Manu20
11-12-2005, 10:39 AM
Buck Harvey: New-age Celtics - how franchises switched jerseys
Web Posted: 11/12/2005 12:00 AM CST
http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/columnists/bharvey/stories/MYSA111205.1C.COL.BKNharvey.spurs.129a8265.html
San Antonio Express-News
BOSTON — Red Auerbach, 88 years old and fresh out of the hospital, wasn't too sick to take a healthy swipe at Phil Jackson this month. Doctors were encouraged.
Auerbach offered up something else that night, too. He said he liked the Spurs, yet added without any explanation: "I don't think they're going to win it this year. I really don't."
He might be right. June is six months and a thousand sprained-ankle possibilities away.
But knowing Auerbach, there was more to this. Just as he pokes at Jackson, the coach who tied him for most titles as a coach, he pokes at another rival.
How hard must it be for Auerbach? A former ABA franchise, created long after he quit coaching, has replaced his Celtics as the model?
The Spurs will need a few more decades like this one to match the Celtics' history. Auerbach lit up victory cigars seemingly every spring, overseeing a Russell-Havlicek-Cowens-Bird lineage that was just one ping-pong ball short of adding another. Tim Duncan might have worked out in Boston, too.
But this is more than a turn of luck. Whereas the Celtics were once known for scouting, the Spurs broke through as the pioneers overseas. The Celtics passed on Tony Parker, for example, at Auerbach's suggestion. He was an advocate of a player in that draft who is no longer in the league.
Instead? The Celtics married the kind of one-on-one scorer they always abused in the past. Paul Pierce, by the old definition, is not a Celtic.
Friday night gave another example, as did a fan yelling from the baseline. Loud and firm — with the Spurs ahead by 20 points — the fan directed his anger at Pierce.
"Pass the ball! It's a TEAM game!"
Pierce yelled back, as if words would change the truth.
The Spurs were once on the other end of this. The Celtics came to San Antonio in November of 1983, and they chewed up the Spurs the way the Spurs chewed up the Celtics on Friday. Doc Rivers won't get fired after losing by 21 points at home — but Mo McHone was immediately after such a loss to Boston.
"Somebody asked me before the game if this was a measuring stick," Rivers said. "If it is, then there's your answer."
These are the measuring sticks that gauge more than one night. They show how the Spurs share, and how they could toy with their lineups, and that they know where to go and why.
The old Celtics see it because they once lived it. Bob Cousy, for one, acknowledges the Spurs have the traits of his old teams.
"They've got everything in place," Cousy said. "Veteran team, no wasted motion and defensively they respond. They are supremely confident, and they simply raised the level in the second half when they wanted to. It's very difficult in basketball to control your own momentum, and they do."
And then Cousy said something else, as if he'd seen a vision of Boston in 1961 or 1981. "It's refreshing. They are a throwback."
Duncan says these are the qualities that every championship team has, and he's right. But of all the teams and all the styles in today's NBA, the Spurs come closest to what to what Auerbach had in mind. Cousy nods at that, too.
For the Celtics, nothing is the same. The franchise known for the parquet of old Boston Garden now plays in a new, generic building that has already changed names (TD Banknorth Garden just doesn't fit). Danny Ainge and Rivers are trying to rebuild, but are there tangible signs?
Rick Pitino, in a famous moment of anger, once said Larry Bird and Kevin McHale "aren't walking through that door." And he was wrong. Bird and McHale walked through the arena door Friday night.
They just wore Spurs uniforms. They walked in with the kind of talent and trust in each other the Celtics once had, and then they walked out having treated the Celtics as the Celtics once treated everyone else.
Blowing out a mediocre team doesn't guarantee a title. But Bird won three titles in his career, and Duncan has already matched that.
There's still more time for him to win titles and continue his streak against the Celtics and push the memories of a fading franchise further back. Isn't that enough to make a legendary figure wish for something else?
Web Posted: 11/12/2005 12:00 AM CST
http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/columnists/bharvey/stories/MYSA111205.1C.COL.BKNharvey.spurs.129a8265.html
San Antonio Express-News
BOSTON — Red Auerbach, 88 years old and fresh out of the hospital, wasn't too sick to take a healthy swipe at Phil Jackson this month. Doctors were encouraged.
Auerbach offered up something else that night, too. He said he liked the Spurs, yet added without any explanation: "I don't think they're going to win it this year. I really don't."
He might be right. June is six months and a thousand sprained-ankle possibilities away.
But knowing Auerbach, there was more to this. Just as he pokes at Jackson, the coach who tied him for most titles as a coach, he pokes at another rival.
How hard must it be for Auerbach? A former ABA franchise, created long after he quit coaching, has replaced his Celtics as the model?
The Spurs will need a few more decades like this one to match the Celtics' history. Auerbach lit up victory cigars seemingly every spring, overseeing a Russell-Havlicek-Cowens-Bird lineage that was just one ping-pong ball short of adding another. Tim Duncan might have worked out in Boston, too.
But this is more than a turn of luck. Whereas the Celtics were once known for scouting, the Spurs broke through as the pioneers overseas. The Celtics passed on Tony Parker, for example, at Auerbach's suggestion. He was an advocate of a player in that draft who is no longer in the league.
Instead? The Celtics married the kind of one-on-one scorer they always abused in the past. Paul Pierce, by the old definition, is not a Celtic.
Friday night gave another example, as did a fan yelling from the baseline. Loud and firm — with the Spurs ahead by 20 points — the fan directed his anger at Pierce.
"Pass the ball! It's a TEAM game!"
Pierce yelled back, as if words would change the truth.
The Spurs were once on the other end of this. The Celtics came to San Antonio in November of 1983, and they chewed up the Spurs the way the Spurs chewed up the Celtics on Friday. Doc Rivers won't get fired after losing by 21 points at home — but Mo McHone was immediately after such a loss to Boston.
"Somebody asked me before the game if this was a measuring stick," Rivers said. "If it is, then there's your answer."
These are the measuring sticks that gauge more than one night. They show how the Spurs share, and how they could toy with their lineups, and that they know where to go and why.
The old Celtics see it because they once lived it. Bob Cousy, for one, acknowledges the Spurs have the traits of his old teams.
"They've got everything in place," Cousy said. "Veteran team, no wasted motion and defensively they respond. They are supremely confident, and they simply raised the level in the second half when they wanted to. It's very difficult in basketball to control your own momentum, and they do."
And then Cousy said something else, as if he'd seen a vision of Boston in 1961 or 1981. "It's refreshing. They are a throwback."
Duncan says these are the qualities that every championship team has, and he's right. But of all the teams and all the styles in today's NBA, the Spurs come closest to what to what Auerbach had in mind. Cousy nods at that, too.
For the Celtics, nothing is the same. The franchise known for the parquet of old Boston Garden now plays in a new, generic building that has already changed names (TD Banknorth Garden just doesn't fit). Danny Ainge and Rivers are trying to rebuild, but are there tangible signs?
Rick Pitino, in a famous moment of anger, once said Larry Bird and Kevin McHale "aren't walking through that door." And he was wrong. Bird and McHale walked through the arena door Friday night.
They just wore Spurs uniforms. They walked in with the kind of talent and trust in each other the Celtics once had, and then they walked out having treated the Celtics as the Celtics once treated everyone else.
Blowing out a mediocre team doesn't guarantee a title. But Bird won three titles in his career, and Duncan has already matched that.
There's still more time for him to win titles and continue his streak against the Celtics and push the memories of a fading franchise further back. Isn't that enough to make a legendary figure wish for something else?