With the Celtics facing the Lakers in the NBA Championship Series it reminded me of my first recollections of watching basketball. I have to admit that I wasn't a Knicks' fan, but a Celtics' one instead. It was Bob Cousy who grabbed my attention along with the great team play that his passing and ball handling skills enabled. Above some film clips I found that I combined with an NPR interview about the Russell-Chamberlain rivalry. It was highlighted in John Taylor's book, "The Rivalry: Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and the Golden Age of Basketball."
About Cousy
Robert Joseph "Bob" Cousy (born August 9, 1928 in New York City) is a former French-American professional basketball player. The 6'1" (1.85 m), 175 pounds (79.4 kg) Cousy played point guard with the National Basketball Association's (NBA) Boston Celtics from 1951 to 1963 and briefly with the Cincinnati Royals in the 1969--70 season. In his first 11 seasons in the NBA, Cousy led the league in assists eight consecutive times and introduced a new blend of ball-handling and passing skills, earning him the nicknames "The Cooz" and "Houdini of the Hardwood". He was elected into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1971, and in his honor, the Celtics retired his number 14 jersey and hung it into the rafters of the Boston Garden, where it has remained since. Cousy was named to the NBA 25th Anniversary Team in 1971, the NBA 35th Anniversary Team in 1981, and the NBA's 50th Anniversary All-Time Team in 1996, making him one of only four players that were selected into all those teams. In the 1959-60 NBA season, Cousy was again productive, his 19.4 points, 4.7 rebounds and 9.5 assists per game earning him his eighth consecutive assists title and another joint All-NBA First Team and All-Star team nomination. Again, the Celtics defeated all opposition and won the 1960 NBA Finals 4--3 against the Hawks. A year later, the 32-year-old Cousy scored 18.1 points, 4.4 rebounds and 7.7 assists per game, winning another pair of All-NBA First Team and All-Star nominations.
About the NPR interview
When a young Wilt Chamberlain was to face off against Boston Celtics center Bill Russell for the first time in 1959, one magazine billed it "The Big Collision." Author John Taylor writes about that collision's effects and the early days of professional basketball in The Rivalry: Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and the Golden Age of Basketball. Taylor talks with Scott Simon about the book.
Excerpt: Chapter One
ON THE NIGHT of November 7, 1959, people lined up on the sidewalks outside Boston's North Station, a dingy yellow-brick building, and crowded along the bar at the Iron Horse, the old drinking-parlor inside. They stood in clusters on Causeway Street and Haverhill Street and Canal Street, their voices almost drowned out by the thundering traffic on the elevated highways and subway tracks that crossed above them on iron girders, and by the hiss and clang of the trains in the rail yards.
The citizens of Boston had much to debate that evening. In Washington, D.C., Charles Van Doren, the thirty-three-year-old Columbia University English professor, had just admitted to a congressional committee that the producers of Twenty-One, the television quiz show that had turned him into a national icon, had been secretly prepping him with the answers to questions. Senator John Kennedy, who had all but announced his intention to run for president the following year, had been touring California and Oregon the previous week, greeted by ecstatic crowds carrying signs saying "Viva Kennedy!" In Boston itself, a newspaper strike was under way, and just four days earlier, John Collins, the Suffolk County register of probate and a victim of paralytic polio who was confined to a wheelchair, had defeated Senate president John Powers for the Boston mayoralty. It was a stunning upset, brought about by an FBI raid on the headquarters of a gambling syndicate just one hundred yards from the East Boston police station and resulting in charges of widespread corruption in the city's government.
But the topic that consumed the crowds around North Station was neither the television scandal nor the impending administration of John Collins nor the presidential prospects of a young Irish American Catholic. It was instead basketball, specifically the game scheduled that night between the Boston Celtics and the Philadelphia Warriors. While Boston was a storied sports town, the sports that had always provoked the most passion were baseball and hockey, the sports of the Red Sox and the Bruins. These were sports with rich local histories, sports that had been played for generations in Boston and had, over the years, woven themselves so deeply into the fabric of the city that residence there seemed virtually synonymous with a rabid devotion to its baseball and hockey teams. Professional basketball, in contrast, was only thirteen years old in 1959. Walter Brown, the owner of the Bruins and leaseholder on the Boston Garden, had started the Celtics to fill seats at the arena on nights when his beloved hockey team was not playing and the big, drafty building, located above the train station, would otherwise sit dark and empty. In other words, the team was a purely commercial afterthought in a sport without strong roots in the city's culture, and for much of the fifties, attendance at its games reflected this. Rarely was the Garden more than half filled on the nights it played. Members of the Celtics joked that while Ted Williams could not get out of a car on Charles Street without being mobbed, their entire team could walk the length of the Common and no one would give them a second glance.
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