Celtics ☘️ Sentinel

 As always, I find the tweets of @frostybias fascinating. This one got my particular attention. For those that bash the shooting percentages of the older NBA, here is Tom Heinsohn on the Celtics perspective during their titles in the 50s and 60s. There is a reason those numbers were so low pic.twitter.com/N8M5ZHtPQu — Frosty Bias (@frostybias) January 2, 2022 Out of curiosity, I compared the Celtics team from the 1964-65 season to the present 2021-22 crew . I compared "Field Goals Attempted" and "Field Goal Percentage" from both versions of The Green. Some of what Tommy proposed holds true , but I don't think that tells the whole story. Here are the stats looking at the top-8 players in minutes-played from both the old and the new: FIELD GOALS ATTEMPTED THE OLD: 101.0 FIELD GOALS ATTEMPTED PER GAME THE NEW: 93.5 FIELD GOALS ATTEMPTED PER GAME  Okay, so the 64-65 team attempted an average of 7.5 shots per game. Now let's look at the percentages: FIELD GOA...

Imagine it! Ten dearly-departed, former Celtics returning as a small-ball team to compete. And why not bring back John Kiley at the organ and Johnny Most "high above courtside" .Hell, put Red Auerbach on the sidelines to coach and berate the refs. Starting at center, we have 6'7" Tommy Heinsohn . At the point, 6'3" JoJo White will run the show alongside defensive ace, 6'4" Dennis Johnson . At the small forward slot, 6'5" John Havlicek will start and be partnered with the bruising, 6'5" Jim Loscutoff . "Loscy" will handle many of the "drudgery" chores and play the role of enforcer should the need arise. Coming off the bench as backup point guard is 6'1" Bill Sharman . We can expect him to see minutes at the shooting guard spot next to DJ at times during the game. Also coming off the pine will be 6'5" "Pistol Pete" Maravich at both back court spots, but not at the same time. Sorry...

Last night's 116-111-win over the Pacers was hopefully the start of a trend. I am not wishing for the Celtics to peak so early in the season, but despite the positive signs, this current version of The Green could use some lessons in mental and physical toughness. The Celtics Big 3 of the 1970's were all tough in their own ways, as was their coach, Tommy Heinsohn. There was no mistaking the ferocity and intensity of center, Dave Cowens. It was there in his play and on his face. He was a smallish center at 6'8.5", but he backed down to no one. Kareem Abdul Jabbar? Wilt Chamberlain? Made no difference. He took them all on. Conversely, John Havlicek never changed his expression and never broke a sweat. You never saw exhilaration or despair on Jarrin' John's face, and he was so well conditioned, there was hardly ever a drop of sweat on him. But Intense? You bet! Hondo never stopped moving at both ends of the floor and never gave up. JoJo White was a quiet gentleman...

Smart's value just got bigger with Kemba Walker's knee woes I am amazed that Marcus Smart still has critics in Boston. He may come in second to Larry Bird as the Celtic who most-used the qualities that God or nature bestowed on him. So we need to change the photo wording "on the departure Kyrie Irving & Al Horford" to "on the worrisome knee issues of Kemba Walker". Flash back to the 2020 post-season. Still not known as the second coming of Sam Jones, Marcus only hit 39.4% of his field goal attempts, but in the playoffs he averaged 38.1 MPG, 14.5 PPG, 4.6 RPG, 4.6 APG, and 1.2 SPG. He was vital to The Green's making it to the Eastern Conference Finals. For those who weren't around, I see Smart as a hybrid combo of the Jones Boys, Sam and K. C. Sam attempted more than twice as many shots as his back-court partner, K. C., and for good reason. Sam's career FG% was .456, while K. C. hit .387 from the field. Once Bob Cousy retired, K. C. Jones took...

  The following message I received from one of my followers, @CelticsCanada, via Twitter, but the sentiments are shared by me - and probably many others. I’m probably just writing this to get over my own grief. I never met Tommy (Heinsohn) but when you listen to someone as often as I had for 40 years it leaves you feeling like you lost a loved one, someone whose advice and sage you relied upon. I’m hoping that the Celtics will do something for Tommy to a degree that the league has never seen before: such as make him an official assistant coach for the upcoming season so that the fans can hear his name called out before every game for one more season, and just possibly get Tommy that ever elusive 18th title. Place Tommy Heinsohn anywhere you wish in the Celtics All-Time Hierarchy, but no one has been connected with The Green for so long, and in so many capacities, as Heiny. I love the idea of Tommy as virtual assistant coach for the upcoming season. And maybe an end-of-season Tommy ...

I doubt any Celtics fan ever used the term "placid" to describe the intense and fiery coaching styles of Red Auerbach and Tommy Heinsohn, but Boston's present leader certainly fits that description. A master at Xs and Os, out-of-bounds plays and switching team defenses, some fans often wonder if Brad should adopt a somewhat-more animated presence on the sidelines ( per NBA.com following 1974 win vs. Milwaukee by Boston in Game 7 of Finals ). The victory was an affirmation of Heinsohn’s coaching ideas. In what he called “guerrilla warfare,” his teams kept the pressure on opponents at all times, controlling the tempo of the game and playing with great intensity. “We made teams crack in these playoffs,” he 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.” There you have it - "... they just didn't want to play anymore." Tommy Heinsohn coached as he had played - fast breaking at every op...

Isn't it time to recognize Tommy Heinsohn as a true Boston treasure? After starring at Holy Cross, Red Auerbach drafted him in 1956 with the Celtics' territorial pick, while also finagling a trade with the St. Louis Hawks to acquire Bill Russell. K. C. Jones and future Celtic, Willie Naulls (drafted by Hawks), were taken in the second round. Red was unmerciful with Heinsohn from the start, constantly berating him in front of the troops and bestowing on him the demeaning task of lugging the ball bag - not only in Tommy's rookie year but also in his sophomore season. The following from my interview with Sam Jones: (Sam): "I saw a lot of it. I loved it. That means he (Red) kept off my back. That (Heinsohn) was Red's whipping boy. Better Tommy than me." Tommy had a spectacular rookie season, putting up 16.2 PPG and hauling down 9.9 rebounds in 29.9 minutes per contest. His minutes increased to 37.0 MPG in the post-season, as did his points (22.9 PPG) and board...

Tommy Heinsohn has been around the Boston Celtics for so long, he seems to have a padlocked connection to the team. He has played the role of player, coach and analyst going back 64 years. The guy Red Auerbach called "the oldest 27-year-old body in the history of sports" earned eight Championship rings with The Green as a player and two more as coach. But his work as a TV analyst often spawns criticism from fans that view his analysis as perhaps too slanted in favor of Boston. These occasional attacks on Tommy's rhetoric go back as much as 53 years (from Bob Ryan's book, Scribe: My Life In Sports Everybody talks about (Celtics radio announcer) Johnny Most, and nobody watches Celtics games on TV without listening to him on the radio. That's too bad because if you really want a laugh, you should listen to Tommy Heinsohn, who is so partisan he makes Most seem like Walter Cronkite. Most is essentially a reporter, however ridiculous he may sound on occasion. Heinsoh...

Red Auerbach knew how to manage his troops, but he didn't hold back on criticizing some of them . Tom "Satch" Sanders and Don Nelson were often the recipients of Red's barbs, but it was Tom Heinsohn that was the most-frequent victim (per Sam Jones in his 1-on-1 interview with me): (Sam): "I saw a lot of it. I loved it. That means he (Red) kept off my back. That (Heinsohn) was Red's whipping boy. Better Tommy than me." Heinsohn helped the Celtics to eight Championships and played in six All-Star games. After Bill Russell's retirement in 1969, Tommy was chosen as Boston's next head coach, a move that was subject to much criticism at the time. But Celtics renowned announcer, Johnny Most, got it right (from Mark C. Bodanza's book, Ten Times a Champion): To me, Heinsohn represents the closest total of Auerbach coaching attributes of all the ballplayers that played for him. I think Tommy will turn out to be the junior edition of the Redhead. ...

Most young Celtics fans see Tommy Heinsohn as the aged Celtics TV analyst. Some may know the 8-Time Champion and 6-Time All-Star was 1957 Rookie-of-the-Year when Bill Russell was a fellow-rookie in the same season. What most don't know is that then-coach, Red Auerbach, belittled Heinsohn unmercifully - because Red knew Tommy could take it ( per NBA.com Staff ): In addition to employing him as a go-to scorer, Auerbach directed his criticism of the team at Heinsohn, knowing that other players' egos were too fragile for such a direct assault. "[Auerbach] knew that some of the big guys had sensitive egos -- egos that didn't like it if Red started to get on them verbally," Heinsohn recalled in an article in the Boston Globe. "So when he wanted to get on someone to stir up things in the dressing room, he got on me. He knew I could take it. I was his whipping boy. I understood what he was doing, so I could handle it." For example, Heinsohn remembered one ga...

It happened in 1962 during Game 5 of the Eastern Finals that pitted Bill Russell's Celtics against Wilt Chamberlain's Philadelphia Warriors. Boston took the game, but it was Sam Jones' hard foul on Wilt that really got the crowd's attention. Wilt, all 7'1" of him, was pissed and went after Sam - who promptly snatched the closest weapon available - a photographer's stool. I interviewed former Celtics great Sam Jones, and the author of his biography, Ten Times a Champion, Mark C. Bodanza, last year. It was fun, informative and a bit tense on one subject. I loved all of it. Sam told me that Chamberlain threatened that he was going to make Jones eat that stool. Russ and Sam's other teammates came to his aid, and things calmed down after that. Sam was picked up the next day by Wilt and they had dinner together with Wilt's mom. When Wilt's mother asked Sam what he intended to do with that stool, he answered: "I was going to break your son...