How Bill Russell coped with the boos

Rosalie posted an article recently about how the eventual 1969 championship winners got booed rather lustily after a humiliating, thirty-five point loss to the Lakers toward the end of the regular season.

The news of the booing, four decades old, came as a surprise to me. I attended a dozen games that year, although not the game in question, and don't remember any such negative waves. Admittedly, though, it was their thirty-fourth loss, beer was cheaper (and actually had alcoholic content), it was a weekend game, and they never carded anyone. So perhaps booing was inevitable, under the circumstances.

After that, of course, the Celtics went on a Don Quixote-like championship run. In order to see what changed the team around after getting booed, I checked a couple of accounts in books. Regrettably, there are very few written descriptions of that magical year, especially the playoffs. The best stories are buried in the newspaper archives, on microtext, for the most part, and difficult of access. It's indicative of the misplaced priorities of the information age that such invaluable primary source material is at hand yet virtually inaccessible.

That late-season debacle against the Lakers was a nationally televised game, and Bill Russell, more than anyone, submitted a stinker. Wilt Chamberlain, upset about the negative press he'd been getting, destroyed Russell on the boards. Wilt and Baylor finally seemed to have found synchrocity, after butting heads all season long, and West was his usual automatic self. As an aside, that Lakers team bears some remarkable similarities to the current Celtics team, at least in terms of superstars integrating and cooperating.

The 1969 Celtics were hurting, old, tired, they had qualified for the playoffs but didn't seem to have the least prayer of repeating. The Bullets, with Wes Unseld and Earl the Pearl, had given the Celtics all they could handle; the Knicks beat them six out of seven that season, including painful back-to-back, home and home destructions over the New Year; the Lakers had toyed with them in that late regular season debacle.

All anger is self anger, and appropriately directed inward, yet that day Bill Russell turned his powerful anger on his own team with a twenty-minute tongue-lashing behind closed locker room doors immediately after the buzzer sounded. The ultimate players' coach, the superstar coach who rarely yelled at his team, the player-coach who prided himself that his teammates were also his friends, loudly and fiercely threatened each and every one of them with fines and benching if they ever played that way again. (You have to wonder, though, if he even looked in Havlicek's direction.)

Even so, amid all the bluster, Bill Russell the coach must have known that the real problem was Bill Russell the player. He had suffered through his most difficult year as a professional, fighting the effects of exhaustion all season long. It was more than mere tiredness, it was mental fatigue. The challenge of coaching while playing the dominant on-court role on a championship professional sports team would wear any mortal out. Even though Bill Russell's powers were Herculean, all season long in 1968 and 1969, he was mortally worn-out.

In February, the Celtics were fighting back against the Knicks in the final seconds of a close game. It was the team's third game in four days. Russ leaped in the air, got bumped hard and landed awkwardly on his right knee - the same right knee that had been bothering him all season long and Bill did not get up right way. He'd had a heavy cold for weeks, he'd had just a few hours sleep the night before; now he had a searing pain in his knee and didn't have the strength to stand up. He was carried off the court on a stretcher and taken by ambulance to the hospital.

X-rays showed nothing was broken. He was diagnosed with "acutely strained knee ligaments" and "complete physical exhaustion". He took himself out of the lineup for five games and the Celtics lost them all. Next game, he put on a knee brace and limped up and down the court. With impeccable timing, he tied the game at the end of regulation and won it for the team in overtime. His knee gradually healed, enough so that eventually he could get rid of the clumsy brace and run without a limp.

As the season wore down, Russ grabbed every available chance he could to get some rest. Besides Russ' knee (and mental exhaustion) there were troubling leg injuries to aging stalwarts Satch Sanders and Sam Jones. At one point it seemed as though everyone on the team was hurt. As a result, they were wildly inconsistent, winning some big games and losing painfully at other times. By the time they lost to the Lakers by thirty-five points in a nationally televised game, the fast break had fallen apart and the team had given the paying customers precious little to cheer about.

By all accounts, the reason the fast break fell apart in the 1968-69 season, was because Bill Russell wasn't getting up and down the floor the way he once did, and wasn't the unstoppable force on the defensive and offensive boards that he used to be. Fortunately for the team, there was an unpaid, unacknowledged assistant coach who wasn't about to let his teammate down, the only player on the Celtics who had the 'authority' to criticize the coach.

After the loss to the Lakers, John Havlicek started talking up the running game, cajoling, yelling, constantly pushing and demanding that the team start running as they never had before, rightfully recognizing that, beat up as they were, the Celtics still could defeat any team in the league if they could run their vaunted fast break.

Amazingly enough, it easily can be argued that this was the very moment in time when John Havlicek emerged into the highest levels of superstardom, spoken of in the same breath as Russell and West, Baylor and Wilt, transcending the game, - his face would be on the cover of Sports Illustrated within days of the final victory, his performance in the Finals being so ultimately worthy of praise.

That's how it came to be that in the very next game the Celtics played after that debacle of a Lakers game, after the Garden crowd uncharacteristically booed the Celtics, the old building was witness to the rather stunning sound of a player shouting at his coach to hustle: as Russell jogged up the floor, far behind the fast break, Havlicek, on the sidelines taking a breather, shouted, "Move it, Russ!" That shout carried the team all the way to the balloons and beyond.

That's how Bill (and the team) coped with the boos.

spike

Spike,

Excellent read.

I wonder who'll be the Hondo of today?

Pierce? Too quiet. If he was a vocal leader, he'd have been it before KG got here.

Ray Allen? Maybe, but also maybe too much of a gentleman to get in someone's face and bark at them.

Finley? He certainly has the veteran credentials, but he hasn't been with this team very long and might not feel it's his place.

Rondo and Perk? There's been more than enough talk this season about how the young turks are trying to assert themselves with the old bulls and how it wasn't working.

Sheed. He's fiery, he's competitive (although not always in a constructive way) and he's certainly not afraid to express himself full-out. Maybe this is when and how Sheed makes his signing all worth while. Lousy shooting percentage all year, weak rebounding, matador defense. Maybe now is when Sheed's experience, competitive fire and big mouth pays off.

Let's hope so.

bob

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Spike and Bob

You ask who would be the Hondo on this squad. He'd have to be sort of young not a vet at all and been with this team for at least 3-4 years. Although Hondo was starting by then he was really known as the 6th man still.

My vote for someone with enough moxie and talent is Davis. What if he were to be more vocal and call out his mates for not hustling? He knows better than anyone the wrath of a vet upon him. Let it go the other way.

He is inch for inch as tough a rebounder as we have. The others could learn from it.

beat

beat wrote:Spike and Bob

You ask who would be the Hondo on this squad. He'd have to be sort of young not a vet at all and been with this team for at least 3-4 years. Although Hondo was starting by then he was really known as the 6th man still.

My vote for someone with enough moxie and talent is Davis. What if he were to be more vocal and call out his mates for not hustling? He knows better than anyone the wrath of a vet upon him. Let it go the other way.

He is inch for inch as tough a rebounder as we have. The others could learn from it.

beat

beat,

Good point. God knows Davis isn't afraid to express his emotions and his effort and enthusiasm has been "leading by example". The question is: will the vets listen to him?

bob

great job, tyrone, excellent research and writing.

the Hondo of today, eh? the vocal, unpaid assistant coach among the players... well, if they'd listen to their coaches, between Doc and Thib and the rest, they might not need one, y'think?

but i guess i do think they need some vocal player leadership. unlike bob, and with all due respect (and considerable respect is due ! ) i think Ray COULD do it. and i guess i agree that Rondo would be a reach - but not for much longer ...

and who knows what's already going on behind the scenes? there may already be guys speaking up. this locker room stuff - we'll just never really know about it, as i know Sam's pointed out many times.

Michael

Thanks, guys. Comparing teams, '69 was the transition from the Russell leadership to the Havlicek leadership, the two coexisting beautifully in those last few weeks of glory. The current team is still the Big Three era and isn't giving way to the Rondo era, yet. Maybe after a few more championships, say, after #20. It just ain't fair to compare Rondo to Hondo.

The comparison between the 1969 Lakers and the Big Three Celtics is kinda cool. West and Baylor liked to run, while Wilt rumbled up the court. That's partly behind the rationale of keeping Wilt on the bench in the final minutes of Game 7. The three Laker players couldn't get it together all season long and should have won the Finals.

Comparisons to the current Celtics: Wilt was a little taller and slightly heavier than KG, Baylor and Pierce are similar as are West and Ray. Like Ray, West liked the outside shot while Baylor was Mr. Inside and, like Paul, drove relentlessly. Wilt was just as intimidating as KG, for different reasons.

It was how they blended that is of interest. No matter who was on the court with him, West executed his game, which was very much the team game, played with individual distinction. In clutch situations, he always wanted and usually got the ball (except one time when he couldn't shake K.C. Jones and the ball went to Frank Selvy). Wilt and Baylor would take and make the clutch shot if the ball came to them, but both knew West was the first option if at all possible.

The Big Three did have that first among equals, Paul Pierce, in '08. Fortunately, in their case, unlike the old Lakers, when it came time for Pierce's teammates to step up and help, they did. Wilt and, because he was forced to play hurt, Baylor, let West down.

Hi,
I believe no Hondo is needed tonight. All usual suspects have to be on fire: this one for KG - he watched our backs, now's time to pay back!
If they don't it will be t-time pretty soon.

AK

Spike, I'm still trying to remember that blowout loss to the Lakers. I know I had to be there in my usual seat, because I simply didn't miss games that season. I probably joined the rest of Section 88 in trying to shut up the boo-birds. I'm willing to bet that not one person in our section or Sections 87 or 89 booed—at least not more than once—because we would go over en masse and simply embarrass them to tears. We knew all the ushers too, so we weren't the ones who would get thrown out. We figured any blathering A-hole who was ignorant of the travails suffered by that team needed a serious lecture, and and any dipsh-t who could boo a team of gamers that had won nine championships in the previous ten seasons, deserved to be embarrassed ruthlessly. Geez, my blood is boiling just from envisioning the possibility—and I don't even remember it!. I'll have to calm down on the plane.

Sam

Spike,
Thanks again for a great narrative...One of the many reasons to come to this board. LACELTFAN

i've missed this sort of thing. good read Spike!

Hey Matty. How have you been? What's happening? Good to see you back on the board.

Sam

You know, just the other day, I was thinking, 'Why doesn't Cheryl Tiegs call me anymore?'.