Q&A With Tommy

http://www.masslive.com/sports/index.ssf/2014/07/qa_with_boston_celtics_hall_of.html







As part of its 60 Days of Summer promotion, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame brought in Celtics legend Tommy Heinsohn on Wednesday, July 16. Heinsohn talked to a large group of Celtics fans and kids for half an hour before an autograph session. He was kind enough to speak with MassLive before the event.

MassLive: As a power forward, you mastered the hook shot. What was the key to getting it off?

Heinsohn: Well, it was a tweener shot. It's very difficult to defend. It wasn’t a low post hook shot, it was more of a roving, moving shot. If I got angled off the basket on a drive, I could always get that shot off. Nobody uses it now, except (Spurs guard Manu) Ginobili. That's the same type of form, but not as far out. Cliff Hagan was the same type of shooter as I was with the hook shot. He would take hook shots as well.

MassLive: It's basically unblockable. Why don't players use it anymore?

Heinsohn: Beats me. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar led the league in scoring, and he had the sky hook, and nobody seems to (want to do it). Nobody else can do it. But when I was coaching, everybody I coached had a hook shot. It was effective. It’s still effective today.

MassLive: Your teams were never afraid to push the ball in transition. Has it been satisfying to see teams going back to that?

Heinsohn: I’ve talked to so many coaches over the last decade, and after the advocation of the video tape and six assistant coaches and everybody picking apart to the nth degree what everyone is doing, they still persist to walk the ball up the floor against teams that knew what they were going to do. Every time I would have a discussion with some of these coaches, I would say ‘Why do you do that? They know exactly what you are going to do.’ I say ‘What you are doing is like Eisenhower calling up Adolf Hitler and saying we’re landing at Normandy.’ Where’s the commando raids? The parachutes? I think they are wising up, and that was the secret to the Celtics’ success of the teams that won 11 out of 13 championships.

MassLive: You were known for not being much of a talker on the floor. Did that give you a competitive edge?

Heinsohn: We could be friends with people off the floor, but it was a point of emphasis by Red Auerbach: You can’t talk to your opponent. We played against these guys innumerable times in my era, far more than they do now. There was competitiveness built up because of the confrontations. And it was much more physical then than it is now. I mean, we actually had fistfights like hockey players. The competitiveness was always there because of how many times you played each other. It was a matter of continuing to try to intimidate the other team. It wasn’t ‘We are only going to play twice in the course of the season.’ This was like we were going to play you 8 or 10 times.

MassLive: So was it refreshing to see that competitiveness in the Kevin Garnett/Paul Pierce era?

Heinsohn: What I loved about that team was that they played as a team. We saw how effective team play can be in this current playoff run for the Spurs. They beat exceptional three good players. A team can always beat individual players. My teams that I played on and I coached played against great players, but we had eight guys. You can go look and see how many Celtics are in the Hall of Fame. It’s because we played as a team. In the era I played in, there was never a Celtic in the top-10 scorers, but we were all double-digit scorers, and we could take advantage of our opponents if we wanted to.

MassLive: Finally, thoughts on Boston's offseason so far?

Heinsohn: Last year, they blew the house down, and they started to dig the foundation and put the forms in place. This summer, they are trying to pour the concrete. So we’ll find out what the mix is gonna be. They’re not done yet, and there’s the future with Rondo or not. That’s a big point.



bob
MY NOTE:  LOVED the analogy to D-Day.  Tommy, the original.













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Players and coaches in Tommy's day were just plain smart.  They were virtually all college grads, and they didn't have special help or gut courses to nurse them through college.  They needed a degree because they knew they were never going to make a fortune playing basketball.  So they did smart things like pushing the ball constantly, shooting practically undefendable hook shots, and capitalizing on the realization that a pass moved the ball faster than dribbling.

Sam

Players and coaches in Tommy's day were just plain smart.  They were virtually all college grads, and they didn't have special help or gut courses to nurse them through college.  They needed a degree because they knew they were never going to make a fortune playing basketball.  So they did smart things like pushing the ball constantly, shooting practically undefendable hook shots, and capitalizing on the realization that a pass moved the ball faster than dribbling.

Sam

Players and coaches in Tommy's day were just plain smart.  They were virtually all college grads, and they didn't have special help or gut courses to nurse them through college.  They needed a degree because they knew they were never going to make a fortune playing basketball.  So they did smart things like pushing the ball constantly, shooting practically undefendable hook shots, and capitalizing on the realization that a pass moved the ball faster than dribbling.

Sam