On Tommy Heinsohn, who was always meant to be a Celtic

There are some who believe everything happens for a reason; that some things were just meant to be. If you’re one of them and you find yourself in a debate with someone who disputes that, tell them Tommy Heinsohn’s story.

Sure, there have been bigger stars to pull a green jersey over their heads, but only Heinsohn has endured in that Kelly hue throughout every stage of his life. He was such a Celtic that you’d swear that if you pricked his finger, a drop of green would drip out.

He is the Boston Celtics, and no matter what turn his life took over his adult life, it always led him back to the team that became his identity.

Red Auerbach’s coup in 1956 was the draft day trade that brought Bill Russell to the Celtics, but before he pulled that off, he selected Heinsohn with what was then known as the territorial selection.

In the fledgling days of the NBA, teams were allowed to select the college stars in their area without giving up any of their picks. The theory was that fans would follow those stars to the pros, and it would help each team boost its popularity. If Heinsohn had decided to go to school elsewhere, he probably wouldn’t have become a Celtic at all.

Heinsohn, then known as “Tommy Gun” because he never met a shot opportunity he didn’t like, provided a skittish Celtics offense with a confident shot-taker who could convert Russell’s defensive stops into points.

“Sure, he takes a few bad shots now and then,” Cousy once told the Saturday Evening Post (noted in the book 40 Greatest Players in Boston Celtics Basketball History), “but over the long haul the confident player is the one who takes the initiative and wins games for you.”

And win they did. Heinsohn was part of eight championships over his nine-year career, including the team’s first ever title. It wasn’t always easy, though. Heinsohn, like many in those days, was a smoker. He was once told by Auerbach to quit smoking but, when he put on weight, told to take the habit back up.

Auerbach once said Heinsohn had the oldest 27-year-old body he’s ever seen. Red often targeted Heinsohn with barbs like that because he knew he could without Heinsohn being bothered. He couldn’t ride Bob Cousy or Bill Sharman that way but Heinsohn was tough enough to handle it.

That doesn’t mean it didn’t get old.

“I went up to him and I said, ‘hey Red, let me ask you a question, do I deserve to be on this team?’ and he says ‘why you sure do, Tommy,’” he once recalled. “I said ‘do I deserve to be a starter on this team?’ and he says ‘absolutely.’ I said, 'well Red, if that’d be the case, I need you to get off my back a little bit and start pointing it in other directions, because the rookies on this team are starting to steal my socks.”

Heinsohn was a leader, and he was the players union president in 1964 when he led a near-boycott of the All-Star game being played in Boston. With the backing of several of the league’s stars, including teammates Russell and Sam Jones, Heinsohn and the All-Stars refused to go out for the nationally-televised game.

This was a critical juncture in the league’s history. The All-Star game was a big deal in those days. Players took it seriously and viewers saw it as a real showcase of the league’s talent. If this gambit had failed, the league may not have recovered.

Owners relented though, and they recognized the union, an achievement that resonates today as players and owners continue to navigate through an unprecedented time. It’s hard to imagine the union would find itself on equal footing had things gone differently in 1964.

The union wasn’t enough to make the league a lucrative form of work. Heinsohn might have helped win the players benefits, but the league was nowhere near financially viable enough to make basketball a primary source of income for many players. Towards the end of his playing career, the combination of a foot injury and a burgeoning insurance career steered him away from the game. He retired in 1965.

Red Auerbach decided to retire a year later, and he turned to Heinsohn about taking over. However, he refused, which led to a historic decision by the Celtics to make Russell the first Black head coach in NBA history.

“Well, the reason I didn’t is Russell and I were contemporaries, and Red Auerbach was masterful at dealing with Russell. I would never be able to have the same rapport with Bill Russell,” Heinsohn said on an April episode of the Locked On Celtics podcast. “When Red talked to me about it, I said, ‘nobody’s going to get out of Russell you got out of Russell, Red. Why don’t you make Russell the coach. He’s so proud he might kill himself.’ And that’s what he did. So I’m sure, perhaps, I wasn’t the only one but I certainly brought it up. And now Russell did a terrific job and went out and won a couple of more titles.”

Heinsohn knew Russell’s time was up after the 1969 NBA Finals win over the Los Angeles Lakers. At the time, he was still in the insurance business but moonlighting as a Celtics television and radio commentator alongside Auerbach. So he made his pitch to take over the team.

“I’d gotten into the management and life insurance business, that was my side business while I was a player. And I had a management position there. And Red called me up to do television,” Heinsohn said. “So I was on the scene locally, with Red and I was gaining management experience at the same time dealing, recruiting, training and supervising people in the life insurance business… And so I talked to Red and I said, ‘Red, if Russell leaves, I’d be interested in a job if you’d still like to have me.’ And he said, Yes. So that’s how I got the job.”

Once again the timing was right for Heinsohn to stay a Celtic, moving to the sidelines to see the team into a new era. After two seasons out of the playoffs, Heinsohn got a new crop of top-notch talent and he put the lessons he learned as a player to use as a coach.

The Celtics were the original run-and-gun team in the 1960u2032s and when Heinsohn was given 6u20329u2033 Dave Cowens as a center, he rolled with it and played “small ball” decades before it was given that name. Blessed with a stable of athletes, Heinsohn and the Celtics ran opponents out of the gym to earn two more titles.

“We made teams crack in these playoffs,” Heinsohn once told the Boston Globe. “We got them to points in big games in the fourth quarter where they just didn’t want to play anymore.”

Heinsohn swore by his approach; so much so that he swore until the end that his Celtics teams could beat the vaunted 1986 Celtics and their Big 3 of Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, and Robert Parish.

“I tell you that speed wins out, alright? Speed is important for 84 of the 94 feet. Size is important for 15 feet,” Heinsohn said. “And you can take advantage of all that other stuff to beat those bigger guys down the floor or get them out of position.”

He nearly took that approach to Houston with him in the early 1980u2032s.

Things fell apart in Boston after their championship run ended. Questionable moves brought in players Heinsohn didn’t want, and a dispute with ownership swept him off the sidelines. He soon had an opportunity to coach the Houston Rockets, but he was questioned about a free agent he wanted during his interview. It was immediately off putting.

“I just said to myself, I’m going to spend five years here. And I’m going to constantly be dealing with people that don’t understand what I’m trying to do. And so I got on a plane to come home,” Heinsohn said on the Locked On Celtics podcast. "The stewardess comes up and said ‘would you like something to drink?’ I said, ‘You got any champagne?’ And she says, ‘Why sure we’ve got champagne, are you celebrating something?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ She says, ‘well, what are you celebrating?’ I said ‘I just turned down a million dollar deal. And I’m the happiest guy in the world that I did.’

Bill Fitch, who coached the Celtics from 1979 to 1983, ended up taking the Houston job and losing to the Celtics in the 1986 NBA Finals. Once again, fate spared Heinsohn from being related to anything besides Boston.

Instead, he took his trademark bluster and charm back to the broadcast booth, and eventually another twist of fate that teamed him up with Mike Gorman.

At the time, Gorman was a sports anchor for WPRI in Providence, Rhode Island. He was slated to call a Providence College game against Holy Cross, but he didn’t have a color commentator. On a whim, he decided to call Heinsohn.

Heinsohn, to Gorman’s surprise, agreed.

“So I show up to the game. And I’ve got notes, I get multicolored charts, I’ve got shooting percentages, I get how many kids are in this kid’s family, what their major is. You name it, I got it,” Gorman said on the Locked On Celtics podcast “So Tommy comes in and he looks at the stuff spread out the table in front of us, in front of me. And he says, ‘what’s that shit?’ And I said, ‘that’s the stuff we’re going to use during the game.’ And he reaches down and he crumples it up in a ball and throws it to the floor and he says ‘we’re not going to need that.’ And I said, ‘Oh, okay.’ And he looked at me and he said, ‘we’re gonna talk about what happens in front of us. That’s all we’re gonna talk about.’”

And that’s how Gorman and Heinsohn became “Mike and Tommy.” The duo graced Boston television for four decades, during which Heinsohn might have said a total of four nice things about the game’s officials.

He never really liked the officials.

He did love the underdog, though. He loved Walter McCarty, and his regular exclamations of “I… LOVE… WALTAH” became a trademark. It led to the awarding of “Tommy Points,” which Heinsohn would hand out when a player did something great that wouldn’t show up in the stat sheet. It was recognition of the hard work and dedication that might have otherwise gone unrecognized.

Heinsohn made sure to give guys like that their due because, frankly, Heinsohn never seemed to get his.

Yes, he won rookie of the year, made six All-Star teams, and was named to four All-NBA teams, but he was always overshadowed as a player by Russell and Bob Cousy. Yes, he won two titles as a coach and a Coach of the Year award, but Auerbach will always get top billing.

Heinsohn is in the Hall of Fame as a player and a coach, one of only four men to hold that distinction, yet he seems under-appreciated. It took him becoming a loveable, gruff, green-goggled broadcaster to shed the appropriate light on what he’s accomplished.

There is one clip of Tommy Heinsohn that truly captures his essence.

In a nondescript game during the nondescript pre-2008 championship era, McCarty rose from the bench to check in. As he knelt by the scorer’s table, waiting for a stoppage in play, Heinsohn leaned over and called for his attention, mid-broadcast.

“Waltah,” he said in his gravelly, New Jersey accent. “Run! Run Waltah!”

Those few seconds are everything Heinsohn was.

He was a player, looking to do whatever he could to win the game.

He was a coach, trying to implore a player to do what was right.

He was a broadcaster, putting on a show.

And above all else, he was a Celtic. That’s who Tommy Heinsohn was.

That’s who he was always meant to be.

Related Content

Boston Celtics legend Tommy Heinsohn dies at 86

NBA, Union finish negotiations; new season officially begins Dec. 22

Celtics draft pick among ‘most prevalent in trade conversations,’ but experts cool on possibilities (report)

___

(c)2020 MassLive.com, Springfield, Mass.

Visit MassLive.com, Springfield, Mass. at www.masslive.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.