CELTIC TRIVIA & OTHER BASKETBALL STORIES

Met a fellow today who was all Long Island, played under Satch Sanders at Harvard and went to Cousey's summer camp and dated his daughter for a while. His daughter is marrried or involved with Wally Szczerbiak who is frOm Long island. Anyway some Celtic trivia. He told me some great Celtic trivia. Here is one. As the Celtics got older or when the Celtics met a team who could really run and gun, Red Auerback would get new strings hung on the rims which were sown tighter so the ball would not just slip threw like a swish but would be caught up for a few seconds. This helped the Celtics get a few added seconds to get back on defense and be in position. Interesting.

Also why D' Antonio was fired from the Suns......he was told that he needed to hire Tom Thibodeau as defensive coach and was asked to let one of his coaches go and he refused. D' Antonio defense practices consisted in working on defense for 15 minutes and the rest of the time on offense.

On Doc, great strategist on offense but knows nothing about defense. Tom Thibodeau was the guy who won them the championship.

Kind of interesting. Probably will be sitting down with lunch with him again so I'll try to get more Celtic stories.

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The spirit of Tom Thibodeau must live on in green since he's gone and we still have one of, if not the, #1 defense in the league.

As far as the #2 winningest coach in Phoenix Suns history being fired because he wouldn't hire Tom T, if the Suns thought Tom T was so great, why did they pick up Alvin Gentry's option last June instead of competing with Chicago for him?

Wally currently lives in Columbus, OH where his wife has family. Wally and Shannon were in the same freshman orientation at Miami, OH. Shannon Ward Szczerbiak is an Ohio farm girl and part-time model.

http://www.miamialum.org/s/916/images/editor_documents/Membership/CelebrityAd-Szczerbiak.pdf

This is an excerpt from Sports Illustrated:
Or glowing as brilliantly as he had a little while earlier while recounting how, at freshman orientation three years ago, he had met Shannon Ward, the Ohio farm girl and part-time model whose company he has kept ever since.


bob

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Wally has 2 homes, one in Cold Spring Harbor Long Island where he grew up and went to high school, and one in Ohio. Everyone know where his home. I saw him about 5X times in the town of Huntington this past summer. He is doing some collage basketball game announcing in Ohio. His father played in ABA and in Europe for Spain. Again was not focusing in on this guys daughter and him, perhaps he said they dated? However did check him out and he did Attend Harvard and play for Sanders and was all Long Island back in 1970's.
As far as picking up Gentry's contract, you do not know what the board of directors for the Suns was thinking. He may have had some support or he would of been gone already. Perhaps they felt he has put a good staff together. Perhaps they felt that they did not want to scrap and start over. Perhaps he came cheaper. Perhaps they were told by Tommy T. I'm not interested in starting with a team on the way down. No one knows.....so why question?
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I believe Cold Stream Harbor was the name of Billy Joel's first album. I had thought he grew up in Oyster Bay. Do you know whether either of these places was his original hometown?

Sam,

Billy Joel grew up in Hicksville which is in the middle of Nassau county(Western) part of LI just south of Oyster Bay and just South West of Cold Spring Harbor. Cold Spring is the next town east of Oyster Bay. Hickville is a middle class working town formed after the great rush of GI's looking for a patch of green after WWII. It was mostly farms (potato/alphfar) which sits on what is known as the Hempstead Plains. This plain was formed by the out wash of the glaziers that advanced from CT. and stopped just south of Oyster Bay & CSH. The glazier ran from Queens all the way to Riverhead on the east end. When it started to melt, it formed Long Island Sound and the melting wash ran down to the south shore of the island to the Atlantic Ocean. It produced a fertile plain. It also created our great beaches on the south shore like Jones Beach and the Hamptons. It also created a very hilly terrain much like New England which the glaziers left earth and rock that it pushed from CT. until it stopped and melted. The area looks like anywhere New England.

CCH was a whaling town for the better part of the 18th & 19th century and ended about 1880. They have a great whaling museum there.

I saw Billy Joel when he was playing gigs on Long island with his first band the "Hassels".

Billy dedicated or named his first album "Cold Spring Harbor" after the town. It was a dream of his to someday live in this TONEY very affluent section of Long island with great estates. He used to work as a day laborer during the summers building houses in this area. He was also worked as an oyster fisherman off of Oyster Bay and CSH.

His second house was a very old rambling country farm estate overlooking CSH
and had to sell it because all the boats would cruise by trying to catch Christie Brinkley in her bathing suit by the pool. The house was located in Lloyd Neck which is just north of CCH on a remote island like peninsula and is connected by a small causeway which is where his house was. Marshall Field III (Chicago Department Store) fame had a grand estate with stables and 400 acres not far from his house.

Caumsett State Historic Park is on Lloyd Neck, a peninsula extending into Long Island Sound, in the village of Lloyd Harbor, New York. Lloyd Neck was originally part of Queens County, New York.
Marshall Field III bought the property in 1921 and had an estate house built in 1925 It .was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. The Marshall Field estate was purchased by New York State for $4 million on February 3, 1961 and became a state park.
In May 1961, plans were made to create Caumsett State Parkway, a northern extension of Bethpage State Parkway, to provide access to the park. Although right-of-way was acquired, the parkway was never built. A portion of this land was later used to create Trail View State Park.

Billy now has a huge home on Centre Island which is an island connected by a causeway and is part of Oyster Bay/Bayville and overlooks the entire Bay. Right near the Sewanhaka Yacht Club where at one time JP Morgan kept his prized yacht the Corinthian.

He also has a big compound in Sag Harbour near Jimmy Buffett on the east end of LI.

So much for history which I know little about........

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