Tommy Heinsohn picked up the phone, not knowing what I wanted.
If I’m not too close with someone, I generally like to reach out first to see if he would like to chat. But that day I didn’t give Tommy any warning. Just cold-called him in the middle of May, hoping to talk to him for a Celtics alumni poll. Essentially, I had put together a list of questions for former players to answer. I wanted to talk to as many former Celtics as possible. He was the one I most wanted to connect with. Nobody experienced more Celtics basketball than he did. Around that franchise, nobody’s opinion carried more weight.
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It was a nice day. Tommy could have been doing anything else. I wondered if he would want to chat. He agreed to, and then he got going. Man, he got going. Heinsohn was a man of many interests, including painting, but always appreciated a good conversation about his beloved sport. The memories seemed to invigorate him. They were so great, and he knew exactly how to bring them back to life. He stayed on the phone for 30 minutes, and I could have listened to his stories forever.
Heinsohn told me about the time Bill Russell leveled Lakers big man Jimmy Krebbs with an epic punch. After the incident, Heinsohn said he saw Krebbs walking to the shower. He was so out of sorts he didn’t know who had clobbered him. Heinsohn recalled getting in a fight with Wilt Chamberlain. Heinsohn remembered Red Auerbach’s strategy of drafting players who fit into championship college teams. Heinsohn called Russell the best Celtics player ever and said Bob Cousy, not Larry Bird, ranked second. Heinsohn was biased. Of course he was biased. He played with Russell and Cousy. They won six championships together. But Heinsohn also knew damn well what he was talking about. He had more institutional knowledge about the Celtics than anyone else. He lived through it all. His death, at age 86, leaves a crater the organization could never fill.
Heinsohn’s one-of-a-kind resume speaks for itself. He has been inducted into the Hall of Fame twice — once as a player, then again as a coach — and owns a strong case to be inducted a third time for his broadcasting career. He made six All-Star Games and four All-NBA second teams as a player, then won two championships and a Coach of the Year award during his second career. Because of how much else he accomplished, Heinsohn’s coaching tenure is often overlooked, but he restored the Celtics to glory after the departure of Russell and several other Hall of Famers. Heinsohn was an innovator on the sidelines, one of the first NBA coaches to play with a downsized lineup. Wanting his teams to capitalize on their speed, he forever preached the importance of a well-run fast break.
“We were the smallest team in the league,” Heinsohn said that day in May. “And we were pretty good when I coached. We took total advantage of the quickness and speed. And we were really the first team in that era to play without a center, per se. And we were successful doing it. This is hard for the current era to believe or comprehend, but we would fast break off the other teams’ made free throws. And when I talk about it now, they look at me like, ‘That’s impossible.’”
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Heinsohn’s career seems impossible, too. In one way or another, he was a part of all 17 Celtics championship teams. He won eight titles as a player and two more as a coach, then served as a broadcaster for the other seven Celtics championships. Since 1956, when Boston drafted him in a class that also produced two other Hall of Famers — Russell and K.C. Jones — Heinsohn was the Celtic of all Celtics. Nobody touched the franchise in all the ways he did. It’s safe to say nobody else ever will.
How long ago did Heinsohn start his playing career? He once told me that he earned $11,000 per season on his first contract. In those days, the Celtics did not have their own practice facility. Heck, they didn’t even have a practice court of their own. Heinsohn told me his teams often practiced at a Cambridge YMCA, where the Celtics needed to be off the court by noon so the members could take over the gym. Heinsohn always had a great memory for stuff like that. He could spin a tale with the best of them, and he loved thinking back to the way things used to be. He would talk Celtics basketball with anybody, at any time. His eyes would start twinkling when he reflected on an old story. He could put the modern NBA into better perspective than anybody else regularly around the Celtics. When the team opened its new, state-of-the-art practice facility in the summer of 2018, I sought out Heinsohn to pick his brain about the incredible building.
“Red Auerbach wouldn’t believe it,” Heinsohn said of the building that bears his old coach’s name.
Despite his appreciation for the history of the game, Heinsohn embraced the new generation. Outsiders might have viewed him as a crotchety homer with a disdain for referees, but anyone who listened to Celtics broadcasts over the years knows Heinsohn appreciated the finer details of basketball as much as anyone else. He would rave about young Boston players, even some who didn’t deserve as much praise as Heinsohn dished out. He once famously compared Greg Stiemsma to Bill Russell. Such outrageous remarks could have turned away fans, but those moments were just part of Heinsohn’s charm. He fell in love with players, fell in love with teams, fell in love over and over again with the game. He worked for the Celtics for most of his life, but never strayed from his role as the team’s biggest fan.
During the dark years, especially, that enthusiasm helped his broadcast partner, Mike Gorman, carry the broadcast. That might have been when Heinsohn was at his best. He treated mediocre teams like they were remarkable. In December 2000, Milt Palacio stole an inbounds pass with 1.8 seconds left before drilling a game-winning 3-pointer at the buzzer. The Celtics were near the end of the gory Rick Pitino era at the time. It was actually the final win of Pitino’s tenure. Not even the trying times for the organization could rob Heinsohn’s joy. After Palacio’s last-second heave splashed through the net, Heinsohn reacted like a child.
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“Whoa!” he shouted.
Even when the Celtics were bad, Heinsohn handed out Tommy Points and coined phrases like “I love Waltah.” As shown by his appreciation for Walter McCarty, it didn’t take huge talent to woo Heinsohn. He liked nothing more than a selfless player. A disciple of Auerbach, Heinsohn religiously preached the values of team basketball. He loathed players who were out for themselves, as evidenced by his reaction to a 2004 Ricky Davis blooper. After intercepting a pass against the Lakers, Davis tried to put the ball between his legs for a fast-break dunk. While he tried the extravagant slam, the ball slipped out of his hands and bounced off the backboard. On the call, Heinsohn lost his cool.
“That’s nonsense Ricky!” Heinsohn hollered. “Go make the basket! Forget the show!”
During tense moments like that, Heinsohn would raise his voice on the broadcast like he wanted the target of his vitriol to hear the message from the court. I’m sure sometimes Heinsohn actually did want that. Often, his punching bag would be referees. That day, he lit into Davis. The fire helped make Heinsohn and Gorman such a balanced team. Gorman provided the soothing voice. He was the calming influence. Heinsohn brought the boom. He could be like a crazy uncle, but he could also break the game down. The two friends worked so well together. Gorman knew when to wind up Heinsohn and when to reel him in. After the Davis play, Gorman let Heinsohn go.
Sixteen years later, Heinsohn remembered the play when I asked about it. Of course he did. He was a Celtics encyclopedia. He still had an apparent disdain for Davis’s playing style, too.
“He was there for the flash,” Heinsohn said. “He could have been a great player, but he was still playing high school basketball for the cheerleaders, you know?”
Heinsohn didn’t much care for the flash. He wanted the Celtics to run and he wanted them to play together. He would give advice to players, and many of them seemed to genuinely appreciate his insight. After one game, near the end of Rajon Rondo’s Celtics tenure, Heinsohn sat down with the point guard in the locker room for at least 10 minutes. Rondo spent most of that time listening. Because Heinsohn did basically everything somebody could in basketball, Rondo gave him the ultimate respect.
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“He’s the biggest supporter here,” Rondo said then.
Always was. Year after year, Heinsohn rooted for the Celtics to live up to Auerbach’s ideals. At his second Hall of Fame induction, in 2015, Heinsohn shared one of the valuable lessons he learned from his former coach. Calling Auerbach a “master manager of people” and “a master coach,” Heinsohn said Auerbach was able to get players to give “their total personhood to what they do.”
“To give their body, their minds and their spirit to winning,” Heinsohn said.
That’s all Heinsohn ever seemed to want from the Celtics. He loved when they played the game the right way. He was biased on local calls, but never hid it. Because of all he accomplished, he didn’t need to. He spent most of the last seven decades involved in Celtics basketball in one major role or another. In a lot of ways, he was the Celtics. It would have been weird if he pretended not to care as deeply as he did. And he never did.
(Photo of Heinsohn, left, with Mike Gorman: Elise Amendola / AP)