Chuck Connors Outlaws the Dunk

This tale of whoa starts with a story by the first coach of the Boston Celtics, Honey Russell, about the first center of the Celtics, Kevin "Chuck" Connors. That first Celtics team was not championship caliber. "We weren't much of a basketball team," Connors later admitted; "We were the worst."

Honey Russell's quote refers to a game played in St. Louis in early 1947.

HONEY RUSSELL: "That was one of our more imaginative and frustrating losses. I called a time-out with 26 seconds left and said, "Okay, boys, you know the situation: We have the ball and a six-point lead. The only way we can lose is for Connors to get the ball."

"Everyone in the huddle started laughing, and I said I was serious.

"So we take the ball out under the St. Louis basket, and what happens? All four of my men on the floor drop back and the pass-in is weak. It's intercepted for a quick basket.

"Now we're up by four points with 23 seconds left. We manage to put the ball in play to one of our own guys this time and pass it around a few times before it's stolen. Swish! Now we're ahead by two points with about 10 seconds left and no time-outs. We have the ball. St. Louis is really pressing now and there's only one of our people open - Chuck Connors.

"So the pass goes to him and he starts dribbling with that high dribble of his. Then he trips, loses the ball, and grabs the leg of the St. Louis player who has recovered the ball and is tossing up a desperation shot to beat the clock.

"As the ball goes through the hoop to tie the game, the referee calls the foul on Connors. St. Louis makes the free throw and we lose.

"Mad? I fined Connors $200 on the spot, but it wasn't his fault. Chuck just did what came natural to him - he loused up."
____________________________________

So how, one may wonder, did it come to pass that Chuck Connors' coach had such a low opinion of his starting center's situation? Or, to put it differently, what happened to make Honey Russell distrust a guy who was one of the few people ever to play professional baseball and professional basketball, who married Miss Israel, and became a goodwill ambassador for Richard Nixon to the USSR?

Russell's mistrustful opinion of Connors may have begun on the day the franchise played its very first game: November 6, 1946. There was a rodeo scheduled for Boston Garden that day so the game was played in the old Boston Arena. The team had acquired new glass backboards for its inaugural season and the bull gang braved real live bulls to get the backboards out of their storage place in the Garden and across town to the Arena.

It wasn't Chuck's fault that the crew didn't install the backboard correctly, or that Chuck was the first guy to test that possibility by trying to impress the fans by throwing in a dunk.

Wham! Crash! Clatter and Tinkle. Like Humpty Dumpty, Walter Brown's brand new $3,000 glass backboard could never be put together again.

Chuck went on to have a wonderful career in Hollywood. His sterling series, The Rifleman, is still in syndication today.

Unfortunately, the dunk would not go anywhere for a while. One of the most exciting plays in basketball would be outlawed from the game for years to come, not in so many words, but every player was aware of exactly how much money Walter Brown's backboard had cost and, for the next ten years, thought twice before dunking. It wasn't the owners, it was the players themselves who outlawed the dunk.

There wasn't a rule against the dunk, as there soon would be in college, it simply wasn't done. According to a player from that era, Alex Hannum, "Not unless you wanted to risk having someone tear your head off and hand it to you on the next play. Today it's Showtime. Back then, it was showing a guy up."

It took ten years and the arrival of another left-handed center for the Boston Celtics for the dunk to return to the game.

According to Hannum's friend and teammate, Slater Martin, "Bill Russell was the first player to dunk regularly; he did it off lob passes from Cousy and he did it with little flamboyance. He just caught the ball and dunked it, no big deal, and we accepted that because it was Bill's shot. There was no finger-pointing or talking like you see today. We didn't consider the dunk a skill shot. If you could jump high, then you coud throw the ball through the rim. So what?"