Red and Training Camp

Red: "Gentlemen, this thing I hold in my hand is a basketball. The object of this game is to take this ball and stick it into that hole over there. And after it goes through that hole, you've got to all work together as a team to stop the other side from putting it through the hole at the other end. Any questions so far."

John Havlecek: "So many coaches have a tendency to overcoach. But Red made basketball simple. For instance, blocking out. Some coaches get all caught up in describing the moves of the legs, the reverse pivots, the crossovers, all kinds of stuff like that. Red would just say, "Stick your forearm into his chest, get your ass against him and don't let him touch the ball!" See what I mean? He'd explain what he wanted in simple terms, then he'd expect you to go out and do it."

Red: "I tried to draft what I call 'my kinda kid'. . . . I always believed the quality of the person is every bit as important as the quality of the athlete. I wanted a kid who had the ability to absorb coaching, who'd react to whatever I told him, a nice kid on and off the court, not someone who'd be bitching all the time. Some kids become real pains once they get a taste of stardom. Most of all, I wanted a kid who wanted to win so bad he wouldn't think twice about giving me every thing he had."

Red: "I wanted a certain type of player on the Celtics, a player with no questions about his character or his work habits. It takes more than talent, and I've turned down deals for talented players because I didn't believe they would fit in with the Celtics. . . . The other thing I did was keep my team together. . . . Too many teams think the grass is always greener; they overrate players on other teams and underrate their own players and that leads to stupid trades. If you want to be sure to lose, have constant turnover. If you want to win, pick your team carefully and give it time."

Red. . "I never yelled at rookies. . . . The worst thing that can happen to a coach is to fall in love with the sound of his own voice. He becomes successful and now he wants to become an orator, too. So I'd vary the time I spoke, sometimes long, sometimes short, sometimes loud, sometimes soft, and sometimes I wouldn't say much at all. I didn't want to become predictable."

Red: "Some organizations build teams to make the playoffs. We don't think that way. We build teams to win them. So I figured if we opened the schedule in midseason shape we'd steal a lot of games early, then let everyone else try to catch us later."

Bill Sharman: "The key to Red's success was training camp. When he coached, there were no rules about when you could start training camp, so he started earlier than most teams and he played a lot of exhibition games. By opening night, we were the best-conditioned team in the league. . ."

Frank Ramsey: "Most guys did not touch a basketball during the summer, and Red decided that he was immediately going to drive the demons out of everyone's body. There were two awful weeks of drills, then a schedule of 14 exhibition games in 15 days across New England."

John Havlicek: "Red's camps were grueling, two-a-day practices. He wanted you irritable and a little angry. He created these Vince-Lombardi-type grass drills - drills where you put your hands behind your head and then jumped and reached out at the same time. You kept jumping and reaching until you got to one end of the court, then he made us do it again - only we had to jump backward. The first guy who dropped out had to do sprints. Some days it was pure torture."

Jim Loscutoff: "Red loved hard scrimmages - 90 straight minutes - and fast breaks. He yelled at us to run and run some more. Sometimes, he'd put me in there for the entire 90 minutes and start talking to a friend on the sidelines. He'd forget to take me out and I about dropped."

John Havlicek: "Red had these long passing drills where he'd make you kill yourself to run down a full-court pass. We had 2-on-2 fast break drills where you never had a second to catch your breath. We do situps, pushups, all kinds of exercises. At the end of practice, we ran sprints and the winner got to sit out while the other guys ran again. You should have seen Russell - he and Sam Jones were our fastest guys and they'd win the first two races. The rest of us would let them fight it out and then watch the field, figuring when we could really pour it on and win one."

Bill Sharman: "Red gave us speeches during camp, about how we were the champs, the greatest basketball team ever assembled. Then he'd say how everyone would be gunning for us and he'd say, "Is this the year you're going to let down? Is this the year you're going to loaf?"

John Havlicek: "We picked up Willie Naulls from the Knicks and he couldn't believe what Red put us through. Willie actually passed out in midstride during one of the drills. I'd always heard that if you push your body too hard, it would shut down and you'd pass out but I had never seen it happen until Willie went down. Later, he told me, "Man, with the Knicks, we spent the first two weeks getting acquainted and patting each other on the rear end."

Tom Heinsohn: "One day after camp Carl Braun said to me, "You guys have been doing this for years, right? No wonder you always win."

Frank Ramsey: "Red knew there were times to take the pressure off, so he'd have scrimmages where all the little men played the big men. Cousy always wanted to play the pivot, so this was his chance. The five little men were Sam and K.C. Jones, Sharman, Cousy and me. The big men were Russell, Loscutoff, Heinsohn, Satch Sanders and Gene Conley, Sometimes, another player filled in for Russell and he was the official."

Spike,

I really love these posts of yours. They provide perspective and stories you just don't hear anymore in today's NBA. Could you imagine an NBA coach running players so hard one of them literally drops mid-stride? Doc has his style and drills, no doubt, but just as he's always happy to have the Russell-era Celtics stopping by to talk to today's roster, I hope he takes the time to talk to Russ, Tommy etal about how Red ran his camps, and the undeniably successful results he got from them. Part of our problem last year was that we weren't in shape for the start of the lockout season. Red never had to worry about that because he made sure everybody was in shape to win.

One of the advantages of having a team that has played together for years, like what Red used to assemble, is that they can come together and they already know the playbook. New players and rookies can learn just from being around them. That's much harder when you have a young team or a team that has been overhauled or has a new coach (think replacing Phil Jackson and the Triangle with Mike Brown's schemes. A whole new thing for the Lakers, including Kobe, Pau and the rest of the the veterans). With us, a leader like Pierce can reach out to all the camp invitees and vets and get them to be in Waltham a few weeks before the start of camp so they can workout and play games with each other. They don't need a coaching staff because most of the players already know the playbook and the rooks and free agents can learn just from playing pickup games and hanging with the vets.

I have never understood why the league feels it necessary to mandate the start date for camp. Why should they care? Just Dictator Stern trying to control everything, I guess.

bob


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Thanks, Bob. Yeah, some of these sayings are priceless. The first one - 'this is a basketball' - what he says about working together as a team on defense, it's just a throwawy line, but it's the quintessential Red. And Havlicek complaining! How tough must it have been to make Havlicek complain. This is the guy who made it a point to know how far you could push your body before something bad happened.

My favorite quote is Havlicek relaying Red's strategy for blocking out: forget the fancy footwork, "Stick your forearm into his chest . . ."

Most of these quotes are from Tall Tales by Terry Pluto which is filled with great quotes from the stars of yesterday.

spike

They were great times back then. They practiced at the Mass Maritime Academy on the Cape, paid $.50 cents to get in and watch some of the greatest basketball players in the NBA go at one another. Sam, I am sure you were there too. Who could imagine today that stuff like that even happened? I would wait all summer for rookie camp to open, and then see the guys who didn''t have toshow up, wander in and practice with the young guys.

The rookie camp moved to Brandies University, and we would have to get tickets ahead of time just to watch the kids play. In fact, two days before Reggie Lewis died he was there watching from the sidelines with his little boy. He looked so good, what a sad ending to a life gone too soon.

Anyway, when the Bird era arrived, things got too crazy, the Celtics were practicing at Hellenic College in Brookline and they stopped alot of the open practices for the rookies. I miss those days, but the lines for tickets got to be ridiculous and they finally built their practice center here in Waltham.

As I look back on those days, I am thankful that I lived during a time when life was much simpler. My son remembers going to those practices, and he even went to Red's camp for a few years. His favorite story was when Rumeal Robinson came to supper with the guys and was encouraging them all. My prize possession is his picture with Red shaking hands. But, it means more to me than him I think. By then Red was just a figure head and his history with the Celtics was stories in newspapers and books.

The basketball world is a much different place than then, control, control, control. Red would have gone crazy! Life was simple, and so wasn't basketball.

Great stories Spike, they bring back many memories of great basketball times.

Rosalie

Thanks for the memories, Rosalie.

Mass Maritime. Unbelievable how accessible they were back then. According to Loscy, there were 90 minute nonstop fast breaking practice games. Makes ya wish ya had a wayback machine.

Was there a place in Marshfield where Red held rookie camp? I seem to remember seeing Larry Bird there practicing with the rookies but those brain cells are in a nonrecoverable file right now.

Thanks Spike and Rosalie for the stroll down memory lane.
Always a nice place to visit!

beat

Rosalie,

The Fargo Building (in Boston) and Tobin Gym (Roxbury) were also sites where the Celtics practiced long before their facility in Waltham became their home. Tobin was where I got to shoot around with some of the reserves after practice.

Sam