The One and Only Rapid Robert

I've been rummaging around in my Celtics memorabilia, looking for old stuff that might be of interest to anyone attending the San Francisco party. (The other criterion: It can't weigh much.) And I came across an article in the old Sport Magazine (1960), written by Ed Linn, a well-respected scribe of the day and entitled, The Wonderful Wizard of Boston.

Of course, I got sidetracked. I can never go through this box of stuff without getting waylaid by something or other. This time, the opening sentences of the article really gripped me:

"When Wilt Chamberlain, who sits tall in the saddle, was signed to play professional basketball for an announced $30,000, Bob Cousy, the fancy roper from Boston, had been drawing down a well-established $25,000 for three straight years. The Cooz hadn't even asked for a raise. As the reigning capitalist of the basketball world, he has supplementary sources of income which, he says frankly, have put in a tax bracket where he would only be keeping 50 cents on the dollar anyway. 'Why should I take more money from Walter Brown, who's still deep in the red with this team and has a terrific overhead? Besides,' Cousy adds, in the biggest upset of the new season, 'he's been overpaying us for years.'

When Chamberlain rode into the league, however, Cousy came to Brown with a new salary plan tied to an increase in attendance. Cousy will get a bonus when Boston's home attendance equals last year's, and he will continue to get bonuses with each succeeding 50,000 customers. 'This way,' he explains, 'I won't make any (more) money unless Brown is making it, too.'"

In these days, when the players and their agents are riding roughshod over the pocketbooks of their owners and their fans, I find that memory very refreshing, as was Walter Brown's candid response when told that The Cooz felt he, Sharman and Ed MacAuley, had been overpaid. "It depends upon how you look at it. They weren't overpaid for the skill they possessed or the energy they expended, but they were overpaid for what it brought in at the box office.

There's also a great quote in the article from an unnamed referee: "Some day, somebody's going to tell me that Cousy has just swallowed the ball and I'm simply going to go over to the bench to get a new one."

Auerbach also substantiates my contention that Cousy tried to add a new wrinkle ever year: "Almost every year," Auerbach says, "he comes up with a new shot." Linn continues, "The peculiar sidearm, windmill pass he sometimes uses for long passes seems almost uncontrollable, and there are those unreconstructed anti-Cousyites who point to it as just another notable example of his show-boating. Actually, Cousy began to experiment with it only after he developed and elbow-full of chips which made a long overhand pass very painful. The pass has a slight slice to it, which he has to allow for, and yet it almost never goes awry. Bob controls the pass so well himself that he has developed a windmill hook shot off the same motion. 'I thought it stunk at the beginning, says Auerbach, 'and I still do. But it went straight so I didn't say anything.'"

Linn continues, "Two years ago, Cousy developed a running one-hand shot, from 25 to 30 feet out, which gets its distance from body momentum. 'I gave it away,' Cousy says, 'because I had to take a step off my dribble and pose for a moment as I drew back my right hand.' So at the end of last year 1959), he began to experiment with shooting off his right foot—which, of course, violates all rules of shooting—and he had good enough success so that the unorthodox shot has become part of his working repertoire this season."

There's no moral to this story. Just a couple of insights that seemed worth sharing. None of it does anything to change my opinion that, in these days of "greatest this and greatest that," Bob Cousy was, is, and always will be my choice as the greatest figure in professional basketball. I didn't say "greatest player" or "greatest scorer" or "greatest rebounder" or "greatest defender" or even "greatest winner." I said "greatest figure." And there's not a chance in hell of changing my mind.

Live long and well, Cooz.

Sam

Sam

When you read some of the old accounts, you realize how precarious the NBA's existence was at the time Cousy joined the league. He only ended up with the Celtics because his original team folded. Cousy had an immediate impact and, more than any other player, established the league as a financially viable operation. For years, arenas in other cities pulled in the biggest crowds by far when the Boston Celtics came to town. Red was great at drumming up business but Cousy was the one people came to see.

Bob Cousy reinvented the game. He was the first guard to be league MVP. He did things that nobody would ever imagine. He was exciting to watch and, once you saw him, you wanted to see him again.

When the early networks began televising games, they always scheduled the Celtics because of Cousy. He became the face of the NBA during the league's formative years, sold the game in this country and all over the world, played the game like nobody before or ever after, and did it all with class, dignity and style.

The old Sport magazine articles are not available on the web. Too bad.

Spike,

I hadn't been to my Red Sox/Celtics memorabilia box for quite a while. There are treasures in there, including my scorecard from the 1953 quadruple overtime win in which The Cooz scored 50 and a copy of a Sport Magazine article on my role model, Bobby Doerr.

I have many other articles about Bobby too, and I'm hoping to share some of those with him when we meet up at his Oregon home in the middle of next week. His dad kept albums containing the box score of every game Bob played...on album a season. And those albums take up perhaps 1%-2% of his memorabilia room, which I would wager may be second in scope only to the hall of fame. Bob was an avid movie taker during his career, and his home movies of some of the greats are priceless. He has bats and balls signed by all the greats, including Ty Cobb. Trophies all over the place. A lot of Ted Williams memorabilia—split about evenly between baseball and fishing (they're both in the fishing hall of fame). A real baseball fan can get lost in that room. He just turned 92 and his memory of his playing days is still photographic. He's the oldest living player in the hall of fame; but, more than that, I've had the same role model for 64 years, and he's been a personal friend for about 15.

Bob and Johnny Pesky are the two survivors of "The Teammates," who also included Ted Williams and Dom DiMaggio...fast friends for more than 60 years and the subjects of what I believe is the best sports book ever written: "The Teammates," by David Halberstam.

I expect that, for one reason or another, this could be the last time I see Bob (although we talk a lot), so this visit will be particularly poignant...and the first time my wife will have met him. Needless to say, I'm really looking forward to this trip, and saying good-bye to Bob will be really difficult.

Sam