its 56% interest in the team and 40% ownership of Cincinnati Gardens to Louis “Louie” Jacobs, the multi-millionaire concessions czar and president of Emprise Corporation in Buffalo, New
York which operated Sportservice, the concessionaire to many professional baseball, football, hockey, and basketball stadiums and arenas. Louis Jacobs had already owned 40% of Cincinnati Gardens, now he owned 80%.

  Jacobs immediately named Tom Grace, who was serving as executive vice president of both the Cincinnati Gardens and the Cincinnati Royals, to remain in his position as well as to continue to represent the Royals on the NBA Board of Governors.

  Immediately, Louie Jacobs got a quick lesson in absentee ownership when it was revealed that it was never considered that the Royals might still be playing in early April. Tom Grace had booked the Shrine Circus into Cincinnati Gardens for April 3 and it was impossible to change the dates or cancel the performances. Consequently, game four of the NBA Eastern Division Finals was scheduled to be played in Xavier University’s small 3,000-seat facility, Schmidt Fieldhouse.

  The Royals returned to Cincinnati with a four-day break to rest and practice their plays. Oscar Robertson remarked, “We wasted no time. The day after we got home, our team walked onto the floor of the Cincinnati Gardens for practice. The floor was covered with sawdust and hay, and we had to step over giant piles of elephant shit.”14

  The Royals practices were moved to Schmidt Fieldhouse, but the team wasn’t happy about it. They were all saying that it was the hardest court they had ever been on. Tom Hawkins said there was no spring to the court. “A guy like Bill Russell with those long legs of his could come down with a bad case of shin splints,” said Hawkins.15 Nonetheless, a couple of the Royals did have experience on the Schmidt Fieldhouse floor. Dave Piontek had played at Xavier and Wayne Embry, as a member of the Miami Redskins, had also played some road games at Schmidt.

  The Cincinnati Royals, who had finished the season 16 games behind the Boston Celtics, were now leading the Celtics 2–1 in the Eastern Division playoffs. At that time, the Boston Celtics were arguably the best basketball team ever assembled. The NBA playoffs should have held considerable national media attention, but national television wasn’t interested at all. On Sunday, when the Royals beat the Celtics in Boston, the Los Angeles Lakers, sparked by Jerry West’s 27 points, had defeated the St. Louis Hawks in game one of the Western Division playoffs, played in LA. But neither game was carried on national television. Instead, the networks carried bowling with “Whispering Joe” Wilson doing the dull commentary, golf, ski-jumping in Norway, college wrestling, and an interview with racecar driver Sterling Moss. The NBA was still lightyears behind baseball and football in national media coverage.