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“We were basketball Cosa Nostra,” said Mr. Heinsohn, who also coached the Celtics to their 1974 and 1976 titles. “We thought that was our thing.”
To a later generation of fans, he was known as a talkative TV analyst, his passion, exuberance, and outspokenness making him both a colorful and controversial personality.
“One thing I learned a long time ago is that there is no control over what people think of you,” said Mr. Heinsohn, who once appeared in a famous Miller Lite commercial. showing NBA referee Mendy Rudolph pulling him out of a bar. “Some people have said of me, ‘Hey, it’s great to see someone so excited.’ Others said I was a howling donkey.
“And all I can say is, ‘It’s me, mate.’ I’m involved, and when I’m involved, I let it all hang out. I don’t worry about my image. “
Thomas William Heinsohn, born August 26, 1934, grew up in Union City, NJ, where he attended St. Michael’s High School before enrolling at Holy Cross.
“My mom bought me a whole new suit to go to college,” he recalls. “We were poor, but she wanted me to have this. It was a powder blue suit with ankle-length pants – you know, skinny at the bottom. I think I made a good impression with it.
Mr. Heinsohn made a more lasting impression on the pitch, where he was the Crusaders captain and a first-team All-American. He scored an academic record of 51 points against Boston College at the Garden and helped lead the Crusaders to the National Invitational Championship in 1954 as well as two NCAA playoff offers.
Before the Celtics picked him as their home pick in the 1956 draft, Mr. Heinsohn considered playing for the amateur Athletic Union team in Peoria, Ill., And trying for that year’s Olympics in Melbourne, where he would have played alongside future Boston teammates. Russell and KC Jones in the US gold medal team.
Instead, he signed with the Celtics and played an invaluable starting role in their title race in 1957. In Game 7 of the Series Finals against the St. Louis Hawks, Mr. Heinsohn scored 37 points. and grabbed 23 rebounds, leading the Celtics to a brace. -the triumph over time. It was the franchise’s first NBA championship.
“I just got to play freely and without fantasy,” said Mr. Heinsohn, who was named the league’s Rookie of the Year. “The guys who had been here all this time trying to win a championship, Cousy and Bill Sharman, were so anxious that they couldn’t get out of their way that day. I just went out and played.
Mr Heinsohn would score 12,194 points over his career, averaging nearly 19 per game despite his habit of smoking cigarettes in the locker room before games and during halftime.
“If Heinsohn wanted to kill himself, I was fine with that,” coach Red Auerbach said years later. “As long as it didn’t make him run slower.”
Intensely competitive
Mr. Heinsohn, who was nicknamed “Tommy Gun” and “Ack-Ack”, was the team’s designated sniper who did not need any encouragement to aim and shoot.
“Give Tommy credit for one thing,” Celtics magician Cousy once remarked. “He never shoots without the ball.”
Shooting was Mr Heinsohn’s job, Auerbach said, while observing that his teammates might like to hold the ball every now and then. Mr. Heinsohn, who played in an era without the long-range 3-point shot, used a bowless jumper and skillful hook, but could also storm and force his way to the basket.
“He would overthrow his grandmother for 2 points,” observed teammate Frank Ramsey.
Mr. Heinsohn, who was 6 feet 7 inches tall and weighed 220 pounds, was the “volunteer” who was tapped to prevent Wilt Chamberlain, the 7 foot titan, in order to let Cousy and Russell operate freely.
“It worked for a while, but Wilt got it and he didn’t like it,” Heinsohn said. “Finally, he said, ‘Do that again, I’m going to hit you in the ass.’ And I said, ‘Bring your lunch.’ And of course the next time he hit me on the ground.
Mr Heinsohn, who was Auerbach’s prime target during locker room conferences, was used to absorbing abuse for the benefit of the team.
“Red would say Tommy, you have to do this, Tommy you have to do this – and that goes for you too, Russell,” Mr. Heinsohn said.
Mr Heinsohn has been criticized most for his role as chairman of the players’ union, whose members threatened not to play in the 1964 All-Star Game at the Garden unless the NBA owners agree to establish a pension plan.
“Heinsohn is the No.1 heel in my entire association with the sport,” said Walter Brown, the enraged Celtics owner, who viewed Mr. Heinsohn as disloyal.
The owners and players hit it off ahead of the odds, and after Mr Heinsohn helped produce another title three months later in the garden, Brown reversed.
“No living thing – horse, dog or human – has ever given as much competition as Tommy contributed to the Celtics,” he said.
Transition to coaching
Mr Heinsohn had one more season to go, his career cut short at 30 by a foot injury. He retired in 1965 with one final ring, which Mr Heinsohn felt had diminished because he watched the dying minutes of the final victory over the Lakers from the bench.
“It was heartbreaking for me to see Willie Naulls play for me and the Celtics put away their seventh straight title without me,” he wrote in “Heinsohn, Don’t You Ever Smile?” with co-author Leonard Lewin.
Auerbach, who resigned his coaching post after the 1966 season, offered him the job, but Mr Heinsohn refused.
“I couldn’t handle Russell,” he told Auerbach. “Russell would never play for me. I couldn’t motivate him.
So Auerbach appointed Russell as his player-coach, and Mr. Heinsohn returned to what had been his off-season job: selling insurance. But when Russell retired after three seasons, Mr. Heinsohn took over.
Selling insurance, he said, was not as satisfying as life in the field.
“I got used to the immediate results – in 48 minutes, I won or lost,” he said.
What he inherited in 1969 was a massive rebuilding project on Causeway Street, and this season’s record (34-48) was the club’s worst since 1950. But with established veterans like John Havlicek, Tom Sanders and, Don Nelson and talented young players Dave Cowens, Jo Jo White and Don Chaney, Mr. Heinsohn established a fast-paced running style that left rivals leggy and breathless. After producing a turnaround in his second campaign, he was named NBA Coach of the Year.
“I had the feeling that I was watching something that I had created working,” he says.
The Celtics won the crown in two of the next three years, but when the team sagged in the 1977-78 season, Mr Heinsohn, who had signed a multi-year contract extension this spring, was fired after nine years, 427 wins and six playoff appearances, he was replaced by Sanders in what Auerbach said was “the hardest thing I’ve ever done”
Mr. Heinsohn (“I’m not afraid of the world”) was philosophical about his dismissal.
“I’ve been around the roller coaster,” he says. “I have been to Playland and I have walked up and down and looked in all the mirrors. I did it all. And I never looked back on anything.
Creative with words and paint
Mr. Heinsohn continued his involvement with the Celtics as a color commentator on the team’s television shows with play-by-play announcer Mike Gorman. They would offer the longest continuous on-air collaboration of any professional sports team.
“Tommy doesn’t really color,” Gorman observed. “In his heart he still coaches the Celtics and he always will be. It doesn’t matter who the coach is, and it is not disrespecting the coach. It will always be Tommy’s team. Tommy will coach this team until he takes his last breath. If it was possible to continue playing for this team, it would be.
Mr. Heinsohn’s full-throated commentary, with its hometown inflection, was just shy of participation. The man who had been the league’s greatest cafe philosopher during his coaching days – his credentials ranging from Romeo and Juliet to Henry Clay to Ebenezer Scrooge to Bigfoot – was a master of creating images of words on the air.
Throughout his life he will also display a knack for creating canvas pictures.
Painting was one of Mr. Heinsohn’s favorite pastimes since childhood, when he was disappointed to receive a baseball glove for a Christmas present instead of a set of pastels.
“When I started it was something I could do on my own,” said Mr. Heinsohn, who once dreamed of retiring to Gloucester to paint. “It’s really like a friend. It keeps me involved in something. It’s calming. It’s funny. It is a social exercise. It is an intellectual exercise.
Mr. Heinsohn, a frequent exhibitor who sold some of his paintings and gave others away, loved the landscapes, many of which he discovered on trips across the country.
Once in his hotel room in Cleveland, which looked out onto a brick wall, Mr Heinsohn drew a still life of his boots on an end table as snow fell outside.
“You have to keep doing it,” he said. “Sport is an art. Painting is an art. It’s about mastering the fundamentals and pumping your creativity into them. “
Mr Heinsohn’s most treasured portrait was that of his second wife, Helen, whom he called “the redhead of Needham” and who died in 2008 after a six-year battle with cancer.
“My joke has always been, ‘Nothing can happen to me because Tommy can’t find his socks,’ she once said.
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