Original subtitles

Banner 18! Banner 18!

Our 2024 NBA

world champions!

You get very few chances in life to be great

and carry on the responsibility of what

these banners are and all the great people,

all the great players that came here.

Good to be back home.

It's 30 teams in the league, but how many got tradition?

- Oh, what's up, boy? - Everybody all right?

All good. All good.

How many got things that last forever?

The Celtics were different because

of all the championships and all the great players

that they had.

In my rookie year, I saw all these banners.

I just thought this was normal.

What greatness is all about.

And then you go to other arenas

and quickly realize it's not the same.

Red's theory was 10 players,

2 baskets, 1 basketball.

And we will decide what is done with that one basketball.

Listen to the crowd support the Boston Celtics.

I think we all grew up being proud of where we were from.

I'll be the judge!

We had challenges...

Racial trouble in Boston.

But the Celtics, in many ways,

gave us something to feel proud about.

1, 2, 3.

When you look at the towering greats

of the Celtics' past,

the question is what is my role in this history?

This is how we tell our story.

This is how we understand who we are as Americans.

It's basketball...

No cardiac function.

But it's also life.

It wasn't all ice cream and cherries.

You have to tell the whole story.

This is incredible.

- Let's go! - Yes, sir.

Boston Celtics have to be central to the city of Boston.

And the players who play for the Celtics

have to feel like Celtics

because of the greatness and legacy

and history and rivalry.

That was a disgusting display.

Little fight going on there.

Now Julius and Bird go at it.

Now Maxwell goes after a fan.

There's a lot of memories playing against the Celtics,

none of them very good.

And now let's watch it.

I hate parquet. I hate the leprechaun.

I hate the Celtics.

Uh, fuck the Celtics.

What ever happened to the Los Angeles dynasty?

The greatest thing I ever heard, here comes the--

The world champion, the Boston Celtics.

Celtic pride,

that's the thread that connects all these guys.

They all know each other's story

because it's all part of their story.

Bill Russell's in the house.

Johnny Most is in the house.

Red Auerbach's in the house.

Come on. The ghosts are out.

- You can feel it. - Yeah!

You have a responsibility to this greatness.

Yeah, absolutely.

Bill Russell was a great man.

He represented a type of nobility and honor

that transcended sports.

Pride is created from trying to achieve

a goal by a number of people who bond in the process.

When you look at the history of the Boston Celtics

and you see the names, pioneers...

The people who have come and gone...

It really built up that tradition.

You win in Boston, it's forever.

It's forever.

No one ever forgets.

The Boston Celtics!

The Boston Celtics are the world champions.

Oh, my.

Oh, my.

This place is going crazy.

As I learned what Celtic tradition is...

There was a lot of misconceptions

about what they stood for.

This organization has been a pioneer

for social justice movements and society.

To be at that doorstep of pushing society forward,

it's a part of the fabric of, like, the Celtic DNA.

If you look a little deeper than the flash and excitement

of the game itself...

Celtics!

You find the never-ending attention

to details that make champions instead of just good athletes.

Throw it in the corner.

Brown fakes, fires up the 3.

And of course, a part of the journey is winning.

Jaylen Brown knocks down the 3 to tie the game.

I give my everything to this game.

The Celtics are the world champion.

And Red Auerbach used to say it best--

Celtics is a way of life.

It's Friday night.

The place is Boston.

Boston was just one of the stranger places

to be able to decode.

It was incredibly insular.

We had just about no interaction

with anybody outside of our Irish neighborhood.

It was very tight that way, and small-minded that way.

And when you're a kid, you don't know this.

You don't understand this, you know?

The world is the size that people tell you it is.

And during the beginning of the Celtics,

that's what this town was.

Line up. Watch them all line up.

It's an Irish town, so their basketball team

is naturally called by the ancient Irish name,

the Celtics.

Their team is made up of descendants of Germans

and Czechs and Swedes, and is coached by

the son of a Russian Jew.

Coach of the Celtics, Red Auerbach.

Red could have been a CEO.

He could have been a general.

It just so happened that the thing he loved above all

was basketball.

Originally, my first ambition in life

was to be a physical education teacher and a coach.

And then took the gamble when professional ball started.

The new league is born--

a league that will grow by leaps and rebounds.

The founding owners of the NBA were mostly hockey owners.

And they were thinking, we all have these arenas,

but we all have these empty dates that we can fill in.

So let's start a basketball league

so we can fill all these empty arena dates.

Walter Brown owned the Boston Bruins,

and he ran the Boston Garden.

He kind of began the Celtics almost like an afterthought.

Walter Brown really wanted a winner.

Coach Auerbach was the same way.

Brown said, here you go.

You're the coach, GM, this, this, this, this.

Do it all.

Win at all costs.

Our practice sessions are tough,

and we play a long, hard season.

Winning is a choice.

You have to make fucking choices.

And, like, winning is a choice.

And too many times, we talk ourselves

in and out of the things that we know

are the most important thing.

Here we go. Ready?

Play. Play.

Yes! Yes!

The Celtics has always been in my heart

because I grew up an hour away.

I have vivid memories of going to Red Auerbach Camp.

You could always just feel his presence

when he walked into the gym.

Take off! Space!

Space! Yes, Pete.

Yes, Pete.

To me, it's how much can I learn about

the culture that he created,

the relationship that he had with his players,

the relationship that he had with the city,

the relationship that he had with winning?

There is a DNA of Celtic basketball

that has stood the test of time.

Ah.

This--God, it's so dusty.

It's dusty.

This is just my dad and Bill.

That's when he was coaching.

Notice the black sneakers.

They all wore black sneakers because they were cheaper.

If you wore white, they'd get dirty.

That's why they wore black.

We lived in DC.

I had asthma growing up,

and they thought the winters in Boston

would be too tough on me.

So we stayed here.

This was his suitcase.

And when you think about it--

and as much as they traveled

and they didn't have their own plane, this was heavy.

It was hard. It was hard on my mom.

But she kept us all together and kept things running.

I'm there, and my sister is there.

After a game, win or lose, he'd call.

This was '53.

"Cousy Better Than Ever."

He's the only one, beside my mother,

that called my dad Arnold.

"My coach and my friend, in appreciation for 10 years.

Sincerely, Cooz."

I still speak to him occasionally

just to check up on him.

You're very, very important to this story, Mr. Cousy.

Well, yeah, only because I'm still alive.

I'd like to think it was based on merit.

But there's nobody left,

at least with a lifetime experience.

Bob Cousy of the Boston Celtics.

Use any superlative about this NBA veteran,

and you'd probably be right.

Mr. Basketball starts a fast break.

That's Cousy, and he's red hot tonight.

If you stopped a man on the street

in 1955 in Fargo or in Albuquerque--

name a basketball player.

The plurality would have named Bob Cousy.

He was Mr. Basketball, literally.

That was his official nickname.

The most famous basketball player

of the first 50 or 60 years of the 20th century.

Keep your eyes on Cousy.

One of the all-time leaders in assists, Bob, sets up another.

Cousy is a showman.

He's like James Dean and Elvis Presley--

breaking out, you know, going against the grain.

And fans loved it.

It felt like watching a great magician on television.

Because, at the time, it seemed like

what he was doing wasn't possible.

Yeah.

Bob Cousy, All-American from Holy Cross.

All of these Irish people in Boston at the time

worked so their kids could go to Holy Cross.

And in Boston, you identified

where you're from by the parish.

So Bob Cousy, at Holy Cross,

was an idol

both through my Jesuit uncle and my Irish grandmother.

Everything in 1950 is in flux in the NBA.

There's 17 teams in the league.

The next year, 11.

Six are folding.

At Boston Garden,

Holy Cross would outdraw the young Celtics.

So the belief was he's going to be drafted by the Celtics.

Because if you draft the local guys,

that's gonna bring the fans in.

Red really didn't think he was good enough.

He honestly felt

that Bob Cousy wouldn't help him win basketball games.

I mean, this is the Truman years

evolving into the Eisenhower years.

It's a conservative time in the nation.

Hey, Ma, how about another sandwich?

- What a hungry crew. - They've been at sea.

It's a conservative time in basketball.

If you try a wraparound pass,

that's grandstanding, that's showboating.

That's not the way basketball is played.

Red favored a more orthodox kind of player

and famously said, about the local pressure to draft Cousy,

am I supposed to satisfy the local yokels?

The NBA was so Mickey Mouse

that the only place I wanted to play was Boston.

I just established myself in Worcester,

bought an old Plymouth, put dual controls in,

and started teaching ladies to drive.

And we had--within a few months, we had three cars--

three cars going around the clock,

teaching ladies to drive.

Red Auerbach could care less if you're a popular player.

He cared about finding people

that could help him win basketball games.

In 1950, the Boston Celtics

also drafted Chuck Cooper,

the first Black player drafted by an NBA team.

At the time, the premier outlet for Black basketball talent

was the Harlem Globetrotters.

What gets a fan to come to a Globetrotters game

is players clowning around

and doing these various comic skits.

It speaks to the low status of Black basketball

that if you are an excellent Black basketball player,

it was assumed that you would go play

for the Harlem Globetrotters.

Walter Brown and I decided

that Chuck Cooper would help our team.

He says, I don't care whether a guy is

black, white, yellow, green.

I don't care. If he can play, let's get him.

And a sensational show by Charlie Cooper,

as Boston wins it 80 to 74.

Remember, at that same time,

the great Bob Cousy's in the passenger seat

with the housewives of Worcester.

He's thinking, I don't know about the NBA.

Cousy was on the team that folded,

and the players' names were put inside a hat.

My dear friend Arnold Red Auerbach,

as Waller was going out the door, said,

"Make sure you don't come back with that Bob 'Cow-zee.'"

But when the Celtics go and the only damn thing left

in the hat other than the band was moi.

And that first year, Chuck and I became good friends.

Hello again.

This is John McClellan speaking to you from a table

just off stage here at George Wein Storyville

at the Copley Square Hotel in Boston.

Tonight, you're listening to the Erroll Garner Trio.

Erroll Garner.

We would sit until 2:00 in the morning at Storyville

and drink beer and listen to those soft,

dulcet tones.

And we roomed together because we were friends.

I hadn't dealt with the whole racial thing enough

to make distinctions, or say,

oh, God, I'm rooming with a Black guy.

This is only three years post Jackie Robinson's

breaking of the color barrier in baseball.

Give us something, Jack. What do 'ya say, boy?

And there were moments when Cooper felt

the stings of racial epithets.

In February of 1952,

an opponent called Cooper a Black bastard.

Cooper, chin out, says, say it again.

And he did.

This is a public moment.

There's a private moment

that Cousy has talked about for many years.

So after the game, we're in Raleigh.

Chuck and I didn't have a lot of bad habits.

We didn't sniff. We didn't inject.

We didn't take pills. But we drank a lot of beer.

And we have two, three, four beers,

and, ah, we gotta whiz.

It's the first time either one of us,

looking for the men's room,

those big, fat, ugly signs.

I said, what do you mean

I can't pee with whoever I want to pee with, you know?

Now, Chuck had a bizarre sense of humor like me,

so we walked outside and we both peed together.

We thought it was pretty funny that we--

we did it to whitey.

Watch again as Cousy turns the contest

into a cameraman's delight.

Six years into Cousy's career,

Red called him the best point guard he'd ever seen.

But they won this many titles.

We have six years of frustration,

and Arnold said to me, there's a guy on the West Coast.

And if we can somehow get him, he will solve all our problems.

Bill Russell, a 6'10" center

of the San Francisco Dons--

biggest wheel in the collegiate basketball circuit.

My father used to say,

I don't care what you do for your work when you grow up.

But I want you to be the best you can at that.

The San Francisco Dons, led by Bill Russell,

battled for the NCAA title.

The Dons' game, 83-71.

Collegiate title and 55th straight victory

for San Francisco.

We completely dominated college basketball.

I mean, completely and-- I mean, just completely.

And how they love Russell in San Francisco.

The number one pick belonged to the Rochester Royals

in 1956.

But the owner in Rochester,

who was very sort of conservative

and worried that maybe Russell wouldn't sign--

ultimately, he didn't plan on drafting Russell.

There's a legend that the reason that

the Rochester Royals didn't draft Bill Russell

is because Walter Brown owned the Ice Capades

and had promised that they could have a two week booking.

But that story is not true at all.

Rochester had already been booking the Ice Capades.

Doggie in a new role.

The second pick in the draft was

held by the St. Louis Hawks.

In the late '50s,

still the NBA is a primarily white league.

Most teams have one or two Black players on them.

The St. Louis Hawks, they were an all-white team.

St. Louis were the,

"northernmost Southern city in America."

Was not interested in a Black star at all.

Russell was, to me, the ultimate piece of the puzzle.

Not only great in defense, but could get the ball.

The very first play that I made, I blocked a shot,

and the referee called goaltending.

And Red jumped up and got a technical foul because of me.

And that was like--

I thought that was so cool.

You know, it was like,

whoa, yeah, dude.

Near the basket, Boston has...

Russell.

Go, Russell. Go, Russell.

Go, Russell.

Talk about hitting the jackpot.

He was simply an athlete

playing against these Frankenstein monsters.

He revolutionized the freaking game with his defense,

you know?

Cousy flying.

Cousy and Russell were perfectly

interlocking pieces on the floor--

Russell the defense, Cousy the offense.

Bob Cousy is off for the basket

as Boston puts on more pressure.

That's the genius of Red Auerbach,

to see that the game could be redesigned

around the talents of the defensive players,

that which would then liberate the offensive players.

That was game-changing.

The NBA playoffs for the world championship

of basketball as the Boston Celtics, Eastern Kingpins,

meet the Giants of the West, the St. Louis Hawks.

You know, Red could stir up a lot of mess.

Yeah, I learned

that you hit first and worry later.

Game 3 at Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis,

Bill Sharman in his pregame warm-ups

convinced the basket isn't measured right.

It's not exactly 10 feet.

Red tells the referees.

The referees bring out the measuring tape.

And when the St. Louis Hawks owner, Ben Kerner,

sees this, he rushes down to the court.

He cussed me, and he took a half step towards me,

you know, and I hit him.

Game 7 is in Boston Garden.

And like often in a Game 7, people kind of tense up.

This is particularly true of the Celtics' backcourt,

Bob Cousy and Bill Sharman.

The Celtics backcourt shot,

a dismal 12% from the floor.

The two people who saved them are the two rookies,

Tom Heinsohn and Bill Russell.

No good. The rebound by Heinsohn.

He lays it up, and--good!

Tommy Heinsohn!

Pass into Pettit. Pettit's along the baseline.

Shoots it. Blocked by Russell.

Russell made the greatest play

I ever saw in the game of basketball.

Sharman holds the ball, and a pivot now to Russell.

Russell drives. He lays it up and in!

Bill Russell!

And Boston leads 102-101.

Underneath now to Coleman. It's blocked by Russell!

The shot is blocked by Russell!

He went like the Road Runner.

I mean, pew!

The most amazing play I ever saw.

As Heinsohn tells the story,

it becomes more embellished over time.

Russell's momentum carried him off the basketball court.

Russell started at the Golden Gate Bridge...

That man ran from the length of the court plus...

Crossed the Rockies, then he swam the Great Lakes.

Faster than they could make one pass up the floor

and dribble the ball.

That's because you just didn't see things

like that happening in the NBA of that time.

That was a really exciting game.

We just couldn't put them away.

Bill Sharman takes a shot at the end of regulation.

Boom. Hits the front rim.

They go into overtime.

It's tied again. Bill Sharman has the ball.

Takes a shot with no time left.

And the buzzer goes off. The overtime is over,

and we're going to have another overtime.

Again, it comes down to the end.

Celtics are up by 2.

One second left to go in the second overtime.

Hannum gets the ball, puts it into play.

And hits the backboard.

And the ball was up off the boards.

Almost went in.

It's all over! It's over!

It's over!

People have poured out onto the floor.

The Celtics are the world champion.

That was a moment that I--

everything left me.

I mean, I was just an empty shell.

That '57 series still remained

the most memorable one of all.

The tension of that game, plus it was the first win.

The NBA champions.

In 1957, I was theoretically the best player on the planet.

We won the championship,

and I was voted by my peers

as the best player in the league.

There's a photograph that's taken

just moments before the start of Game 5

of the 1957 NBA Finals.

It's Cousy at 28 and Russell just at 23 years old.

They're so young,

and it's almost like

a message in a bottle.

It comes to shore 50, 60, 70 years later,

and it says, these are the founding fathers.

It's a stunning photograph.

Cousy is in the foreground.

Russell is in the background.

And that's the way fans saw that team at that time.

Russell is in shadow.

The sportswriters in Boston, they loved Cousy.

Cousy was Catholic. Cousy was from Holy Cross.

Cousy was one of them.

A lot of the publicity was worthy of him.

After all, Cousy was the greatest point guard by far.

That was one of my big problems.

And I used to say to Russell,

it's one man's opinion.

It's not the consensus of all your fans.

It's one guy!

Don't let it bother you. To hell with 'em.

You know how I feel.

During the first season, Cousy and Russell

made an accommodation with each other

that lasted all their lives--

that neither one would ever say anything bad about the other.

Neither one would ever get involved in something

that would compromise the other.

This is the basketball from the first 1957 championship.

In those days, basketball was informal.

People signed basketballs.

They did various things. They threw their jerseys away.

You know, now they see them selling for a million dollars.

My first assignment was to go over

and meet this guy, Bill Russell.

So I said, well, why don't we go have lunch?

Russell ordered a martini,

and I thought that was strange because he was an athlete.

And he took the martini glass, and he sipped it.

And he said, mm, good.

And he turned it to me with the part where his lips had been,

and I sipped it.

Gee, it is good, I said, but I got to write a story.

I can't drink too many martinis.

And I think this is

Russell and me when he got the All-Star trophy

in 1963.

He didn't drink martinis.

That was Russell's test.

When he turned the glass to a white person,

see if they drink from the same glass as him without thinking.

And if that happened, he felt he could trust 'em.

We just suddenly became great friends.

He's remarkable.

USF in the '50s, for most of the years I was there,

I think there were nine Black students on the campus.

And there were things that people thought

we should put up with.

This boy walks up to me and says,

hey, what do they call you, boy?

My name is William.

That's my given name.

He said, well, I'm going to call you snowball.

I said, I don't think you should do that.

He said, well, that's what I'm gonna do.

I says, well, 'cause you call me snowball,

I'm gonna knock the hell out of you.

So he called me snowball, and I tried to knock his head off.

And so the Dean of Men called me in, and I said,

he verbally assaulted me, so I retaliated.

And they said, that's-- well, you can't do that.

Well, I did that one.

Russell has all the tools--

quick hands,

great spring and timing,

a keen mind.

And maybe most important, Russell is a proud man.

Russell wanted to be the best at what he could do,

but Russell didn't worry about his stats.

Bill Sharman into Russell,

who gives to Ramsey for the score.

He didn't come to play. He came to win.

There's a difference.

A lot of athletes, they come to play,

but I'd rather have a guy who comes to win.

Celtics win.

Auerbach's team first to clean sweep the title playoffs.

Every minute I played for the Celtics,

I never felt that I was by myself

in that it was important that we won.

My teammates were all highly skilled,

confident, strong men.

When I was growing up, the way the Boston Celtics played

was how we wanted to play on the court.

There's a style of basketball--

share the ball.

You see, what make basketball great is there's only one ball

and only one person can shoot that ball at a time.

And on our team, they didn't worry about

who made the points.

The thing was to get the W.

Their unselfish ball movement,

it can devour a defense.

And kick to the corner. Open Jaylen 3.

Got it!

We all have to sacrifice

some part of our individual goals.

That's the standard of what it is to put this uniform on.

And the buzzer goes off. It's all over!

The Boston Celtics are once again the world champions.

The crowd is mobbing Bob Cousy

out in the middle of the floor,

and they've raised him up on their shoulders.

We loved to have everybody have success.

We applauded each other.

When the Celtics drafted me,

I had said to Auerbach, Red, I can score.

I averaged over 20 a game in college.

I remember him saying distinctly,

that's good for you.

But for me, for you to play in a Celtic team,

I want you to rebound and play defense.

Period.

So let's everybody go after the ball.

Come on, Satch, keep Hawkins off of there

and knock him on his ass.

The reason we were brought together

was to play winning basketball.

If anyone felt anything different,

they would not be on that team.

Were you a manipulative coach?

Did you play with people's emotions

to try to bring the best out in them?

Oh, sure. All the time.

He had fined Sam Jones $100 for eating pancakes.

Red believed that you should not eat carbohydrates

on a game day.

Silly stuff.

You coached through humor, sarcasm,

just plain force.

You gotta change your pace all the time.

Red had no problem with saying things like,

and you're supposed to be Russell, Bill Russell,

the famous shot blocker.

Oh!

Red would point to the skills of players.

Well, once we get it, then run.

OK, Satch?

And that's how he kept the heat on the guys.

I used to get on Heinsohn. I used to get on Sam Jones.

I used to get on Russell.

Guys like that.

But certain guys, you don't.

See, everybody is a different person.

He knew talent.

He knew how to acquire it and he knew how to motivate it.

And the result...

Tommy Heinsohn, he was a tough guy, and he could shoot.

Tommy Heinsohn cages another.

Sam Jones was a big play artist in big moments.

Bill Sharman was not someone you wanted to get mad at you.

Red knew he couldn't get on Sharman too much

because Sharman would coldcock him.

KC Jones was a tough defender and beloved teammate.

Frank Ramsey, he had this angelic look.

And one opposing coach would say,

he'll give you that angelic look while he murders you.

They clinched the series, four games to one,

for the third straight title.

It starts with them.

The merger of Black stars with white stars

is an essential show of greatness by this Celtics team.

They're a good team.

They were good-- they were good men.

They really were.

We were family.

We had that feeling of giving and supporting

and encouraging.

When I reflect, it was really something just totally amazing.

I miss Dad, but I love it.

Who knew we had so much-- so much stuff?

I know.

I'm glad.

Where's the wedding pile?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, my gosh, look how big that cake is.

It's huge.

And it was one of Mom's aunts who made that cake.

And there's the picture right there of the--

Who's in there? Oh, the wedding picture.

Uncle Bill is in that, and Uncle Willie--

This is in Freeport, a farming community

northwest of Chicago.

And Mom said everybody in Freeport

are like, who are these tall people coming in here?

Kind of freaked out the town out.

Yeah.

I'm from a very small town--

Freeport, Illinois.

And when I saw the first playoff game,

the old Garden held 13,909.

And I looked around at this full crowd,

and I thought, well, this is half the population of my town.

It was shocking.

And if it hadn't been for Rose Russell, I'd have said,

I don't think I can handle this.

The wives were very sweet and very kind to me, all of them.

Missie Cousy, Diane Heinsohn, Jean Ramsey.

I loved them all.

We'd all sit together, called the Wives Row.

You know, we kind of took care of each other.

Deep in our heart,

there's always that Celtics relationship.

Mm-hmm.

Not only did that contribute to it,

but all the other players,

and the players' wives, and the players' kids,

we were all like this little tight knit--

- Family. - It's family.

Yeah. It was wonderful.

America has never been an easy place,

far as I'm concerned, for Blacks in particular.

When I was just a kid, every summer,

we'd go down South to visit my grandfather in South Carolina.

Whenever we got to the Carolinas,

cops would pull us over just to question my father

in a ungentlemanly fashion.

Boy, where you going?

Get out of the car.

And we'd go through that hassle

at least three or four times every single trip.

You know, it's interesting.

Everyone talks about those experiences,

but everybody hasn't gone through those experiences.

You know, having my father,

a 50-something-year-old man, being called "boy"--

yeah, and going through that kind of jazz as a kid,

I just never-- never got past that.

You just don't.

So my first year with the Celtics,

Frank Ramsey was there.

I don't feel that right now the South could support

a professional basketball team simply because the fans

do not know enough about the team.

And he had that Southern drawl

that I hated with a passion.

In practice, I would try and beat on him

every single time simply because of the accent,

the Southern accent.

That year, Auerbach said,

Satch, you're gonna start in the playoff series.

I remember Frank Ramsey coming over to me

and saying...

Satch, don't embarrass me.

You're playing in my spot.

Don't embarrass me.

And after that,

we got really close because he wanted to win every game too.

The Celtics went to play in an exhibition game

in Lexington, Kentucky in honor of Frank Ramsey,

an alumnus of the University of Kentucky.

Earlier, I remember going down with Sam Jones

to eat in the hotel restaurant.

Here's the main street of Lexington

with a glimpse of the Phoenix Hotel.

They just said, hey, we don't serve--

I think we were Negroes then.

I might be mistaken.

So we alerted Auerbach,

and he went to the management of the hotel,

and they said that, well,

we could eat there.

And it was interesting because every once and again,

a Black person would pass the window

and you'd see them do one of these.

You know...

So Sam said, we're just joking.

We're not players.

And the management automatically said, oop!

Pulled the menus back.

My attitude was, I'm going home.

Because if I'm getting ready to play

and I can't get a pre-game meal,

why should I play?

Well, we said, hey, if you're out, Russ,

we're out.

Russell, Satch, Sam, and KC Jones left.

But it was a perplexing moment for the rest of us.

We didn't know what to do.

We ended up playing the game

because we had to play the game.

Somebody had to play the game for Frank Ramsey.

I was asked recently about my feelings on the topic.

I--the story wasn't familiar.

And so I called my friend Satch.

I said, Satch, why don't I remember

anything about the Lexington thing

that you guys went through?

He said, because you aren't part of it.

This was the most difficult moment

that I had playing with Black players

and not being involved

in the most positive way I thought we could have been.

Auerbach's the one that ultimately drives 'em

to the airport and voices support for them,

as does Walter Brown, the owner of the Celtics,

as does Frank Ramsey, who says no thinking man

in Kentucky is a segregationist.

At the same time, the white players play in that game.

So it's not to say that the Celtics

were necessarily a racial utopia, not by any means.

More so, they found a language to work together.

Frank Ramsey is a friend of mine,

has been from the first day we met.

I think that his attitude was that

you're a man, you do what you have to do.

And I'm a man, I do what I have to do.

And we're teammates, you know?

When we won the championship,

I'd say, how does it feel to be

a member of the greatest basketball team in the world?

I'd say, what more is there?

Then they'd come back the next year.

I'd say to them, now they're after you.

Everybody's after you.

You gonna let 'em take it away from you?

How tall is tall?

I'm 6 feet, 9 and 5/8 of an inch.

Is there anybody taller than you?

You think I'm big, you should see Wilt Chamberlain.

What's he?

About 7' 1" or 2", something like that.

Wilt Chamberlain was this whole other level,

completely different from everybody here.

This is not like anyone else.

And we were afraid for Bill Russell.

They had no way to compare what I was doing.

It was so far out of the realm of believability.

He was Goliath.

Literally, people called him Goliath.

They'd never seen anybody like Wilt.

The first time I played against Wilt,

he got 30 points.

I got 22.

But I got more rebounds than he did that night, and we won.

The next game, I was of absolutely no value to my team.

I put too much emotion into it and I drained myself.

It took me at least a week to recover.

I could not do that.

What I must do is play the game

that I play for the Celtics.

I always say that Russell was like Athens.

He was the Athenian, and he thought things out.

He thought out the geometry of the game.

And Wilt was the Spartan.

You see him dunking on Russell and blowing him away.

It wasn't like Russell won every moment of every match-up

in any way, shape, or form.

But there's a whole level of basketball brilliance

that I think Russell employed against Wilt.

Shot is missed, but Bill Russell rebounds,

and Sam Jones has it.

It was the preeminent story of the NBA,

something that even the casual fan of basketball

could grab on to when basketball really

needed those casual fans.

Remember, basketball is a team game.

And when I faced teams,

nobody wanted to face me singly.

Nobody--Bill Russell or five Bill Russells.

Which of the defeats got under your skin?

Well--

Because he won more often than not.

Yeah, you know, that is enough

to get under anybody's skin, you know,

first of all, if you have skin.

You understand?

Wilt Chamberlain was here a while ago.

Naturally, we talked about Wilt versus Russell,

and he talked about you.

And he said, you know, he still says

I couldn't carry Russell's jock, in so many words.

I think it kind of bothers him that you feel that way.

I'm glad it does.

- All the times we played them-- - Heinsohn.

- He always blamed the fact-- - The Jones boy.

That Russell had good surrounding cast.

Bob Cousy, the old pro.

More often than not, the Celtics were better.

I'll tell you one thing that I have a quarrel with.

Yeah, well, you may be right about that.

When I hear this, that they always had better players--

The only difference between the two of them

was Russell's will to win at any cost.

To be champions, you have to be up for every challenge.

The seventh game of the semi-finals

for the world's championship.

He was the consummate team player,

and everybody felt part of it.

Of course, Russell was the prime factor.

We helped Russell when it needed to be done.

The game comes down to its final moments.

Uh-huh.

Sam Jones.

No doubt in my mind. No hesitation.

I don't worry about it.

And that's the ballgame.

I was a wolf.

I knew, and they knew,

don't fuck with the wolf.

By 1962, Bob Cousy is getting old.

Lakers have Elgin Baylor and Jerry West.

Many assumed that the Lakers would supplant

the Boston Celtics dynasty.

Watch West.

He taps it away.

Tries to beat the clock.

Beats--he beats the clock.

The Lakers win.

The series now progressed with a fifth game played in Boston.

Elgin Baylor set the single game playoff scoring record.

The scenes we are about to see

were videotaped during the playing

of the seventh and final game of the World Championship Series

between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics.

It was a tight seven-game series.

Comes down to the end.

Tie ballgame in Game 7.

And the Lakers have the ball.

Obviously,

I kind of relish those moments.

The point guard for the Lakers is Hot Rod Hundley.

He's looking around.

He's looking around, trying to get it to West.

He's covered.

He's trying to get to Baylor. He's covered.

He flips it over to guy named Frank Selvy.

And Frank Selvy is open from about 15 feet out.

Selvy had made his living on these 15-foot jumpers.

He was a great shooter.

I was on the bench watching it,

holding my breath like all the other guys.

We just knew the party was over.

Hundley to Selvy. His jumper on the way.

No good! Rebound, Russell.

Overtime.

He missed a great shot.

He was open. He missed it.

And...

We were so amazed that he missed.

It was a blessing.

You know, nothing wrong with a little luck.

Time running out. Watch Bob Cousy.

He's eating up the clock.

Time ticking away, and the ball game is over.

It's a record fourth straight NBA title

for Red Auerbach's Celtics.

Losing is the worst thing in the world,

and I'm not so sure how much damage

that people realize it does to you.

But that was the start of something that, uh,

really, all my life has haunted me.

It just--

why didn't that go in?

One thing I always say,

there's no magic in professional sports.

Bounce pass to Russell.

Basket is good, and he's fouled.

Bill Russell, 30 points and 40,

I repeat, 40 rebounds.

These guys were great, great, great players,

and we beat them.

And so our accomplishments were really unique, and to us,

very marvelous because we beat these guys.

At home with his family, his wife

and his two young daughters, Bob Cousy,

basketball's great man

with the frozen features and burning drive.

I wear and recommend PF's basketball shoes.

My favorite cigarette is Kent.

I've been smoking them for five years.

There's the great Bob Cousy,

the greatest basketball player that ever lived.

In 1962, after the Celtics won

yet another championship, Cousy and Russell's fifth,

Cousy's living the high life.

Janssen International Sports Club.

They didn't pay us much, I remember.

But every year, we would go to an exotic place for two weeks,

and we'd shoot the national ads.

Yeah.

Believe it or not...

I never thought of myself anytime of being hot.

But there's a card out that's still selling--

I get them in the mail every now and then--

with Frank Gifford and I in one of these poses.

And the caption is,

boy, are these guys hot, or something like that.

So yeah, we--

we had a good time.

At that same time Cousy went to Hawaii,

Russell takes his children back home to Louisiana

to see his grandfather, Jake Russell,

who was the first man born free in the Russell family.

Russell is now driving through the South,

and his young children are saying, we're hungry.

Can we have dinner?

And all these restaurants are segregated.

This is the difference from what Bill Russell,

the league MVP that year, is facing in 1962 America,

to Bob Cousy

in a very different side of that America.

"Forbes" magazine decided to do a story on Cousy,

so they hired a local guy to do the interview.

He commented to me, how does it feel

to be the luckiest man on the planet?

Well, what happened?

Well, you get to play with Bob Cousy,

the greatest basketball player that ever lived.

I said, let me tell you something.

Bob Cousy is a great basketball player.

These guys are lucky that I'm here.

I says, they didn't come out to San Francisco

to draft me because they wanted to give

this nice, tall, colored kid a break.

I'm really good.

I think I'm great.

And these guys are lucky to be playing with me.

I said, you know that they never won a championship

before I got here.

He writes the story, and the story says

all of Cousy's Celtic teammates love him

except for Russell.

He's insanely jealous.

And now, ladies and gentlemen,

I give you the greatest-- Bob Cousy.

I know you people here are sorry to see him go.

Well, how do you think I feel?

All I've heard recently

is how are you gonna replace Bob?

That's my answer.

I have been asked many times this year

what I will miss most about no longer playing.

I am thankful to you all for many, many things.

But most of all, for accepting me as your captain and friend,

which has meant a great deal to me.

I was fortunate to receive a number

of very meaningful gifts.

The most meaningful was this clock

from Bill and Rose Russell

with an inscription--

"May the next 70 be as pleasant as the last 7.

From the Russells to the Cousys."

- Here we go. - Cousy. Russell.

Russell and I played together for seven years,

at a time when it was not easy in Boston

in terms of race relations.

My relationship with Russ

should have been, in my judgment, a stronger one.

And it was my responsibility to reach out to him

as opposed to waiting for him to reach out to me.

I'm happy to take that responsibility.

We all regret things in life.

OK.

My friend Bob Cousy said that he wished he had done more.

Well, I did not want him to do more.

I'm very, very capable of taking care of myself.

There was so much that he was absorbing

that Cousy never knew.

After Cousy's Appreciation Day,

Bill Russell whispered to Red Auerbach,

I'll never do this when I retire.

I don't play for Boston.

I play for the Celtics.