The NBA’s Boston Celtics and Red Auerbach are the most successful team and coach in team sport’s history.  The 2008 NBA championship finals carried basketball fans into June.  We can now officially call the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers “The Boys of summer.”

 

While America is seeing Black for the first time (Presidential nominee Barack Obama), the city of Boston is seeing a familiar Red as in Auerbach.  It has been twenty-one years (1987) since these two teams last met in an NBA final.  In 1987, Red Auerbach was still the Godfather of the NBA and President of the franchise.

 

The World of sports lost a true giant when Red died on Saturday October 28, 2006.  He was born in Brooklyn, NY, but he loved his hometown of Washington, DC.  We all know that Red Auerbach was the greatest coach in the history of team sports.  His record in Human and Civil Rights----he was in a class by himself. 

 

It is not by accident or coincident that Doc Rivers is the head coach of the Boston Celtics or Danny Ainge is the team’s General Manager.  Thanks to Red, the Celtics were the first equal opportunity and keeping it in the family employer in the NBA.

 

In 1950, Chuck Cooper of Duquesne University and a second team All-American was drafted by coach Red Auerbach and owner Walter Brown of the Boston Celtics.  Cooper would become the first black player drafted and signed by an NBA team.  The NBA is now the most integrated pro sports organization in America. 

 

Red was the first coach to play five black players at the same time.  He was the first to hire a black coach when he hired Bill Russell and the first to hire a black General Manager with the same name---Bill Russell.

 

During the tenure of owner Walter Brown and Red Auerbach, the Boston Garden was a “Racial Free Zone.”  The stifling racial strife in the city of Boston for the past several decades was not allowed in Boston Garden, the home of the Boston Celtics.    KKK robes and hoods were checked at the gate and replaced with shirts and ties when games were played in the garden.

 

When the Basketball Hall of Fame had forgotten the contributions of Earl Lloyd, the first player to ever play in an NBA game in 1950, Red reminded them.  Earl was finally inducted into the Naismith Basketball of Fame in 2001.  Thanks to Red Auerbach, better late than never.

 

Red Auerbach was a genius.  If you are looking for the definition of coach in Webster’s Dictionary, it is spelled, A-U-E-R-B-A-C-H.  Red could X and O you to death (chalk and black board).  He was a psychiatrist, motivator, P. R. man and an intimidator.  The league’s referees, coaches and players were often the target of his wit and sharp tongue.  He stood 5 feet 7 inches tall, and I clearly remember watching a game on television with him challenging the 7 foot Wilt Chamberlain to a fist fight.  Red would later tell me on my talk show, Inside Sports, “I should have gotten an Academy Award for that performance.”  Talking about getting under an opponent’s skin, when he was sure that victory was in hand he would light up his famous cigar on the bench.  There were several occasions when he would light the cigar up too soon, and the opposition got the last laugh.  Those laughs were far, few and in-between.  Those coaches, who caught Red in the won-lost column, labored more years and were the benefactors of an expanded NBA schedule.

 

This was the eleventh championship final between the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers.  The Celtics lead the series 89-3.  The most important statistic is the one owned by the coaches, Red Auerbach and Phil Jackson.  Each has won eleven NBA Championships.  A win by the Lakers would have given Phil Jackson the outright lead.  Please don’t think this was not lost on the city of Boston, the Celtic organization, the players or the coaches.  The city of Los Angeles, the Lakers’ organization, the players and their coach were also caught up in this historical footnote in NBA history.  Phil Jackson had not forgotten that when his record was compared to the great Red Auerbach, Red made it known that Phil was an NBA opportunist.  Red built his incredible record with just one team—the Boston Celtics and Phil was an NBA vagabond.