New Bob Cousy mix: Master of the Fast Break

I don't regularly post here but some of you may remember me from a while back, I had made an Elgin Baylor video last year and it was posted and discussed here. Well I finished up another throwback mix this time of a Celtic so I thought I'd come back to share, hope you guys enjoy!

Great stuff!!! Thank you, Dantheman.

Dantheman,

Thanks for posting that great montage. It's impossible to miss the fact that not only was The Cooz the most creative basketball player ever but also he could easily have adapted his game to that of any era. You even included some examples of the most beautiful basketball shots I've ever seen—Cousy hooking left or right from 15 feet and on the run. The first two of those shots (the first righty and the second lefty) were taken in his last game (the championship winner against L.A. in 1963).

I believe that, aside from an amazing combination of physical attributes (huge hands, long arms, and incredible peripheral vision), his success as a floor general was largely due to factors: his instinctive creativity; his anticipatory powers (way, way ahead of the play), the suddenness and unpredictability of his moves, and the fact that all his teammates were looking for the ball all the time.

Your video catches a lot of what was The Cooz at his best.

Thanks again for posting it.

Sam

There can be no doubt that fast break basketball a la vintage Celtics is much more enjoyable to watch than plodding half court sets. What a joy to watch. Next time someone says Rondo is Cousy's peer, show him this video. And I love Rondo.

Thanks Dan!

Echoing what Bob said; I hope you can stop here a little more often to share thoughts and opinions.

Regards

Bob,

Before the 24-second clock, when Cooz would dribble out the last minute-or-so of the game with a one- or two-point lead, was when you'd see him dribble with both hands.  (There was almost no video in those early fifties.)  Later on, there really wasn't much need to use the left.  He could literally beat anyone with one hand tied behind his back.  Also, I've never seen any player so ambidextrous with his shooting—especially those running hooks from distance.

In the movie, Blue Chips, which I actually watched despite the fact that it stars Shaq, Cooz plays an aging athletic director (he was probably about 60-65 at that time) who's shooting free throws when the coach comes up.  Cooz carries on the conversation while never missing a beat (or a shot) at the foul line.  Finally, the coach gets irritated and says something like, "Don't you ever do anything else?"  Whereupon Cooz switches hands and swishes a lefty free throw.  Who knows how many takes it may have taken, but it displayed the essence of Cousy's temperament.  A fiery competitor who was the most relaxed guy in the gym when shooting.

I don't believe there's a person in the world who loves a basketball player more than I love Bob Cousy.  Whenever I hear from Sam that Bob has a health problem, or whenever one of Bob's Celtics contemporaries has a health problem, I feel a little bit more of my Basketball Camelot slipping away. Fortunately, it was so incredibly rich that the memories continue to sustain me, even in the down times.

Sam

bobheckler wrote:Dan,

What a great way to spend 11 1/2 minutes.  We got to see a little bit of everything.

Cooz was really, really right-handed, wasn't he?  Based upon this diverse montage you only see him dribble with his left hand no more than 2 dribbles in any scene, just enough to get the defender to shift his weight that way or to avoid a steal/swipe and then, Whoops!, it's back in the right and he was gone.  Also, the argument that old-timers couldn't shoot like today's players is blown away too, as we see Cooz taking and hitting several that would have been for 3 today.

And for a PF, Tommy sure could run, couldn't he?  That's what happens when you know that if you do your point guard will get it to you.

Thanks again.  It'd be nice to hear your thoughts when you don't just come bearing gifts as well.



bob



.

Dribbling with your off hand was a novelty in the 50's and 60's.

swish

I will try to post here more often, I just don't usually have any direct Celtics related content to post about until now of course that I finished the Cousy highlight. I'm a young fan of the game, these players I highlight are from way before my time and I'm from the Cleveland area so I'm a "Cavs fan" but in a broader sense I'm of course a fan of the game first. I run that Youtube channel and always try to learn about and show case not just Wilt Chamberlain as in the name of the channel, but any other players from around that period of time in the form of highlights and documentaries. I've been working on an Oscar Robertson and a Bill Russell highlight for ages. Don't know when they'll be finished but I'll at least be sharing the Russell highlight and sharing my thoughts on that when the time comes.

As for my opinion on Cousy? Well from what I can tell he looks like one of the best fast-break players I've ever observed with a keen eye. There's not much of him on film, but what exists is just enough to reveal to me, via his timing, decision making, etc that he's just like Magic Johnson on the break. Unpredictable to the defense, stylish, and under complete control. His handle is also superb given the fact that carrying was called in his era, which made it particularly difficult to dribble and penetrate under pressure. I think a lot of players from his time and after were a lot better talents and a lot more skilled than most people my age believe. I've learned as I studied film and listened to interviews that there were quite a few subtle but noteworthy rules changes that have happened since that time, it changes how players dribble, what they are allowed to do with their feet, etc I could go into detail all the little changes if anyone wanted to know. At the end of the day, the best players on the planet back then were all hard workers with elite talent that IMO had mastered the game. It just was a slightly different version of the game. I can't watch highlights of a guy like Cousy and not be impressed, same with West, Robertson, Baylor, Russell etc and even the lesser known guys back then.

As far as the ambidextrous thing is concerned, here's an excerpt from a dictionary on Cooz:

"When Cousy was 12, the family moved from Manhattan to St. Albans, Queens. There, he learned to play basketball for the first time when he was 13. His early years were inauspicious. While attending St. Albans' Andrew Jackson High School, Cousy was cut two different times from the junior varsity squad. However, he was welcomed back after he broke his right arm, and was forced to learn to dribble and shoot with his left. His ambidexterity made him valuable. By the time he was a junior, Cousy was the team's star. As a senior, he won New York City's scoring title."


So he had the ability but just lacked the need to dribble equally well with either hand.


Sam

Once an Innovator, Always an Innovator


Okay, the Cousy floodgates are now open; but, don't worry, I'm winding down.  This story chronicles how the creativity that always marked his playing days and would have made him a genius in any era was applied to caring for his wife during her last years. Sorry for the blank spaces, which are pictures that wouldn't reproduce (one showing him driving past a defender and dribbling with his left hand).


Sam


The story of how NBA legend Bob Cousy, 85, went to extraordinary lengths to let his dementia-suffering wife believe she was still healthy
 
•    Cousy, who led the Celtics to six World Championships, said he never felt defeated by the challenge of caring for his wife of 63 years, Missie


•    A week after her death, though bereft, he has described his bounding love for the woman who bristled at the suggestion she was suffering dementia


•    He said he followed a 'game plan' that involved shipping her CAR TO their VACATION HOME and doing all the chores so she could believe she was OK


By HELEN POW
PUBLISHED: 22:03 EST, 1 October 2013 | UPDATED: 12:35 EST, 2 October 2013



NBA great Bob Cousy has opened up about his beloved wife Missie's heart-breaking dementia and how he went to enormous lengths to allow the woman he called 'my bride' to believe she was healthy until the end.
 
Cousy, 85, who led the Celtics to six World Championships, said he never felt defeated by the challenge of caring for his HIGH SCHOOL sweetheart without seeking help, services or sympathy as she slowly succumbed to the ravaging DISEASE.
 
And a week after her death, though bereft and inconsolable, he has described his bounding love for the woman who bristled at the suggestion she was suffering dementia, and the tear-jerking 'game plan' he followed - from shipping her CAR TO their VACATION HOME and doing all the household chores - that allowed her to believe, in her own mind, she wasn't sick.
Great love: NBA great Bob Cousy, pictured in 2006, has opened up about his beloved wife Missie's heart-breaking dementia and the enormous lengths he went to to allow the woman he called 'my bride' to believe she was healthy until the end
 
'My dad provided an ENVIRONMENT that allowed her, in her MIND, to be a fully functioning adult,' the couple's daughter Marie told The Worchester Telegram & Gazette as she sat by her father's side on Thursday. 'It was amazing to watch.'
 
Cousy married the raven-haired Marie Ritterbusch 63 years ago - six months after he graduated from THE COLLEGE of the Holy Cross having helped his team win an NCAA championship.
 
He spent his wedding night playing point guard for the Celtics, which set the scene for how the early part of their MARRIAGE would unfold.
 
'I was BUSY playing a child's game,' Cousy said. 'I thought putting a ball in a hole was important. Looking back, I should have participated more in the lives of my family. But my girls were in the best possible loving hands.'
 
However, tearing up, he described how the couple's romance flourished as they grew older.
'Our marriage was somewhat contrary to tradition,' he said. 'Most couples have the most intensity in the beginning. But I was always working. So we had the best and most romantic part of our marriage at the end. We literally held hands for the last 20 years.'

Roles reversed: Missie, pictured left bringing a drink to her injured husband in 1957, was cared for by Cousy for the past decade as her condition worsened
 
 

Side by side: Bob Cousy, top left and wife Missie, right, applaud during a Milwaukee Bucks-Boston Celtics championship game in 1974
 

Cousy is pictured here with daughters, Ticia Cousy, left, and Marie Cousy during an interview at the FAMILY'S Worcester home last Thursday
 
 
Missie began her COGNITIVE decline a dozen years ago, Cousy told the newspaper. She would ask him the same questions repeatedly and grew disoriented, struggling with balance.
 
But she always knew her husband, and the fiercely independent woman, who was used to running a household with her husband gone for weeks at a time, refused to believe she was suffering from dementia.
 
So, used to 'game plans,' Cousy WORKED HARD to create the perception that his bride was still her old self.
 
He had her station wagon shipped to their place in Florida in the winter because she thought she could still drive. He planted ARTIFICIAL FLOWERS in the garden and did all the chores, telling her she'd done them herself.
 
When her condition worsened, the couple stopped SOCIALIZING and apart from the occasional 'night out with the boys' or game of golf, he spent all his time alone with his sweetheart, patiently answering her questions and ensuring she had everything she needed.
 
'It drew us closer together,' he told the newspaper. 'It was never a chore, because I knew she would have done the same for me. You just have to go with the flow. Every three months, I'd scream out something just for release.'
 


 
Sports lover: Cousy, pictured left in 2007, and right in 1950, was always a sports love and spent weeks away from his FAMILY while playing
 

Legend on and off the court: Cousy, 14, brings the ball past a New York Knickerbockers defender during a game at Madison Square Garden in New York, March 3, 1963 during his last appearance in New York as a professional basketball player
 
Each morning, Cousy would wake first and arrange Missie's pills, the newspaper, a fiber bar and a banana on the kitchen table before rousing her.
 
She would take two or three hours to get through the paper, he said, because she liked to underline every line with a black pen. He explained how, after a while, he found COMFORT in reading between the lines because it was something they shared.
 
'She was leading a happy life,' he said. 'It was part of the game plan.'
 
The routine CONTINUED for years.
 
But on September 7, when Cousy took his wife for an early dinner at Worcester Country Club and on the drive home she suffered a severe stroke. She died peacefully two weeks later.
 
Now, he no longer puts her pills out in the morning or reads between the lines. But, as he did for decades before, he still tells his wife he loves her before bed each night.
It's hard to entirely give up the game plan.
 


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2441171/NBA-legend-Bob-Cousy-let-dementia-suffering-wife-believe-healthy.html




 

Thanks Sam.  As great a basketball player as Cousy was he is a greater man.  And that's where it counts.

Sloop,

He's just one of a growing number of prominent sports figures I've come to appreciate more after his playing days than during them.  And, believe me, I appreciated him plenty during his playing days!

Sam

Sam, when did you start watching basketball, what generation of players was the first you saw?

Dan,

I started watching in 1950, the season that Bob Cousy joined the Celtics.  I believe the poster known as Swish started watching very close to the time the Celtics joined the league, around 1946.  Along with The Cooz, the first generation of players I saw included stars such as George Mikan, Paul Arizon, and Neil Johnston

I don't know whether you might be interested, but my personal history of the Russell Celtics and a description of some of my relationships with those teams appear in the sub-forum on the home page labeled "Links, Books, Media and Sam's Writings."  Sorry there's nothing about the Cavs in there because there were no Cavs yet in those days.  Heck, they had just invented words!

The way you're headed, you might some day produce a visual history of you and the Cavs.  They seem headed in an exciting direction, and my advice to you (though you probably don't need it) is to treasure every detail of the adventure and store it carefully in your memory.  Decades from now, I promise you'll be glad you did.

And I echo Bob Heckler's hope that you'll post here early and often, even if the Celtics are not your primary interest.  Just look at the various threads, and you'll notice the wide range of topics we discuss—even deviating from basketball when the mood strikes us.

All the best,

Sam