alamo50
03-05-2005, 07:16 AM
The Hall-of-Famer dishes on many topics in a Q&A with NBA.com
By John Hareas
Before Jason Kidd, Magic, Pistol Pete, heck, even The Big O, there was the Cooz. At 6-1, Bob Cousy didn't merely dominate the competition, he revolutionized the point guard position. With behind the back passes, dribbles, no-look touch passes, Cousy was the NBA's first virtuoso. He did it all, leading the Boston Celtics to six NBA titles while stockpiling eight assist titles in a row.
In a new book titled, Cousy: His Life, Career, and the Birth of Big-Time Basketball (Simon & Schuster), writer Bill Reynolds chronicles the story of Cousy's impoverished childhood in New York City, the painful experiences of getting cut from the freshman and sophomore teams throughout his Hall of Fame career with the Celtics and coaching experiences with Boston College and the Celtics. The Celtics' all-time assists leader took time to reflect on his career and today's game.
http://www.nba.com/media/celtics/cousy_188_jacket.jpg
NBA.com: You were a star at Holy Cross and many felt at the time that it was a no brainer for you to go to the Celtics yet you were selected by the Tri-Cities Blackhawks.
Bob Cousy: "I'll be honest with you -- in those days, making the NBA was not my No. 1 priority. I hadn't put a lot of thought into it, but I guess I was assuming that the Celtics would choose me, and when they did not, I kind of went on with my life."
NBA.com: Unlike today, the NBA Draft didn't receive global media coverage back in 1950. How did you find out you were selected and what was your reaction?
Cousy: "I was called by some media person who said, ‘Cooze, congratulations, you're the top draft pick of the Tri-Cities Blackhawks.' And I was a pretty good student in college, but I must have fallen asleep in geography class because I found myself asking, ‘What the devil is a Tri-City?'
"Now it's a Quad City, and I found out about Moline, Davenport and Rock Island pretty soon. Ben Kerner, who owned the team at the time, might not have known where the Tri-Cities were either. When he picked me, he called me and flew me up to Buffalo, where he lived.
"He said, ‘Bob, what's it gonna take?' and I answered, ‘10,000 dollars.' He yelled, "Ohhhh, God! How about $6,000?'
"I said, ‘No, but thank you very much, Mr. Kerner,' and I went to the airport and flew home."
NBA.com: Were you prepared to sit out and pursue something else?
Cousy: "Yes. A friend from college and I had just started a business. We were going to open up some gas stations and auto driving schools, so we were a little independent. Then I had gone on a playing tour all through New England with some classmates after we had graduated. We sold out everywhere we went, so I knew I was in a position to settle in Worcester and earn about $10,000 per year. But I certainly wasn't going to go some place far away like Tri-Cities, because the NBA was virtually unknown at that time. I had never seen a game. It wasn't a big deal."
NBA.com: So, you focused on your businesses instead of signing with the Blackhawks?
Cousy: "Yes, I went on teaching ladies to drive for a month or so, when they called me and said, ‘Hey, guess what - they traded you to Chicago (a franchise known as the Stags).' I said, ‘Good, I'm not going there either.'
"Well, they never called me, and two days later, the Chicago Stags went bankrupt. Players were dispersed throughout the rest of the league. All but three of us were taken - Max Zaslofsky, who was a heck of a basketball player, led the league in scoring the year before; Andy Phillip, who was an excellent point guard and went on to become a Hall of Famer and myself."
NBA.com: The three teams drawing the names were the Celtics, New York Knickbockers and Philadelphia Warriors.
Cousy: "Yes, our three names were left in a hat. New York went first - they wanted a good Jewish player and they certainly got one in Max. Philadelphia picked Andy and was pleased. So the only thing left in the hat besides the lining was me, and I think it was [Celtics owner] Walter Brown himself who drew my name.
NBA.com: When did you find out you were going to the Celtics?
Cousy: "The next day. I received another call – ‘Guess what, Boston chose you out of the hat." I said, ‘Good, that's the only place I'll play.'"
NBA.com: Did you deal directly with Walter Brown regarding your contract?
Cousy: "Yes. Walter called and invited me in; we actually went into the men's bathroom because his office was crowded. He said, ‘Bob, what's it gonna take?' ‘I told him, ‘$10,000, sir.' He said, ‘How about $9,000?' and I said, ‘You got a deal.' The rest, as they say, is history."
NBA.com: At the time, Red wasn't exactly thrilled with the prospect of adding you to the team, drafting Bowling Green's Charlie Share, a 6-11 center, with their pick.
Cousy: "After all these years, I'm still not sure Red ever saw me play in college. You'd think I would have gotten around to asking him about it by now.
"I do think that he did what any of us would have done. He had a choice between a big guy and a little guy, and just as now, there were a lot of little guys around and not many big guys. He had been hired to re-do the Celtics, more or less from scratch."
NBA.com: What was the local reaction by the fans and media when it became official that you were joining the Celtics?
Cousy: "Since I had played all four years of college at Holy Cross, the Boston media and fans really loved me and all that good stuff, which we quickly put aside when my rookie season began."
NBA.com: What was Red's greatest strengths as a coach or general manager?
Cousy: "I think Red knew talent, how to acquire talent and how to motivate talent. With only 10 or so teams in those early days, there was an abundance of talent --- and if you were a smart wheeler-dealer like Red, you could recycle pretty quickly.
http://www.nba.com/media/celtics/cousy_188_pass.jpg
Cousy led the NBA in assists for eight consecutive seasons.
NBA Photos
"Nowadays, that's pretty much impossible. You could have a lot of money at your disposal, but the supply is much smaller than the demand. For his day, Arnold was the best you could ever hope for. The way he got Bill Russell and Dennis Johnson, and that he was willing to wait a year for Larry Bird."
NBA.com: You were a member of six NBA championship teams. Which one was the best in your opinion?
Cousy: "The first one in 1957. The other guys, like Russell and [Tom] Heinsohn -- they thought you're supposed to win every year.
"I had waited six long years. We fought and worked and sweated. Like anything else in life, challenges that you work to achieve -- it's a lot sweeter after you've worked for a long time to achieve it."
NBA.com: You helped lead the Celtics to six title in seven years. The Chicago Bulls of the 1990s won six in eight years. How would the Bulls stack up to your championship teams?
Cousy: "I think the Bulls would fare fine, but I just don't think they come close to accomplishing what those units did. You're talking about a team that produced two Hall of Famers, Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. If you count Red and Walter Brown, I think the Celtics of my era have eight Hall of Famers.
"I would receive calls after the Bulls won three in a row (in the early '90s), and I said, ‘I hate to sound like an old-timer, but let's let a little history go by before we make this comparison. When they challenge 11 in 13 years, we can talk again.' I'm a guy who says Michael is the best who ever played, but they had a lot of role players who got the job done in their shadows at a time when the league was watered down."
NBA.com: Fans also love to compare players from different eras in addition to different teams. What do you think of today's NBA player in terms of athleticism?
Cousy: "Players have certainly gotten better and more athletic, but when we were playing, whatever the talent level was, it was much more concentrated and consistent across the board throughout the entire league. It was much tougher to dominate in the '60s.
"These days, if you have a couple Hall of Famers in your lineup, you should be able to do much more damage today than the past."
NBA.com: What is your assessment of the current Celtics?
Cousy: "They're a nice little team. They need a few better players, but the good news is that they've got three or four good, solid young players that I think will reach some level of being very good and perhaps even great.
"The kid Al Jefferson, he's gonna be a player, as is Tony Allen, Kendrick Perkins does a lot of good things. I saw Delonte West once and came away thinking he has some excellent potential at point guard. Obviously, Paul Pierce is going to continue to be a great player for some time. They just need a few more good players."
NBA.com: The book outlines the story of you and Chuck Cooper, the first African-American selected by an NBA team, spending time together at a train station and it turned out to be quite an emotional experience for you.
Cousy: "Chuck was a very intelligent, personable, sensitive kid that shared a lot of the same interests with me, in terms of music and other stuff. So we became good friends and I roomed with him for most of that first year.
"We were playing an exhibition game in Charlotte and those were the days when black players were not allowed to stay in the same hotel, so rather than make a fuss about all this, Chuck and I went to Red.
"We said, ‘You guys are flying back in the morning. We checked, there's a train that comes through here at midnight and we'll go through New York and connect back up to Boston.' He said fine, so we went to the train station in the hopes of getting some rest.
"We get there, and there was no one there at that time of the night after the game. Both of us were from modern urban areas, me from New York and he came from Duquesne in Pittsburgh. We had never been faced with this overt direct racism before. I guess we had a couple of beers and we had to both use a restroom, when sure enough arrows in the bathrooms pointing in different directions read "BLACKS" and "WHITES".
"It was an emotional moment. I literally didn't know what to say to my friend. We couldn't enter a men's room together. To me, this was so ludicrous, at the time I was literally ashamed I was white. It was so basic. It turned out that, since there was no one around, we went to the edge of the train platform and each did our business onto the platform. At least we did it together.
NBA.com: That wasn't the only eye-opening experience for you at the time, was it?
Cousy: "No. It was also about the same time that I found out that the churches in the South were segregated and that created a lot of emotional trauma for me, as a Catholic. I very strongly considered giving up religion at the time. Racism is always embarrassing. I think we, the human animal, probably jumped out of the trees a couple of million years too early. We should have waited until we had advanced intellectually to the point where we could get along with each other.
"I think racism stems from insecurity. Some people think, 'That person is different, so they're going to take something away that I want or I have or whatever.'
"I might expect some uneducated, unsophisticated people to feel that way, but unfortunately, there are some people that are in a position where they should know better. We're killing ourselves in 15 different places as we speak for some stupid reason - different culture, different religion, different color, whatever."
NBA.com: On the basketball court, didn't you use hatred of your opponent as a strong motivator to gain a mental edge?
Cousy: "Yes, Being a competitive person, I could relate very well to hating someone. I used to do that to prepare myself for games. I would cloister myself away from all other people and just focus on whoever I was going to play, and he might have turned out to be a 6-2 white guard. But to go from hating that specific 6-2 white guard, to hating all 6-2 white guards didn't make any sense then or now."
NBA.com: You revolutionized the point guard position as the game's ultimate showman --- behind-the-back passes, lots of razzle dazzle. How did you develop that style?
http://www.nba.com/media/celtics/cousy_280_photo.jpg
Cousy did things with a basketball that people had never seen before.
Greg Foster/NBAE/Getty Images
Cousy: "My on-court style arrived from having received a lot of God-given skills that translate well to this particular game. Good hand-eye coordination, large hands, exceptional peripheral vision, which I think are the biggest assets that myself or any point guard possesses. The strange thing about some of the things I would do that were considered flashy is that my on-court philosophy has always been conservative, but I was the only one doing that stuff, so I got associated with it."
NBA.com: The behind-the-back dribble, you never practiced them?
Cousy: "I never did. I never thought about it, actually. It's literally a case of necessity being the mother of invention. I would dribble down the floor and if it required me to put the ball behind my back, I felt that was the best way to execute what I wanted to execute, I would do it. People don't believe that, but I never went off in practice and worked on it.
"For people who are blessed with those kinds of skills, it is so easy to do the unorthodox that you don't even think about it. I only used it when the occasion called for it. Even though we wanted to promote the game back then, I never remember doing it for the sake of doing it."
NBA.com: In today's game, dribbling behind one's back is now common.
Cousy: "Yes, sometimes you will see players dribble behind their back unguarded - I think that's too much. Especially for point guards, everything you do should have a reason behind it."
NBA.com: Who are the point guards you have admired over the years?
Cousy: "Dick McGuire, for one -- we were contemporaries, but he and Bob Davies, they weren't fancy, but they were good and solid.
"Pete Maravich, obviously, had the skills to do all that stuff, and perhaps better than any of us, I don't know. He never had the luxury of playing with a team where he could just do the creative stuff. He was always with teams that needed him to post 25 to 30 points a night just for the team to be competitive. He might have been remembered even greater - and perhaps be the best of all time. I don't know, but he sure was something special.
"Magic Johnson. He added the dimension of being 6-9, which also helped in terms of the creative stuff. John Stockton and in today's game, Jason Kidd and Steve Nash fit into that category. I've been saying Kidd for years is the best among today's point guards, but I haven't gotten many opportunities to see Nash this year and I'm pretty interested because people are telling me how his Suns are a throwback to our Celtics days."
NBA.com: You were the first point guard to win the NBA MVP Award and since then only Allen Iverson is the only other player 6'1 and under to win it. Many project Nash as this season's MVP favorite. Do you think he can win it?
Cousy: "If they continue to win, he'll be a viable MVP candidate. I won my MVP award after our first title in 1957. From a point guard's perspective, I'd love nothing more than to see him win it, especially considering it's always been more of a big man's award. I think there have only been five guards to win it - Oscar Robertson, Magic Johnson and Allen Iverson. I am not sure if Michael Jordan fits the definition of a guard, but we all know how good he is."
NBA.com: In a sense, the term point guard is loosely used today since many can play both positions.
Cousy: "The pure point guard has become extremely rare. There are a lot of guys at two guard now with point guard skills, but I don't look upon them as pure point guards. The kids don't seem to be learning those skills coming through the schoolyards of the world. I have a lot of admiration for Stephon Marbury, but in my mind, he's a two guard with point guard skills.
"I don't know if the media makes as much of saying what the point guard does, but to me, a team without one is like sending a football team out without a quarterback. I don't know how you can do it. Although the Celtics did it with Bird, [Kevin] McHale and [Robert] Parish working with Dennis Johnson and Danny Ainge. I just can't relate to a team winning without one."
NBA.com: How pleased were you with the book?
Cousy: "I'm very pleased to have worked with Bill Reynolds. He's a wonderful storyteller and hopefully, I've provided a wonderful story for him to tell. I'm very pleased with the results. I've done seven books, and in this case, we worked for two years on it and you become like an expectant father. You put your heart into it, and you wonder how the co-author will help you put it into words, so it's always an anxious time until you get that first manuscript."
By John Hareas
Before Jason Kidd, Magic, Pistol Pete, heck, even The Big O, there was the Cooz. At 6-1, Bob Cousy didn't merely dominate the competition, he revolutionized the point guard position. With behind the back passes, dribbles, no-look touch passes, Cousy was the NBA's first virtuoso. He did it all, leading the Boston Celtics to six NBA titles while stockpiling eight assist titles in a row.
In a new book titled, Cousy: His Life, Career, and the Birth of Big-Time Basketball (Simon & Schuster), writer Bill Reynolds chronicles the story of Cousy's impoverished childhood in New York City, the painful experiences of getting cut from the freshman and sophomore teams throughout his Hall of Fame career with the Celtics and coaching experiences with Boston College and the Celtics. The Celtics' all-time assists leader took time to reflect on his career and today's game.
http://www.nba.com/media/celtics/cousy_188_jacket.jpg
NBA.com: You were a star at Holy Cross and many felt at the time that it was a no brainer for you to go to the Celtics yet you were selected by the Tri-Cities Blackhawks.
Bob Cousy: "I'll be honest with you -- in those days, making the NBA was not my No. 1 priority. I hadn't put a lot of thought into it, but I guess I was assuming that the Celtics would choose me, and when they did not, I kind of went on with my life."
NBA.com: Unlike today, the NBA Draft didn't receive global media coverage back in 1950. How did you find out you were selected and what was your reaction?
Cousy: "I was called by some media person who said, ‘Cooze, congratulations, you're the top draft pick of the Tri-Cities Blackhawks.' And I was a pretty good student in college, but I must have fallen asleep in geography class because I found myself asking, ‘What the devil is a Tri-City?'
"Now it's a Quad City, and I found out about Moline, Davenport and Rock Island pretty soon. Ben Kerner, who owned the team at the time, might not have known where the Tri-Cities were either. When he picked me, he called me and flew me up to Buffalo, where he lived.
"He said, ‘Bob, what's it gonna take?' and I answered, ‘10,000 dollars.' He yelled, "Ohhhh, God! How about $6,000?'
"I said, ‘No, but thank you very much, Mr. Kerner,' and I went to the airport and flew home."
NBA.com: Were you prepared to sit out and pursue something else?
Cousy: "Yes. A friend from college and I had just started a business. We were going to open up some gas stations and auto driving schools, so we were a little independent. Then I had gone on a playing tour all through New England with some classmates after we had graduated. We sold out everywhere we went, so I knew I was in a position to settle in Worcester and earn about $10,000 per year. But I certainly wasn't going to go some place far away like Tri-Cities, because the NBA was virtually unknown at that time. I had never seen a game. It wasn't a big deal."
NBA.com: So, you focused on your businesses instead of signing with the Blackhawks?
Cousy: "Yes, I went on teaching ladies to drive for a month or so, when they called me and said, ‘Hey, guess what - they traded you to Chicago (a franchise known as the Stags).' I said, ‘Good, I'm not going there either.'
"Well, they never called me, and two days later, the Chicago Stags went bankrupt. Players were dispersed throughout the rest of the league. All but three of us were taken - Max Zaslofsky, who was a heck of a basketball player, led the league in scoring the year before; Andy Phillip, who was an excellent point guard and went on to become a Hall of Famer and myself."
NBA.com: The three teams drawing the names were the Celtics, New York Knickbockers and Philadelphia Warriors.
Cousy: "Yes, our three names were left in a hat. New York went first - they wanted a good Jewish player and they certainly got one in Max. Philadelphia picked Andy and was pleased. So the only thing left in the hat besides the lining was me, and I think it was [Celtics owner] Walter Brown himself who drew my name.
NBA.com: When did you find out you were going to the Celtics?
Cousy: "The next day. I received another call – ‘Guess what, Boston chose you out of the hat." I said, ‘Good, that's the only place I'll play.'"
NBA.com: Did you deal directly with Walter Brown regarding your contract?
Cousy: "Yes. Walter called and invited me in; we actually went into the men's bathroom because his office was crowded. He said, ‘Bob, what's it gonna take?' ‘I told him, ‘$10,000, sir.' He said, ‘How about $9,000?' and I said, ‘You got a deal.' The rest, as they say, is history."
NBA.com: At the time, Red wasn't exactly thrilled with the prospect of adding you to the team, drafting Bowling Green's Charlie Share, a 6-11 center, with their pick.
Cousy: "After all these years, I'm still not sure Red ever saw me play in college. You'd think I would have gotten around to asking him about it by now.
"I do think that he did what any of us would have done. He had a choice between a big guy and a little guy, and just as now, there were a lot of little guys around and not many big guys. He had been hired to re-do the Celtics, more or less from scratch."
NBA.com: What was the local reaction by the fans and media when it became official that you were joining the Celtics?
Cousy: "Since I had played all four years of college at Holy Cross, the Boston media and fans really loved me and all that good stuff, which we quickly put aside when my rookie season began."
NBA.com: What was Red's greatest strengths as a coach or general manager?
Cousy: "I think Red knew talent, how to acquire talent and how to motivate talent. With only 10 or so teams in those early days, there was an abundance of talent --- and if you were a smart wheeler-dealer like Red, you could recycle pretty quickly.
http://www.nba.com/media/celtics/cousy_188_pass.jpg
Cousy led the NBA in assists for eight consecutive seasons.
NBA Photos
"Nowadays, that's pretty much impossible. You could have a lot of money at your disposal, but the supply is much smaller than the demand. For his day, Arnold was the best you could ever hope for. The way he got Bill Russell and Dennis Johnson, and that he was willing to wait a year for Larry Bird."
NBA.com: You were a member of six NBA championship teams. Which one was the best in your opinion?
Cousy: "The first one in 1957. The other guys, like Russell and [Tom] Heinsohn -- they thought you're supposed to win every year.
"I had waited six long years. We fought and worked and sweated. Like anything else in life, challenges that you work to achieve -- it's a lot sweeter after you've worked for a long time to achieve it."
NBA.com: You helped lead the Celtics to six title in seven years. The Chicago Bulls of the 1990s won six in eight years. How would the Bulls stack up to your championship teams?
Cousy: "I think the Bulls would fare fine, but I just don't think they come close to accomplishing what those units did. You're talking about a team that produced two Hall of Famers, Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. If you count Red and Walter Brown, I think the Celtics of my era have eight Hall of Famers.
"I would receive calls after the Bulls won three in a row (in the early '90s), and I said, ‘I hate to sound like an old-timer, but let's let a little history go by before we make this comparison. When they challenge 11 in 13 years, we can talk again.' I'm a guy who says Michael is the best who ever played, but they had a lot of role players who got the job done in their shadows at a time when the league was watered down."
NBA.com: Fans also love to compare players from different eras in addition to different teams. What do you think of today's NBA player in terms of athleticism?
Cousy: "Players have certainly gotten better and more athletic, but when we were playing, whatever the talent level was, it was much more concentrated and consistent across the board throughout the entire league. It was much tougher to dominate in the '60s.
"These days, if you have a couple Hall of Famers in your lineup, you should be able to do much more damage today than the past."
NBA.com: What is your assessment of the current Celtics?
Cousy: "They're a nice little team. They need a few better players, but the good news is that they've got three or four good, solid young players that I think will reach some level of being very good and perhaps even great.
"The kid Al Jefferson, he's gonna be a player, as is Tony Allen, Kendrick Perkins does a lot of good things. I saw Delonte West once and came away thinking he has some excellent potential at point guard. Obviously, Paul Pierce is going to continue to be a great player for some time. They just need a few more good players."
NBA.com: The book outlines the story of you and Chuck Cooper, the first African-American selected by an NBA team, spending time together at a train station and it turned out to be quite an emotional experience for you.
Cousy: "Chuck was a very intelligent, personable, sensitive kid that shared a lot of the same interests with me, in terms of music and other stuff. So we became good friends and I roomed with him for most of that first year.
"We were playing an exhibition game in Charlotte and those were the days when black players were not allowed to stay in the same hotel, so rather than make a fuss about all this, Chuck and I went to Red.
"We said, ‘You guys are flying back in the morning. We checked, there's a train that comes through here at midnight and we'll go through New York and connect back up to Boston.' He said fine, so we went to the train station in the hopes of getting some rest.
"We get there, and there was no one there at that time of the night after the game. Both of us were from modern urban areas, me from New York and he came from Duquesne in Pittsburgh. We had never been faced with this overt direct racism before. I guess we had a couple of beers and we had to both use a restroom, when sure enough arrows in the bathrooms pointing in different directions read "BLACKS" and "WHITES".
"It was an emotional moment. I literally didn't know what to say to my friend. We couldn't enter a men's room together. To me, this was so ludicrous, at the time I was literally ashamed I was white. It was so basic. It turned out that, since there was no one around, we went to the edge of the train platform and each did our business onto the platform. At least we did it together.
NBA.com: That wasn't the only eye-opening experience for you at the time, was it?
Cousy: "No. It was also about the same time that I found out that the churches in the South were segregated and that created a lot of emotional trauma for me, as a Catholic. I very strongly considered giving up religion at the time. Racism is always embarrassing. I think we, the human animal, probably jumped out of the trees a couple of million years too early. We should have waited until we had advanced intellectually to the point where we could get along with each other.
"I think racism stems from insecurity. Some people think, 'That person is different, so they're going to take something away that I want or I have or whatever.'
"I might expect some uneducated, unsophisticated people to feel that way, but unfortunately, there are some people that are in a position where they should know better. We're killing ourselves in 15 different places as we speak for some stupid reason - different culture, different religion, different color, whatever."
NBA.com: On the basketball court, didn't you use hatred of your opponent as a strong motivator to gain a mental edge?
Cousy: "Yes, Being a competitive person, I could relate very well to hating someone. I used to do that to prepare myself for games. I would cloister myself away from all other people and just focus on whoever I was going to play, and he might have turned out to be a 6-2 white guard. But to go from hating that specific 6-2 white guard, to hating all 6-2 white guards didn't make any sense then or now."
NBA.com: You revolutionized the point guard position as the game's ultimate showman --- behind-the-back passes, lots of razzle dazzle. How did you develop that style?
http://www.nba.com/media/celtics/cousy_280_photo.jpg
Cousy did things with a basketball that people had never seen before.
Greg Foster/NBAE/Getty Images
Cousy: "My on-court style arrived from having received a lot of God-given skills that translate well to this particular game. Good hand-eye coordination, large hands, exceptional peripheral vision, which I think are the biggest assets that myself or any point guard possesses. The strange thing about some of the things I would do that were considered flashy is that my on-court philosophy has always been conservative, but I was the only one doing that stuff, so I got associated with it."
NBA.com: The behind-the-back dribble, you never practiced them?
Cousy: "I never did. I never thought about it, actually. It's literally a case of necessity being the mother of invention. I would dribble down the floor and if it required me to put the ball behind my back, I felt that was the best way to execute what I wanted to execute, I would do it. People don't believe that, but I never went off in practice and worked on it.
"For people who are blessed with those kinds of skills, it is so easy to do the unorthodox that you don't even think about it. I only used it when the occasion called for it. Even though we wanted to promote the game back then, I never remember doing it for the sake of doing it."
NBA.com: In today's game, dribbling behind one's back is now common.
Cousy: "Yes, sometimes you will see players dribble behind their back unguarded - I think that's too much. Especially for point guards, everything you do should have a reason behind it."
NBA.com: Who are the point guards you have admired over the years?
Cousy: "Dick McGuire, for one -- we were contemporaries, but he and Bob Davies, they weren't fancy, but they were good and solid.
"Pete Maravich, obviously, had the skills to do all that stuff, and perhaps better than any of us, I don't know. He never had the luxury of playing with a team where he could just do the creative stuff. He was always with teams that needed him to post 25 to 30 points a night just for the team to be competitive. He might have been remembered even greater - and perhaps be the best of all time. I don't know, but he sure was something special.
"Magic Johnson. He added the dimension of being 6-9, which also helped in terms of the creative stuff. John Stockton and in today's game, Jason Kidd and Steve Nash fit into that category. I've been saying Kidd for years is the best among today's point guards, but I haven't gotten many opportunities to see Nash this year and I'm pretty interested because people are telling me how his Suns are a throwback to our Celtics days."
NBA.com: You were the first point guard to win the NBA MVP Award and since then only Allen Iverson is the only other player 6'1 and under to win it. Many project Nash as this season's MVP favorite. Do you think he can win it?
Cousy: "If they continue to win, he'll be a viable MVP candidate. I won my MVP award after our first title in 1957. From a point guard's perspective, I'd love nothing more than to see him win it, especially considering it's always been more of a big man's award. I think there have only been five guards to win it - Oscar Robertson, Magic Johnson and Allen Iverson. I am not sure if Michael Jordan fits the definition of a guard, but we all know how good he is."
NBA.com: In a sense, the term point guard is loosely used today since many can play both positions.
Cousy: "The pure point guard has become extremely rare. There are a lot of guys at two guard now with point guard skills, but I don't look upon them as pure point guards. The kids don't seem to be learning those skills coming through the schoolyards of the world. I have a lot of admiration for Stephon Marbury, but in my mind, he's a two guard with point guard skills.
"I don't know if the media makes as much of saying what the point guard does, but to me, a team without one is like sending a football team out without a quarterback. I don't know how you can do it. Although the Celtics did it with Bird, [Kevin] McHale and [Robert] Parish working with Dennis Johnson and Danny Ainge. I just can't relate to a team winning without one."
NBA.com: How pleased were you with the book?
Cousy: "I'm very pleased to have worked with Bill Reynolds. He's a wonderful storyteller and hopefully, I've provided a wonderful story for him to tell. I'm very pleased with the results. I've done seven books, and in this case, we worked for two years on it and you become like an expectant father. You put your heart into it, and you wonder how the co-author will help you put it into words, so it's always an anxious time until you get that first manuscript."