Interviews from the world of sports!

Written By:  Michael D. McClellan |

His arrival in Boston coincided with that of a certain shot-blocking, game-altering, paradigm-shifting center named Bill Russell, his considerable basketball talent overshadowed by the dazzling ball handling of fellow Holy Cross alum Bob Cousy and the dead-eye marksmanship of the gifted Bill Sharman.  There would soon be other marquee players added to the mix, future Hall of Famers such as John Havlicek and the Jones Boys, KC and Sam, further obscuring the contributions of one Thomas William Heinsohn, and yet his very arrival helped cement a roster on the rise send the Boston Celtics on an unparalleled, decade-long championship feast.

Despite starting his Celtics career in Russell’s considerable shadow, Heinsohn was the trigger man for that untouchable run of eleven titles in thirteen seasons; with Russell in Melbourne, missing the first 24 games of 1956-57 regular season to compete in the Olympic Games, Heinsohn bounded onto the NBA stage like a playful pup, chasing down rebounds and firing those patented low-trajectory jumpers en route to the league’s Rookie of the Year Award.  The capstone of that dream season came in Game 7 of the 1957 NBA Finals.  With Cousy and Sharman both ice cold from the field, Heinsohn scored 37 points and grabbed 23 rebounds in Boston’s thrilling 125-123 double-overtime win over Bob Pettit and the St. Louis Hawks.  It would prove to be the defining moment for Boston Celtic basketball, and in many ways the foundation of Celtic Pride:  That win not only established Boston as a perennial NBA power, but it also stamped the Celtics as clutch performers obsessed with the bottom line, an unselfish team far greater than the sum of its individual parts.

Tommy Heinsohn

Born on August 26th, 1934, in Jersey City, Heinsohn flourished at St. Michael’s High School, earning all-county and all-state honors as a junior, and then earning national All-America honors as a senior.  The four-year letter winner averaged an eye-popping 28 PPG during that 1951-52 season, drawing national attention and prompting an avalanche of scholarship offers.  He ultimately decided on Holy Cross, then one of the preeminent basketball programs in the country, following in the collegiate footsteps of another hoops legend, Bob Cousy.

At Holy Cross, Heinsohn went onto become a three-year letter-winner, as well as a three-time All-Conference performer.  As a junior he averaged 23.3. PPG, and as a senior he set a school scoring record by averaging 27.4 PPG.  The numbers could be downright spectacular – on March 1, 1956, Heinsohn scored a school-record 51 points against Boston College – or they could simply be amazing, such as the eighteen consecutive free throws made in a game against Georgetown University earlier that same season.  Not surprisingly, Heinsohn finished his senior season by being honored as a consensus All-American, but perhaps even more impressive was his making the dean’s list (four times in two years) and being named Holy Cross’ top student-athlete.

A territorial pick by Red Auerbach and the Celtics in the 1956 NBA Draft, Heinsohn averaged 16 PPG during his rookie season.  Together, Heinsohn and Russell proved to be the missing ingredients to a championship mix, defeating the Hawks in that dramatic 1957 NBA Finals and staking claim as professional basketball’s team of the future.

Heinsohn’s scoring averaging increased during the 1957-58 season, to 17.8 PPG, but an ankle injury to Bill Russell in the ’58 Finals allowed the Hawks to claim the title.  Nicknamed “Tommy Gun” and “Ack-Ack” by his teammates, Heinsohn’s offensive punch helped the Celtics win a second title a year later.


The 1959-60 NBA season brought another championship to Boston.  Heinsohn’s scoring average increased for the fourth consecutive year, to 21.7 PPG, this to go along with a career-high 10.6 RPG.  Battling Wilt Chamberlain and the Philadelphia Warriors in the Eastern Division Finals, Heinsohn was there when the team needed him most, tipping in a shot at the buzzer to win Game 6 and send the Celtics back to the NBA Finals.  For Heinsohn, that play remains one of his biggest thrills.

“Wilt didn’t like me to begin with,” Heinsohn recalls with a smile.  “He was pretty easy-going, but for some reason I seemed to get under his skin.  I scored twenty-two points in that game, including that tap-in at the buzzer.  It was a great feeling to score like that.”

Heinsohn was named to his second All-Star Game the following season, and the Celtics were once again world champions.  It was a delicious pattern that would repeat for the next four seasons.  He would retire following the 1964-65 campaign, his mind willing but his ailing knees unable to carry him further as a professional basketball player.  Still, there were no regrets; his nine years in the league had produced eight championships and six All-Star selections.

Auerbach would retire a year following the 1965-66 season, and, in the ultimate show of respect, he approached Heinsohn about taking his place on the bench.  Heinsohn didn’t have to think long about the offer – he pretty much refused on the spot.

“I was flattered, but I knew that Russell still had a few years left,” he says.  “I couldn’t accept the job because, aside from Red, there was only one other person who could coach and motivate Bill Russell – and that was Bill Russell.”

Auerbach agreed, and Russell was named player-coach.  He would win two more championships over the next three seasons and then bow out a winner.  The final tally for the Russell Dynasty would be eleven titles in thirteen years, including eight in a row.


Russell would retire following that 1969 title run, and Auerbach once again approached Heinsohn about the head coaching job.  This time Heinsohn agreed.  With Auerbach providing the talent – he grabbed Kansas point guard Jo Jo White in the 1969 NBA Draft, and a year later selected Florida State’s Dave Cowens – the rebuilding Celtics enjoyed a speedy resurgence; after finishing 34-48 during Heinsohn’s rookie campaign as head coach, the team rebounded with a 44-38 record the following season.  A 56-26 record ended a two-year playoff drought, and then the Celtics rolled to a 68-14 record during the 1972-73 regular season.  The 68 wins were a team record.  Heinsohn was named the NBA Coach of the Year.

The next season would prove magical, as Heinsohn’s Celtics dropped to 56-26 but advanced to the 1974 NBA Finals.  Considered an underdog to Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) and the Milwaukee Bucks, the undersized Celtics played a frenetic brand of basketball to forge a 3-2 series lead.  In Boston for what would a the penultimate Game 6, Jabbar’s buzzer-beating skyhook forced Game 7 back in Milwaukee.  The media proclaimed the new-look Celtics dead, that they had squandered their best chance to claim the title.  Privately, Heinsohn had a different take on things.  He saw an old Oscar Robertson, his legs weary from a long season and a difficult playoff push, and he knew that his players were fresh and ready to atone for that Game 6 loss.  And atone they did:  Cowens scored 28 points and grabbed 14 rebounds, outplaying the bigger Jabbar.  Jo Jo White and Don Chaney forced Robertson to work hard on both ends of the court.  Paul Silas was a beast on the glass.  And when it was over, the Celtics were once again world champions – the first of the post-Russell era.

“We were able to dictate the style of play,” Heinsohn says quickly.  “We forced them to play our way, and we wore them down over those seven games.”

The Celtics were unable to repeat the next season, but they were able to reclaim the title one year later, following the 1973-74 regular season. It was Boston’s second title in three seasons.  That series will forever be remembered for Game 5 in the Boston Garden, a three-overtime thriller against the Phoenix Suns that the league now bills as ‘The Greatest Game Ever Played.’  As a coach, Heinsohn compiled a 416-240 record over eight full seasons, won five consecutive Eastern Division titles, and two world championships.  He would resign midway through the 1977-78 regular season, but his passion for the Boston Celtics kept him in the game as a television broadcaster and earned him the reputation as the team’s ultimate homer.

“The Boston Celtics are a special organization, one of the best in all of sports,” he says with a smile.  “I’m proud to be a part of the Celtic family.”

Please tell me a little about your childhood, and some of the things that led you to the basketball court.

I grew up during the Depression and World War II.  In 1944, my family moved to Union City, New Jersey, and that’s when I first started playing basketball.  All sports, for that matter.  A guy named Perry Del Purgatorio took an interest in me in the schoolyard – he played at the University of Villanova with Paul Arizin.  He was between his sophomore and junior years, and he would come home and practice at night, and one night I just happened to be there.  He asked me to shag the balls, and we became friends.  And I did that every night, and he taught me how to play basketball.  That’s how I started playing basketball, and by the time I got to the eighth grade I was pretty good.  I got a scholarship to high school, which allowed me to play basketball at a little Catholic school.  So that’s how I started playing.  I tried out for the football team, but never made it.  I played a little bit of baseball.  But basketball was my game.


You played your high school ball at St. Michael’s High School in Union City.

I had a terrific high school coach.  His name was Pat Finnegan.  He arrived at St. Michael’s just prior to my sophomore year.  He was a World War II veteran and a Fordham grad.  His brother John was a marine and Seton Hall graduate.  Both played college basketball for their schools.  The two of them would come around on Saturdays and would scrimmage with all kinds of people, so by the time I was a sophomore in high school I was playing against very, very good basketball players.


How good was your high school team?

By the time we got to be seniors we had a very good team.  I played with two guys who ended up going to college on basketball scholarships.  We won the Metropolitan Catholic Championship – all of the Catholic schools in and around the New York metropolitan area competed.  Teams from New York and New Jersey.


You were a two-time All-State basketball player at St. Michael’s.  Did that help open doors to playing against better competition?

I was selected to play in an All-Star game down in Murray, Kentucky, for the Converse Rubber Company.  You’d go down there for a week.  You’d have two-a-days and scrimmages, and then you would play the game.  The coaches spent that entire week evaluating the players, and that’s how I ended up being selected to the high school All-America team.  I was also on a team that went up to Eastern States Catholic Invitation Tournament in Newport, Rhode Island, which at that time was a big deal.  We played well and ended up in the final game, but we lost that one.  It was a great experience that helped me transition to the college level.  In fact, I had over 350 offers after making the All-America team, so it opened up a lot of doors.


I hear you also played some semi-pro ball.

I played practically every night, from my sophomore year on.  I played under another name for the Jewish Y.  I played PIL basketball for a semi-pro team, which was really the best experience I could have gotten.  The league was more talented, and more competitive than my high school league at the time, which in itself was pretty good at the time.  I played against some pros, and I played against some All-Americans.  A lot of college players.  In one tournament at the end of my sophomore year, against this kind of competition, I was selected as the MVP of the tournament., which was quite a thing for a kid that age.

Tommy Heinsohn

Why did you choose to play college ball at Holy Cross?

I selected Holy Cross because I wanted to go to a Jesuit school, and because it had the best basketball program at the time.  Holy Cross was number one in New England, and I knew several of the players.  Togo Palazzi, who also played for the Celtics and who was two years ahead of me, was a Union City guy.  I had played against him in high school, and he was a terrific player.  Another guy by the name of Earl Markey – he was a senior when I was a freshman in high school, and he had played in the same league that I had played in.  I knew his brother, and I played semi-pro basketball with his brother.  So I knew some of the people, I liked the school, and I liked the coach.  So I went to Holy Cross.


Freshman weren’t eligible for varsity ball in those days.

I played on the freshman team.  We were an undefeated freshman team, and we used to battle the varsity to a standstill in practice.


You ended up having a pretty decent college career at Holy Cross, finishing as the school’s all-time leading scorer and a consensus first-team All-American.

My sophomore year we won the Sugar Bowl, and we won the NIT, which was the premiere tournament at the time.  We were ranked number one or two in the country, depending upon which ranking you wanted to use.  But we were a terrific team.  There were three sophomores starting on the team that won the NIT.  The next two years were successful and challenging at the same time.  We lost Togo Palazzi to graduation.  He was drafted by Red Auerbach and played for the Celtics.  We also lost Ronnie Perry, our captain, so we really didn’t have the same team.  To make matters worse, my coach had a falling out with the school and left at the end of my junior ear.  My senior year brought a brand new coach and a new philosophy and everything else.  But I ended up making All-American both years.  I played against the Harlem Globetrotters, I played in All-Star games, and I was selected as a territorial pick by the Boston Celtics.

Tommy Heinsohn (24)

What was the territorial pick all about?

Back then, the territorial process was really the first round of the NBA Draft.  You had the exclusive rights to a player if you wanted him, regardless of where you finished in the standings.  It was based on a player’s proximity to the team, and it allowed teams to showcase players that were popular in that team’s market.  So the Celtics executed their territorial rights on me.


In 1956 you joined a Celtic team on the verge of a dynasty.  Did you know fellow Holy Cross alum and Celtics star, Bob Cousy?

Well, I had watched the Celtics play.  I really didn’t know Bob Cousy until I joined the Celtics, even though he lived in Worcester, where Holy Cross is located.  He was busy playing basketball for the Celtics and I was still in school at the time.  So I never really got to meet him.  But, as I said, I did get to see Cousy and the Celtics play.  They were an up-tempo team.


Tell me about your first year in a Celtics uniform.

That year changed everything for the Celtics.  Walter Brown and Red Auerbach made the deal to get Bill Russell, after St. Louis selected him with the third overall pick in the 1956 NBA Draft.  The Celtics also got KC Jones in the second round, and they used that territorial pick on me.  The Celtics got three Hall of Fame players in the same draft.

Russell went to the Olympics, so he didn’t join us until midyear.  In the meantime, I learned to play with Cousy.  That turned out to be the best way to adjust to NBA basketball.  And the reason we were so successful was because of the rebounding.  Prior to my being there, and Russell being there, they really had a terrific offense but no rebounding.  “Easy” Ed Macauley played underneath the basket for them – he was the key player that Boston packaged in order to get Russell from the Hawks – and he was too thin to really compete against the big guys inside.  He was 6’8”, but he didn’t weigh 200 pounds.  He was terrific scorer, though.  He just wasn’t a rebounder.  Russell and I provided that.  Plus, I was a scorer.  Russell came in around the middle of the season on.  We were eight games out of first place by the time Russell came back from the Olympics and started playing with us.

Bob Cousy and Bill Sharman, who were established pros at the time, were the most experienced players on that 1956-57 team.  Jack Nichols was a forward on that team.  Arnie Risen was the center until Bill Russell showed up.  There was Jim Loscutoff, who had been a rookie the year before.  Andy Phillip, who ended up being a Hall of Fame player, was a part of that team.  He was a great playmaker, and very steady.  So it added up to a pretty savvy basketball team, and as the younger group started to mesh.  KC Jones actually didn’t play that year, because he had to go into the service for two years.  We later added Sam Jones and Satch Sanders, and the Boston Celtics was well on its way to becoming a dynasty.

Tommy Heinsohn (left) celebrates the Celtics 1974 NBA Championship with John Havlicek (17)

After years of playoff disappointment, the Celtics finally broke through.

We played well in the postseason, and we made it to our first NBA Finals.  We beat St. Louis in double-overtime of Game 7, which I still consider to be the most thrilling game that I was ever involved in – and I’ve been involved in a lot of Finals series, broadcasting, coaching or playing.  To the best of my knowledge, there has never been another seventh game that has gone into double-overtime.


You scored 37 points and grabbed 23 rebounds in that Game 7 victory over the Hawks.

It was a championship game, winner-take-all.  I got up for the game, and Russell got up for the game, but Cousy and Sharman were so nervous that they never really performed at their best.  Russell had a super game, but I had a super game, too.  Frank Ramsey played very well.  So did Jim Loscutoff.  Cousy and Sharman were like 4-for-40 from the field, or something like that.  They really had a tough night scoring.  But they played great defense, and they got the ball to other people when they needed to.


What do you remember most abut that game?

I remember Russell fouling out.  I remember how intense the game was, and the excitement in the Boston Garden.  The two greatest plays that I ever saw in basketball happened in that game – one with Russell, who blocked a shot after going out-of-bounds and running the length of the court.  He came out of nowhere to block Jack Coleman’s shot for a layup.  It was breathtaking to watch.  And then, Alex Hannum throwing the ball the length of the court pass off the backboard and into the hands of Bob Pettit, to get a shot with two seconds left.  It was an eighteen footer, and it almost went in.  I had never seen anybody ever do anything like that before or after.  And now they’ve changed the rules, of course, so you don’t have to do that.  But he threw it the length of the court, it hit the right corner of the backboard, and it rebounded all the way out to Bob Pettit [laughs].  He got the ball, and he almost made it.

Tommy Heinsohn (center) sits on the bench with Bill Russell (left) and head coach Red Auerbach (right)

You were very close to team founder Walter Brown, but your friendship was tested in the days before the 1964 NBA All-Star Game.  Tell me about that.

I was the president of the NBA Players Association, and in 1964 the All-Star Game was going to be held in the Boston Garden.  A really difficult situation developed between the Player’s Association and the league with regards to playing conditions – there were no trainers at that time, no pension plans, and playing games on Saturday night and then traveling all night to try and play a game on television on Sunday were just some of the problems that we were trying to address.  Well, the owners wouldn’t talk to us when they promised that they were going to talk to us, and it all came to a head at the 1964 NBA All-Star Game.  I had told Walter Brown that I didn’t know what was going to happen, but unless something was done with regards to these issues, then something was going to transpire at the All-Star Game.  I let him know this about a month before the game was to be played.  The days passed, and the closer it got to playing the All-Star Game the more it looked as if the players were going to boycott.  You have to understand, back then the All-Star Game was the most important national exposure for the league.  It was vitally important to both the players and the owners, but especially for the owners because they were trying to grow professional basketball in a big way.  Well, minutes before game time, NBA President Walter Kennedy gave his personal guarantee that adoption of a pension plan would occur at the next owners meeting, that coming May.  And he was true to his word.  The owners approved a plan in which they would contribute 50% toward the purchase of a $2,000 endowment policy.  That’s how the NBA pension plan was started.


Did it effect your relationship with Walter Brown?

And after it all happened, Walter Brown called me the biggest heel in sports.  He said that if the league had a team in Hawaii he’d send me to the team in Hawaii.  He eventually calmed down, and by the end of the season we won the title.  At the team’s breakup dinner he stood up, and he said that I was the main reason why the Celtics had won the title that year.  Believe it or not, at the same time all of this was going on, I was in the insurance business and I was handling the insurance side of Walter Brown’s estate planning.  So I had a somewhat of a mixed relationship with Walter.  He was a terrific human being, and a man of his word.  Frank Ramsey used to send his contract signed completely blank, and he would have Walter fill in his figures.  I can remember negotiating my contract standing in the bathroom at the urinal, and before I zipped up we had a deal [laughs].


Red Auerbach often took the Celtics on preseason barnstorming tours throughout New England.  What was it like to ride in the car with Red?

I never rode in the car with Red Auerbach – you’d have to be crazy to ride in the car with Red Auerbach [laughs].  My funniest story?  I don’t know if anyone ever told you this one, but it revolved around Jim Loscutoff, who had had back surgery and was trying to make the ball club again.  Naturally, after back surgery Loscutoff was a little tentative.  Now, Red had been in the Navy, and had done some work helping guys recuperate from injuries in the service, and what have you.  Psychologically, he tried to get into Loscutoff’s head.  He wanted to make him forget about the back and just play basketball.  Anyway, he would have separate drills on these road trips up through New England.  We’d go to play in a high school gym, and we’d all go to take a nap in some motel, and in the afternoon he would take Loscutoff to the gym for a separate workout.  Loscutoff was my roommate, and he would come back to the motel and go, ‘I’m gonna get that little sucker, and I’m gonna kill him.’  And he kept saying this, you know, and finally I went to Red and said, ‘Red, what are you doing to Loscutoff?’  I said, ‘You better watch out, he wants to kill you.’  And Red said, ‘You and Ramsey, you two come and watch what I’m doing.  Just don’t let him know that you’re there.’  So we sneaked into the high school gym and hid way up in the stands behind some seats, and we watched Red put Loscutoff through his paces.  And he would throw the ball on the floor, and he would say, ‘Okay, doggie, go get it.’  Loscutoff was expected to dive on the floor and jump on the ball.  And then Red would throw these long passes so that Loscutoff had one step and then he would crash into the wall.  And after it was all over, I looked at Ramsey and I said, ‘If I were Red, I wouldn’t keep dong that to Loscutoff – he’s a little bit left of center anyway, and he’s just crazy enough to knock Red into next week.’  [Laughs].  But to give Red his due, he got Loscutoff’s head back into the game, and Loscutoff was an important part of the team for years to come.


Your relationship with Red Auerbach is clearly special.  How were the two of you able to get along so well?

Before I became the coach, I spent four years in the management end of the insurance business, in which I was very successful.  As I was going through the initial management course for the insurance company, all of a sudden I started to see how good Red really was as a manager of people.  How he drafted certain players, and why.  And how he made the acquisitions to get players in to help keep the team on top.  All of the motivations he used, and everything else.  And I thoroughly believed in the philosophy that we had about running and making the other team play twice as hard, and think twice as fast.  The other thing was, unbeknownst to a lot of people at the time, every time we signed a rookie and something was wrong, he’d ask me questions.  For example, he might say, ‘Tommy, what’s wrong with Mel Counts?  Why can’t he rebound, and why can’t he hold onto the ball?’  And I might say, ‘Well, he’s not catching the ball off the board.  He brings it down and it gets slapped out of his hands easily.’  And Red would respond, ‘Well, you work with him.’  So over the years I worked with a lot of players.  As a consequence, Red saw me dealing with a lot of players.  Larry Siegfried, for example.  Red was going to cut him, and I used to play one-on-one with Siegfried.  Nobody could beat me one-on-one until Siegfried showed up.  He would beat me every time we played.  So I said to Red, ‘Before you cut Siegfried, you should know that he’s the only guy on the team that can beat me one-on-one.’  Red looked at me curiously, and he said, ‘He does?  Well, we’re going to have practice at the Garden.  You play him one-on-one and let me watch.’  So, Red was way up in the stands where he couldn’t be seen.  And he watched – Siegfried never knew this – and so we played and he beat me again.  Red kept Siegfried.

After I had retired, he called me up that summer and said that he had a chance to get Don Nelson.  He said, ‘What do you think of Don Nelson?’  And I said, ‘Red, Don Nelson is slow as shit.  He cannot run.  But he and Joe Holup are the only two guys that I played against in the NBA that I couldn’t get around.  I don’t know how he does it, but he does it.  He’s also a terrific shooter, so if you’ve got a shot at him I think it’s well worth the effort.’  So that was my contribution to Don Nelson landing in Boston.  And I think Red saw something in me as a coach, and that’s why he approached me for the job.


Tell me about your friend and the radio voice of the Celtics, the late Johnny Most.

Johnny Most and I were really good friends.  I hung around Johnny from my rookie year on, because he was a very intelligent man, and he was a great storyteller.  I would ask him questions about everything.  He was in second World War, and I would meet all of his buddies.  He was a gunner on a B-24.  So, we’d go out somewhere and one of his buddies from that crew would meet up with us.  I’d go out to dinner with them, or breakfast or lunch, or whatever, so I got to know all of his old-time buddies.  Johnny had a tough time in the service.  He was in Italy, and he was there with the Tuskegee Airmen, and he was one of the planes that they used to protect.  So, he wrote about stuff like that.  And it made him ultra-sensitive.  He would tell stories about that period in his life.

He helped me after I started broadcasting the games in ’66.  So I roomed with Johnny Most on the road when I did the game.  We did twenty-five road games.  I would room with him, and he helped me learn how to broadcast.  After I became the coach of the Celtics, I started broadcasting at Sports Channel, and in the summer we used to have Johnny Most sound alike contests.  So I would emcee the sound alike contest all over New England – at the hotel, a bar, whatever.  And we had a lot of fun doing that.

Johnny Most was also a Pop Warner football coach, and the commissioner of a Pop Warner football league in his community.  And he helped get my son involved in football.  So, we were brought together in many different ways.  I was friendly with him as a player, I would pal around with him as a coach, and we hung out in between during my time as a broadcaster.  So I hung out with Johnny Most for well over twenty years.

He always had a slew of jokes – he’d sit down, and he’d just rattle off these jokes.  You’d go out with him after a game, and sit at a bar, and he’d start telling jokes and everybody would be laughing their tails off.  What else?  He’d been up in the Borscht Belt in New York, which is up in the Catskills.  He knew all of the comedians, and everything else.  So, Johnny was a special person and a good friend of mine.  And it was a shame that, ultimately, even when he knew what was going to happen he never stopped smoking.


Do you have a funny story from your time with Johnny Most?

My favorite story about Johnny Most?  If he took a liking to you, then he would try to promote you on the broadcast.  At that time my roommate was Lou Tsioropoulos, which was my rookie year.  So, he liked Louie.  Loscutoff got hurt and couldn’t play in the playoffs, and Louie had to fill in for him.  And his broadcast went something like this:  “I can’t believe the defensive job Lou Tsioropoulos is doing on Bob Pettit.  I mean, he’s in his jersey, he’s in his sneakers, there’s no place that Pettit goes that Lou Tsioropoulos isn’t right there with him.  Here we are in the middle of the second quarter and he’s only got….thirty-two points?”  I laugh about that to this day.


You scored 22 points in Game 6 of the 1960 Eastern Conference Finals, beating Wilt Chamberlain and the Philadelphia Warriors.

That was one of my more memorable games, because I tipped that shot in at the buzzer.  That’s the only time that anybody has ever shut up 11,000 Philadelphians all at once [laughs].  Convention Hall went deathly silent.


You were known to get under Wilt Chamberlain’s skin.

Wilt was a force to be reckoned with, and he took an immediate dislike to me during his rookie year in the league.  He ripped off my jersey during one game in which we had a little altercation.  We had a little play that we used to help us beat Philadelphia all the time, because Wilt got a little lazy at times.  They would shoot a free throw, and make it, and Russell would run down the floor.  Cousy would inbound the ball real fast, and Russell would outrun Wilt easily, and Russell would get a layup.  So we were getting three or four baskets a game off of that.  By the time we get to the series with the Sixers that year, Wilt has caught on.  So before the series starts, Red said, ‘The play with Wilt is not working anymore, so we’re going to change it a little bit.  We’re going to have somebody step in and block out the shooter once the ball goes through, go pick off Wilt Chamberlain, so Russell can get the step on him and beat him down the floor.’  So that sounded pretty good to me, because I was never the guy blocking out the shooter.  I was always on the line, rebounding.  So, for five games, I’ve gotta go and get in front of Wilt Chamberlain on every free throw.  Finally, he gets wise to what I’m doing.  And he says, ‘You do that one more time and I’m going to knock you on your ass.’  So, you know, you never back down.  I looked him in the eye and I said, ‘Bring your lunch.’  So, they made the free throw, and I went over there, blocked him…I set a pick on him…and sure enough he knocked me on my ass.  I went all the way out to half court.  Whereupon he comes running down the floor, winds up, and he’s punching me as I’m getting up to my knee.  And I’m looking at this fist coming at me, and all of a sudden Tom Gola walks in between us.  And he hits Gola off of the back of the head – and Wilt breaks his hand!

The next game is up in Boston.  The ball gets by Russell and Wilt turns to the basket.  I’m the guy coming over to help.  I try to punch the ball out of his hand.  Instead, I punch him on the broken hand.  He looks at me, and he’s going to kill me.  And I said to myself, ‘If I play chicken with this guy right now, he’s going to own me.’  So he got to the foul line, and he kept looking at me.  He was giving me a stare down.  I kept looking him right in the eye.  I put my hands on my hips and I just kept staring at him [laughs].  Finally, he said out loud to himself, ‘This guy’s crazy.’  And he took the free throws and I never had another moment of trouble with Wilt [laughs].  It was the ultimate stare-down at the O.K. Corral [laughs].

Tommy Heinsohn

Someone told me that you played a pretty good prank on Red Auerbach.

I call it my worst day.  I was in the insurance business, and I would read mail and the paper with breakfast.  I opened the paper and learned that I’d just lost a big, half-million dollar insurance case.  I went to my car and drove down to the radio station in Worcester to do my radio show, and when I came out afterwards I had a parking ticket on my windshield.  Then I hopped in the car to go to practice, and ended up getting a speeding ticket.  I end up late for practice because of the ticket, and I got fined by Red.  By this time I’m in a bad mood and I don’t have a particularly good practice.  I go downstairs to get dressed afterwards, and when I reach into my pocket I realize that somebody had stolen my wallet.  My credit cards are gone, and so is my draft card, which was pretty important in those days.  So I’m sitting there very despondent, and Red says, ‘What’s the matter?’  So I tell him about the worst day I’ve ever had, and he says, ‘You know, Tommy, when things aren’t going well, I always like to have a cigar.’  He reaches into his pocket and says, ‘On the way home, here, take this cigar and smoke it.  You’ll feel better.’  I said, ‘Red, I’m not a cigar smoker.’  He said, ‘Take it anyway and try it.’  So I’m driving home, and about halfway I say to myself, ‘What a nice gesture on Red’s part to give me the cigar and calm me down a little bit.’  So I unwrap the cigar and I put it in my mouth.  I get the cigarette lighter going, I take two puffs, and the damned thing explodes in my face [laughs].

The next day Red says to me, ‘Tommy, did you smoke the cigar?’  Well, I wasn’t going to let him know what happened.  I said, ‘No, you know that I don’t smoke cigars.  I had to go speak at a thing last night, and I gave it to the monsignor.’  Red said, ‘You gave it to the monsignor?’  And I said, ‘Yes I did.’  Well, he looked at me dumbfounded, but he didn’t say anything.

So, every couple of weeks I’d give him a cigar.  I’d say something like, ‘Red, I was just at this thing, and they gave me a couple of cigars.  Here.  You have them.’  And I’d buy the cigars.  I’d feed him the cigars like that, every couple of weeks.  The first few, he kept looking at them to see if they were loaded.  He’d inspect either end.  Finally, I’d given him so many cigars, that he stops looking to see if they’re loaded.  Now we’re going into the playoffs.  We had practice, and I give him this loaded cigar.  All of the newspaper guys are standing around, waiting to hear his pearls of wisdom.  He used to sit there, at the bench, and unwrap a cigar, light it up and talk to the press.  On this particular occasion he didn’t have a match.  I had a cigarette lighter, so I went over and I lit it for him.  And he took two puffs, right in front of the press, and it exploded right in his face [laughs].  Let me tell you – he literally chased me out of that place…up the stairs, on the court, everywhere [laughs].


Bill Russell and Sam Jones retired in 1969, and the Celtic Dynasty was officially at an end.  What was it like to take over the reins as head coach, and how were you able to temper the fan’s expectations regarding the new starting center, Hank Finkel?

Needless to say, Hank Finkel was no Bill Russell.  Here I am, I’m going to take over, and I’m going to try to win a championship without Russell, Mr. Defense, of the last thirteen years.  And without Sam Jones, one of the greatest offensive players in the history of the game.  I gotta do something with this team.  After Cousy retired, the Celtics didn’t run quite as much, and things slowed down toward the end of the dynasty because Russell had reached an advanced age.  I always believed that running was the way to win, so I tried to get this team to run a little bit.  Really, what the first year was all about, was an elongated tryout camp.  Trying to fit the pieces together.  Actually, if I’m not mistaken, we didn’t make the playoffs in either of my first two years coaching.  But if you look at the team’s record that second year, it was a good enough record to make the playoffs most any other year.  We had Finkel, we had Richie Johnson, and we had to devise a way to win.  It wasn’t easy.  I had to become a coach, have them listen to me, and establish my credentials as a person capable of doing the job.  It wasn’t easy, especially when you’re losing and the fans are used to winning championships.

We got through the first year, and then we got Cowens.  In the meantime, I had worked with Don Chaney that whole first season, bringing him along.  And Jo Jo White was the pick that first season.  So I worked with him.  The next year I established the style of play, and how to do it.  We started in training camp, and we really, really developed an up-tempo game without the likes of a Bob Cousy.  And I put together a way of running, so that everybody played a little bit like Bob Cousy.  Because I’d run up the floor so many times with him, and I saw how he reacted to the fast break situations.  So I devised tactics to do exactly the same thing with different personnel.  So we didn’t have to rely on one particular player to deliver the ball, like we did when Cousy was playing.  That allowed us to maintain the pace, and win with pace.  Because I believed that that’s how the Celtics, when I played, really won.  A lot of those games we paced the other team completely out of the game, we’d run so much.  But this team I had, with Cowens, was very small.  That’s how we had to win games, or not win at all.  It succeeded.  I put the offense in one year, and then I worked on augmenting it with a pressure defense.  The goal was to have a pressure offense and a pressure defense.  The pressure offense was to beat them up the floor, make them hustle back, and the pressure defense was to make them work the ball up the floor, and to force them into mistakes.  We utilized a lot of people.  We changed the morale of the team a little bit, because we used a lot of people, and we started to win.

BOSTON – 1956: Tom Heinsohn #15 of the Boston Celtics poses for a mock action portrait circa 1967 in Boston, Massachusetts. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and/or using this Photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 1956 NBAE (Photo by NBA Photo Library/NBAE via Getty Images)

The following season the Celtics drafted Dave Cowens.  How long did it take for you to realize he would be special?

I had never seen him play – Red was the guy that had seen him play.  So, when we got him, I had gone down and I’d seen a couple of other centers, and I didn’t like any of them.  Red kept telling me about Cowens, who he’d seen at Florida State, and so he said that he was going to draft him.  So I said, ‘Fine.’  I didn’t know what the heck he was capable of until I finally go to see him play.  And I immediately said, ‘Wow, this guy is a bundle of energy and ferocity.’  So, we used that on the fast break.  He really wasn’t a good offensive player at that time.  We spent a couple of years working with him on his offense.  And we also put in a system to bring him along, to where when we played the big centers like Wilt, Bob Lanier, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Willis Reed, and all of those guys – the big seven-footers – we really had a no-center offense.  We would pull Cowens out from under the basket, and we’d rotate people all over the place.  So in addition to becoming a rebounder, Cowens also became a playmaker.  He had the ball, and he would make Wilt come out, and it was a style that became very, very successful for us.  Cowens fit into it beautifully, and it was one of the main reasons we were able to win so many games.  We really played two different styles of basketball – against the big teams we ran, and then we’d use this offense if we had to slow down.  It forced the opponent’s big guys to come out of the middle and play defense on the outside, on the perimeter, which they didn’t know how to do, nor want to do.  Cowens gave us a terrific advantage.


What was it like for you to win your first NBA Championship as head coach of the Boston Celtics?

It ranks right up there with winning my first championship as a player.  It was something that I’ll never forget, and it was a great thrill just to be a part of it.  The year before, we had won a team-record 68 regular season games, but John Havlicek hurt his shoulder in the playoffs and we got into a 3-1 hole in the Eastern Conference Finals.  We tied that series up at 3-3, and then lost that seventh game.  So, even though we had a great year, we were left with a very empty feeling to win 68 games and then fall short of a championship.

We came back wiser, healthier, and more mature the next year.  We only won 56 games, but we had learned that winning in the playoffs is far more important – you have to win during the regular season, sure, but we wanted to peak at the right time.  And that’s what we did.  We battled Kareem and Oscar Robertson in that series, and neither team could maintain control of home court advantage.  In fact, we were up by a point in Game 6, and had a 3-2 series lead, and all we had to do was make one more stop to win the championship.  And then Kareem hits that big shot from the corner.  It was one of his patented skyhooks, and it sent the series back to Milwaukee for the seventh game.

We knew we were the better team, and going into that final game we wanted to prove it.  We also knew that our pace had taken a toll on Oscar.  He was at the end of his career, and all series long he had been forced to hustle on both sides of the ball.  He was tired.  So we turned up the pressure on him even more.  We picked him up earlier on defense.  We pushed the ball every chance we got.  And we were able to win that game decisively.  It was a great thrill, and one of the best basketball experiences that I’ve ever had.


Nineteen years removed from your incredible double-overtime performance against the St. Louis Hawks, your Boston Celtics took the court in Game 5 of the 1976 NBA Finals.  In your mind, what stands out most about that triple-overtime thriller?

Fainting in the locker room after it was all over [laughs].  I’d gotten dehydrated during that thing, so they’d brought me into the trainer’s room and I fainted.  Somebody asked me a question and I just keeled right over.  I ended up with a touch of high blood pressure, and they weren’t going to let me go out to Phoenix and let me coach the next game.  It wasn’t until the next day that they changed their minds.  They looked me over, and allowed me go out and coach.

That game was such a draining experience.  It was a terrific game.  We got up big, and then Paul Westphal starting making these whirling-dervish moves.  He was the only guy in the league that I’d ever seen go into the paint for a layup, and do a three-sixty at full speed, in the air, and make the shot.  And he made about four of those in the second half of that game.  And then, of course, Gar Heard hit that big shot.  The next game, the sixth game, was in Phoenix.  And whoever was able to bend over, tie their sneakers and walk out onto the floor was going to win that game [laughs].  That’s how debilitating that triple-overtime game was back in Boston.

Tommy Heinsohn

If your athletic career were a play, it would contain three acts:  Your sensational collegiate career at Holy Cross, your Hall of Fame career as a player for the Celtics, and your equally impressive job as head coach.  If you had to choose a signature Heinsohn moment from each of these acts, what would they be?

At Holy Cross, it was winning the NIT and being named MVP of the Sugar Bowl.  As a player, it would be the seventh game of that first championship in 1957.  As a coach, it would be wining my first championship against the Bucks in ’74.


Final Question:  If you could offer one piece of advice on life to others, what would that be?

I told my kids this – you don’t do things because people will like you.  Because I’ve found out playing basketball that forty percent of the people will hate you no matter what.  Forty percent of the people will love you no matter what.  And twenty percent of the people will actually be influenced by what you truly do.  So you’ve got to find something that you like to do, that you have fun doing, and then do it.

Written By: Michael D. McClellan |

Rich Manley is going places, and he wants to take you with him. The more remote the better. He’s made his way through land as flat and featureless as a page without words, he’s scaled the Peruvian Andes at altitude, and he’s chopped his way through jungle so dense it blots out the sun. Today, the desert calls. Thousands of miles spool out behind him. Thousands more lie ahead. The earth spins. The sun rises. Long shadows shrink into puddles of shade beneath his feet. From dawn to dusk, in every direction, the landscape looks the same. The only thing that changes is the angle of the sun. No matter. Manley is as comfortable here as he would be sitting at home, kicked back on his sofa, a cup of his favorite Turkish coffee in one hand, the TV remote in the other. Nevermind that his GPS is a fickle oracle that gives inaccurate distances and leads him miles in the wrong direction. There’s no cause for alarm, no reason to freak out. Drop Rich Manley in the middle of nowhere, with a compass and a map, and the actor/producer/magician/adventurer is not only coming out of the other side unscathed, he’s going to have one helluva time in the process.

That’s where you come in.


Manley, the star of the upcoming series, Culture Shock: Bridging Cultures Through Magic, wants to share these once-in-a-lifetime experiences with you, taking you on journeys ranging from the high mountain caves of Ethiopia, to the sun-washed plains of Namibia, to the backwaters of the Amazon and beyond. Now available on the Tubi Channel, Culture Shock not only follows Manley to some of the planet’s most exotic locales, it immerses you in the indigenous cultures that he encounters along the way. Manley may not speak their language, but he connects with them through the magic and illusions that he learned from his late grandfather. They, in turn, share their unique magic with him.

Culture Shock isn’t about the magic for magic’s sake,” Manley explains. “It isn’t about the ‘trick.’ It isn’t about, ‘Look at me, I’m trying to fool you.’ This show, at its core, is about communication through magic – energy, humility, compassion, and collective souls coming together. This is a spiritual and cultural coming of age.”

Rich Manley was seemingly born with a backpack, a tent, and a hunger to stay as far as possible from the ever-beaten path. The Concord, Massachusetts native grew up with this passion for adventure thanks, in large part, to his grandfather, a respected surgeon with a distinct Indiana Jones vibe. It was Manley’s grandfather who blazed the trail, traveling the world in search of esoteric medical knowledge and magic, then years later sharing these stories with his grandson. Manley soaked up every detail: Tales of hiking, alone, through sun, wind, rain, and snow, climbing mountains, crossing plains, and sailing across minor seas. He’d sit for hours and listen, his imagination aflame, so much so that he could practically hear the sound of his grandfather’s boots crunching on the treeless tundra, or see the shimmering heat rise up from a parched and dusty road.

Photo Courtesy Rich Manley

The result is Culture Shock (www.CultureShockMagic.com), Manley’s wild adventure show that’s full of dangerous stunts, exploration, tests of will…and, of course, plenty of magic. All of it germinating from those visits to his grandfather’s study, where he first learned sleight-of-hand and dreamed of one day performing on his own. He was 10 years old at the time, and by his teen years he was doing tricks in front of family, at events, in bars, and even on TV. At the age of 13, Manley started training in Kenpo Karate, receiving his Black Belt in four years (along with teaching status), at his local school. By his late teens, Manley was also into archeology and anthropology, going on digs to uncover Native American artifacts. All of these elements coalesce in Culture Shock.

“I studied and I trained nonstop,” Manley says. “It was a total commitment: body, mind, and spirit. To be able to bring these things to a series like Culture Shock brings everything full circle for me.”

Indeed.

Manley trained extensively and privately with Shaolin monks in those early years, learning Chan Buddhism, Chen and Yang Taiji Chuan, Chi Kung, and Northern Shaolin Kung Fu. All of it setting the stage for what was to come next: Radford University in Virginia, where Manley studied acting, media and sports. That he was able to minor in martial arts was the thing that sealed the deal.

Photo Courtesy Rich Manley

“That experience really got me to thinking about next steps,” he says. “I was able to make a connection with someone who was connected to Hollywood, and that world was very interesting to me. I’d always had an interest in film and television. The opportunity to be a part if it was exciting.”

Manley soon left Radford to become part of the crew for a pilot called Stars, Stunts, Action – an experience that further motivated him to pursue all forms of entertainment. Before long he made his uncredited feature debut in writer/director John Wells’ drama, The Company Men, which starred Ben Affleck, Chris Cooper and Tommy Lee Jones. That same year, he made his credited debut opposite Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz in director James Mangold’s Knight and Day. From there he’s kept his foot on the gas: Additional feature credits include The Town, Here Comes the Boom, Cowboy Spirit, Bipolar, The Debt Collector, Slay Belles and the upcoming Angel One Eye.

“I’ve had a blast, and I’ve learned something each step of the way.”

It’s hardly surprising that Manley rarely sits still. In addition to Culture Shock, he stars in the upcoming post-apocalyptic series Fallen Cards, and was recently featured opposite Lacey Chabert, James Caan and Lance Henriksen in writer/director Andre Gordon’s Acre Beyond the Rye (based on Manley’s book). Not bad for a guy who happened upon Hollywood almost as if by accident.

Photo Courtesy Rich Manley

“I think it found me,” he says with a laugh. “I don’t think I could have escaped its grip if I’d tried.”

Culture Shock, it turns out, is the perfect escape.

With COVID completely changing the world as we know it, adventuring with Rich Manley in the Peruvian mountainside is a much-needed elixir for our mental health. Give it a try. Climb through clouds to Machu Picchu, the fabled “lost citadel” that perches incredibly atop a precipitous Andean peak at the edge of dense rainforest. Travel along the Amazon River as it meanders its way to the sweeping Brazilian coastline. Watch Manley share his amazing powers of prestidigitation, dazzling children and adults alike. You’ll not only find the ideal way to detox and destress, you might even find yourself planning an adventure of your own.

And if you happen to encounter a handsome stranger wearing a backpack and sporting a deck of cards, you might want to stop and introduce yourself.

Trust me, you’ll be glad you did.

Let’s talk Culture Shock: Bridging Cultures Through Magic. Where did you get the inspiration?

Culture Shock is a concept that actually started when I was about 10 years old. My grandfather was a surgeon, and he traveled around the world as part of his practice. He would visit with indigenous cultures and learn about their methods used for healing, whether it was the herbal medicines used in Peruvian Amazonia or the spiritual meditation practiced in Tibet. He also loved climbing; he spent time in the mountains of Japan, and he also climbed the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps, so there was a bit of an Indiana Jones thing going on with him – he even wore a fedora like Indiana Jones. The study in his house was filled with items he’d collected during his travels, which made it feel like you were on the set of Raiders of the Lost Ark. As you might imagine, I couldn’t wait to visit and ask him questions about all of these amazing, faraway places that he had been. He also loved sailing and he loved the ocean, so there were all kinds of mariner’s tools in his study – compasses, nautical charts, astrolabes, chronometers, things like that. It felt like you were in a museum. So, because my grandfather loved adventuring, I think that in turn invoked a sense of adventure in me.


In Culture Shock, you perform magic for indigenous cultures.

That idea also came from my grandfather. Magic was something that he used to do for the people that he met along his travels. He learned magic because, in the 1940s, the medical profession was teaching surgeons to be better with their hands. Finger dexterity was just starting to become very important, so he learned magic to be a better surgeon. I was 10 years old when my grandfather taught me my very first sleight-of-hand trick.

Photo Courtesy Rich Manley

How do you select the places you visit?

My grandfather left me his journal when he passed away, which details all of the countries and places that he’d visited during his travels. He was very thorough in his journaling; there are notes about where he did magic, and notes on the cultural aspects and the traditions of the people that he visited. So, Culture Shock is based on me receiving my grandfather’s travel journal and retracing his path to all of the countries and all of the remote areas that he visited to meet these people.


The world has changed dramatically since your grandfather’s travels.

The heart of the show is about meeting all of these beautiful, indigenous people, and learning how the modern world is affecting them. We get to learn how they live, and experience their customs and traditions firsthand. It’s an eye-opening experience; some of these people are far happier with absolutely nothing than a lot of us living in First World countries today. In Western society, we have all of these things that make our lives so much easier, from relatively simple things like indoor plumbing to more complex things like cars and computers and smartphones, and yet we’re constantly bogged down by stress and anxiety. The difference is striking, and I think the viewers will see that. The people we meet in Culture Shock have been living the same kind of life for generations. It was awesome to learn about the traditions and oral stories that they’ve passed down for generations, and seeing how these help to keep them close knit and family-oriented.


Where does the first episode of Culture Shock take us? And what will we learn?

We go to Peruvian Amazonia. It was surprising to learn that many of the indigenous people we met not only have their own stories of magic, but that they have their own forms of magic that they practice. There’s an Amazonian shaman who explains that their form of magic is herb-based. While a lot of the plants in the Amazon have been discovered by the Western world, there remain some that are still undiscovered – and these plants could be potentially used to cure cancer and a lot of other diseases that plague us today.

The first episode is fascinating because it shows how some of these different plants can open you up spiritually, making you receptive to knowledge from what they call Pachamama – which is equivalent to our Mother Nature in Western society. In Inca mythology, Pachamama is a fertility goddess who presides over planting and harvesting, embodies the mountains, things like that. She’s an ever-present deity who has her own power to sustain life on this earth. The first episode goes into this, and shows how they use coca leaves to connect to the cosmos, which is what they do on the eastern slopes of the Peruvian Andes. They hold Ayahuasca ceremonies, which is their way of connecting with Mother Nature and Mother Earth. They live their lives based on the messages that they receive from the huacas, which are the spirits of the mountains, and Pachamama, which is Mother Nature.

Photo Courtesy Rich Manley

Was it hard to overcome the language barrier?

A lot of times it’s tough to communicate with these cultures that I encounter. Thankfully, I get to share a little bit about myself when I do magic. And since magic doesn’t require language, it’s a good way for me to bridge the gap and make a connection. I might go somewhere in remote Peru, where they speak a muddled language that’s a combination of Spanish and their own dialect. Or I might visit a part of Africa, where they speak a Bantu language like Swahili. So, I use magic to break down the language barrier and find common ground. There might be an awkwardness and lack of trust in the beginning, but all of that goes away when I do magic for them. At that point it’s very easy for them to take me in and say, “Okay, we can embrace this person. We can share our traditions and values with him.” Through magic, you begin to see how similar we all are, and that’s really what the show is about.


Culture Shock isn’t a one-sided experience. There seems to be a real symbiotic relationship between yourself and the people you meet.

Very much so. We were in the mountain area of Pitumarca, Peru, where we came upon a Quechua village. These are people who live up in the Andes Mountains, which is at a very high-altitude. They acclimated a long time ago, grow their crops, and survive in a harsh environment. I met a small village family, and I did some magic for them. They had never seen Westernized magic, which is basically sleight-of-hand tricks, and they were fascinated by it. You can see their reactions; they had the hugest smiles on their faces, which you’ll see in the footage when the show comes out. They had a wonderful time, and we did as well. It was just amazing meeting them, and seeing how innocent and pure they were when they smiled.

After doing magic for them, they introduced me to the village shaman. It was such an awesome experience because they performed a ceremony for me, the mountain ritual in which they give thanks to Pachamama – Mother Nature – and the huacas, which are their version of spirits contained in rivers, mountains, and all of the land. This was in the winter months in the Andes Mountains, so the sky was very overcast at the time the mountain shaman prepared the ritual. It was also very cold, with a mixture of snow and rain. He began the ceremony and we all circled around him. I just felt this energy – you could feel the wind blowing, and you knew that something was going on – a calmness, and the presence of something else around us. I won’t get into too much detail about the ceremony because you’ll be able to watch it…but after the ceremony, the clouds actually separated and you could see the blue sky above. I turned to my cohost and one of the other guys in the crew, and we all couldn’t believe what we were seeing. We were equally stunned to think that this ceremony, with the shaman giving thanks to the mountains, could actually clear up the weather that was so overcast and inhospitable just a few moments before. It really put things in perspective. The magic that I do is obviously just a way for me to entertain, have some fun, or make light of the situation. But after experiencing what happened during that ceremony…it convinced me that there really is some form of magic out there.

Photo Courtesy Rich Manley

How did you learn magic?

The first tricks that I learned were from my grandfather. There is this one trick, where you have a card in your hand, and you make it disappear and reappear. It’s a difficult trick to do if you have small hands, so, being 10, I had to work on it. From there I read books, watched shows about magic, and then developed my own tricks based on the principles and the basics of sleight-of-hand. I really enjoyed watching David Blaine and Criss Angel growing up, so I’d watch their shows.


When did you start performing magic in public?

During my teen years. I worked in restaurants as a server, so I started out by doing magic tricks for the customers. Then, I became a bartender when I was a little older, and I’d do magic for the people there. I just enjoyed going out and doing tricks. I would do a lot of magic.


You’re more of a close-up magician than someone who does the big stage illusions.

Yes. I prefer that kind of setting over the big stage tricks. It goes back to my roots being in sleight-of-hand. Cards are the thing that I’m most comfortable with, but I enjoy taking everyday objects and doing tricks. If I’m at a bar, I might see a salt shaker, so there might be an opportunity to do something with that. Or I might want to do a trick with something that someone has on them, like a ring or a dollar bill. I like the magic to be organic. Nothing to set up. I was never into the bigger stage allusions only because for me, I loved watching them, but I didn’t have a burning desire to perform them. That’s because I prefer a more intimate setting.

Photo Courtesy Rich Manley

What about street magic?

When you’re doing street magic, you’re performing in a very intimate setting. It’s basically the same thing as if you’re doing close-up magic at a bar or at a restaurant: Everyone’s right there, right in front of you, so the stakes are higher in terms of people seeing what you are doing. You have to control a lot more, and there’s more psychology involved than a lot of people understand. Part of it is managing people – talking to them as you’re performing, keeping their minds occupied while you’re doing the sleights and making the moves. You’re always engaged with the people you’re entertaining: You’re talking to this person. You’re talking to that person. You have to be very aware that someone could come up behind you, or that someone could be standing at just the right angle to see what you’re doing. There’s a different energy that comes with that type of magic. Whereas, if I’m doing magic on a stage, there’s less of a challenge because everything is controlled. I prefer an uncontrolled environment. I want to be able to take a deck of cards, or take a common item off of someone, and then entertain them while all of these other things are going on, and while people are looking at you and trying to figure it out. That has always been fun for me.


You were into archaeology at a young age. How did that influence what you’re doing today?

I started to get into archeology about the same time that I was getting interested in magic, which was around 10 years old, so the two kind of went hand-in-hand. Maybe I liked it so much because I’d always been drawn to Indiana Jones. I was very fascinated with Egypt. The ancient Egyptians actually had their own forms of magic – they would actually do a few tricks that you see today, like tricks with rings, cups, and balls. As I became more interested in Egyptian culture and history, that sparked a lot of my other interests in anthropology throughout the world, such as in Africa, Japan, and Asia. As I got a little older, I started looking into things that I could do locally to enhance my knowledge and understanding of both archaeology and anthropology. Growing up in Massachusetts, there was a lot of Native American activity, so I joined an archaeological society in my later teens. We went on digs in Wayland, Massachusetts, which was really cool because we found all of these different arrowheads and tools. I enjoyed that a lot. I also enjoyed learning the techniques of mapping out what we’d found.

Photo Courtesy Rich Manley

You went to Radford after graduating from high school. Why Radford?

Growing up, there were three main interests in my life – magic, archaeology/anthropology, and martial arts – so I went to Radford primarily because it offered a program where I could minor in martial arts. I honestly didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life at that point, but I knew that I loved martial arts; I’d spent time training with Shaolin monks from China as a teenager, and at one point I was training eight hours a day – it was all that I was doing with my free time. It helped me mentally, because the meditative effect of doing martial arts, especially Shaolin, which they consider moving meditation, goes hand-in-hand with having that center that permeates into everything else that you do. It also gives you the discipline and the Zen mentality that you experience when you visit different cultures. My time in the martial arts has really helped that regard. It’s given me a better understanding of other people as well, which really helps with a show like Culture Shock.


You weren’t at Radford long before you made the jump Hollywood. Please tell me about that.

While I was at Radford, I met a man named James Houston. He was the owner of a local martial arts school. I met him through Dr. Jerry Beasley, who was my guidance counselor there at Radford. Jerry used to write for Black Belt Magazine, and he’s a member of the Black Belt Magazine Hall of Fame. During the 1980s he worked with Joe Lewis, the legendary, undisputed American heavyweight kickboxing champion, so he’s someone you listen to when he’s giving advice. He told me that I had to talk to this guy, James Houston, who owns this school and who could really help me reach my potential and become a great martial artist.

So I met James, who is a very charismatic and interesting guy. He was always traveling to Hollywood, and at the time he was working on a TV show called Stars Stunts Action, where he would do behind-the-scenes interviews. He’d talk to people about their martial arts, their stunt work, and working in Hollywood as a stunt person. I was fascinated by this whole thing. I said something to the effect of, “Hey, if you have any openings, I’d like to come along…” So he hired me as a production assistant, and I moved to Hollywood and started meeting people in the stunt and martial arts worlds.

Photo Courtesy Rich Manley

Did you think it would lead you to where you are today?

I was enamored by the whole Hollywood scene. I didn’t know where it would lead, but I knew that I needed to trust my instincts. In my head I said, “Hey, maybe I can use the martial arts skills that I have to do martial arts in movies.” I was willing to do whatever I could find, whether that was stunts or acting roles. And I was still doing magic. I was invited to a lot of Hollywood parties, so I would do magic for people at the parties. That was the start of me saying, “I want to use my magic and martial arts skills and see where these take me.”


Like an upcoming movie project! Please tell me about Acre Beyond the Rye.

Acre Beyond the Rye is a film based on a book that I wrote. After I finished it, I brought it to a friend of mine who’d self-published a couple of books. He took a look at what I wrote, really liked it, and offered to take a pass at my draft. He immediately dived in and did some rewrites, at which point we put our names on it jointly as co-authors, and then he went through his publisher to publish the book. That was the easy part. Making a movie was something that I’d always wanted to do, but it’s not something that can be done in a vacuum. For that reason, there was a period of time early on when I wasn’t ready to make Acre Beyond the Rye. Besides, when I first came to Hollywood, I was auditioning to get into someone else’s projects rather than making my own projects. But then I started meeting individuals in the business: I got a job at Paramount, and I also worked as a script supervisor and writer for another company, so I used those experiences to network and build my contact list.

Photo Courtesy Rich Manley

How were you able to take a self-published book and land a movie deal? Especially one that stars James Caan?

Oddly enough, my big break came while I was doing magic tricks at an L.A. sushi restaurant. I was doing magic for the sushi chefs, and this guy came over and introduced himself. His name is Barry Bernstein. He said that my sleight-of-hand was really good, and that he managed a lot of magicians, guys like Max Maven. He explained that he was an accountant, and then he asked me if I needed one, which I did. That was how we became friends. Before long he learned that I had ideas for all of these movies I wanted to make, including Acre Beyond the Rye, but that I didn’t have the financial means to make it happen. I had all of my contacts from my time at Paramount; I had all of my contacts that I’d met through James; and I had all of my contacts that I had through the other productions that I’d worked on. I just didn’t have the financial backing for a film, and I didn’t have a clue how to set up my own production company. Barry helped with that. We started out doing some other smaller projects, but I eventually got back to Acre Beyond the Rye, and wrote the script based on the book. Once we had a script, we used my contacts from Paramount to find a producer, a director, and all of the other pieces that we needed to make the film. We were able to put together an amazing cast, headlined by James Caan and Lacey Chabert. Barry jumped in and helped raise the money that we needed. He eventually became the executive producer, so my accountant is now my business partner.


What can you tell me about Fallen Cards?

Fallen Cards, was the first project out of the production company that I started with Barry. I actually started writing Fallen Cards while I was still at Paramount – I’d work on it when I had free time in my office. They say that you should write what you know, so I created a story of based on a magician who is also a martial artist as well. It’s set in a Mad Max, post-apocalyptic world. I spent a lot of time writing that screenplay. Like Acre Beyond the Rye, we didn’t have a lot of funding for it, so I took it upon myself to really raise money with Barry. When it came time to cast, I went out to my contacts… I knew all of these funny guys, guys like Kevin Farley, who is Chris Farley’s brother. I called up Brandon Morale, who is a good friend and who has been in a bunch of films with Adam Sandler. Even though they were primarily known for comedy, I thought it might be interesting to see them in a serious role.

Photo Courtesy Rich Manley

What was it like putting this film together?

I wore a lot of hats. I would run all over town; one minute I’d go to the prop houses and pack my car with everything needed for a particular shoot, the next I’d be packing my car with service food to feed that cast and crew. Kevin Farley looked at me one day and said, “You’re acting in this film, you’re doing the martial arts, your bringing everyone their food, you’re pickup up the props. How in the hell are you doing everything?” I just said that I’m going to do whatever it takes to get the ball rolling. The funny thing about it is that the more that I invested my time and energy to make it happen, the more people responded to it. Pretty soon we had the funding for it. I think that’s the way it is a lot of times. If you want to do something worthwhile then you just go for it. If there is value in it – if it’s a good idea and a good product – then I think people will get behind it and the resources will come. They will want to be a part of it, and word spreads and others want to be a part of it, too. That’s what happened in the case of Fallen Cards.


Let’s look ahead. What’s next for Rich Manley?

Everything is up for speculation due to COVID. With Culture Shock, we were ready to visit Madagascar and shoot an episode there when the coronavirus pandemic hit. Hopefully the situation will improve and we’ll be able to pick that back up in April, 2021. I picked this particular place because it was actually a utopia for pirates back in the 1700s. We’re going to go there and explore shipwrecks, and then go inland in search of a lost pirate colony called Libertalia. We also have a trip lined up for Greenland, and also one for Rwanda, which we’re very excited about. So the plan is to go to those countries and film those three episodes for Culture Shock.

Photo Courtesy Rich Manley

You’re living your dream. If you had one piece of life advice, what would that be?

You have to follow what you love doing. I love magic; I love martial arts; I love culture and history. Because I’ve followed what I love, and because I’ve kept pushing forward, I’ve been able to do some things that I never thought I’d get to do. So follow what you love, keep doing it, and don’t give up.

Written By: Michael D. McClellan |

Psst. Nik Wallenda has a secret he wants to share. The record-setting daredevil, who has thrilled millions with his white-knuckle treks across the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, and – wait for it – an active volcano, found himself at a crossroads after an eight-person pyramid collapse injured five, including his sister, who ended up in a coma and had 73 screws and plates inserted into her face. Wallenda, who was anchoring that pyramid under the Circus Sarasota Big Top that winter afternoon in 2017, clung to the wire for dear life when the team’s practice stunt when horribly wrong. While he walked away without a scratch and stepped back onto the wire the next day, Wallenda wasn’t as unfazed by the accident as it seemed on the surface.


“I was battling fear,” says Wallenda, who dives deep into the traumatic event in his new book, ‘Facing Fear: Step Out in Faith and Rise Above What’s Holding You Back’ (Sept. 15/HarperCollins). “We were attempting to break a world record for the highest four-level, eight-person pyramid. After training for six weeks we brought it up to 30 feet above the ground. We were days before attempting it in front of a live audience and in front of Guinness, and then the collapse happened. I got back on the wire the next day, and performed for the next six weeks as if nothing were wrong. But then, when that contract ended, I had six weeks where I wasn’t performing. That’s when I realized that there was something different about me. I started experiencing fear. It was an entirely new emotion to me, and it became debilitating, to the point where I told my wife I was done.”

For Wallenda – a seventh-generation member of The Flying Wallendas family of aerialists – this was not only a stunning admission, but the first step in his journey to overcome fear and resume the death-defying feats that have captivated imaginations around the globe. And if you’re wondering whether Wallenda is fully healed, you need look no further than his March 4, 2020, walk across the heat-generating, gas-spewing Masaya Volcano in Nicaragua. Crossing the volcano’s active lava lake, Wallenda offered proof positive that he’s on top of his game.

“That walk was challenging in so many different ways,” he says. “Pulling it off wouldn’t have been possible if I hadn’t gone through the process of facing my fear and silencing the shame that came along with it. From that point I was able to work through my fear and resurrect my dreams of being a world-class aerialist.”

A holder of 11 Guinness World Records, Wallenda has more than lived up to the legacy created by his great-grandfather Karl, who brought the family to the United States in the 1920s and immediately started thrilling young and old alike.

Nik Wallenda – Photo Courtesy Rogers & Cowan PMK

“I’m very proud of our family’s place in history,” Wallenda says, “and I’m proud to do my part to carry on the tradition, even though my mom and dad tried to push me away from the industry. They didn’t want me to carry it on because of the struggles of the circus world. My great-grandfather said it best in the 1970s: ‘In this business, one day you eat the chicken. The next day you eat the feathers.’ I totally get that now. This is a very fickle, very feast-or-famine business.”

Crossing Niagara Falls into Canada on June 12, 2012, Wallenda made history of his own: Enigma Research estimates that one billion people had either seen or knew of Wallenda’s Niagara Falls walk. The event was ABC’s highest rated Friday night program since November 2007, and the highest non-sports summertime program on any of the major networks in six years. A year later, Wallenda upped the ante with a riveting walk across the Grand Canyon, completing the 1,400 foot walk in 22 minutes, 54 seconds, using a 2-inch-thick steel cable.

Nik Wallenda crosses the Grand Canyon
Tiffany Brown/Associated Press Images for Discovery Communications

Wallenda has built quite the resumé by defying convention. He’s crossed the Chicago and New York City skylines on a high-wire; he’s hung from his teeth 250 feet above the ground as part of a helicopter stunt in Branson, Missouri; and he’s crossed between the two towers of the ten-story Condado Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, recreating the very act that had killed his great-grandfather Karl Wallenda in 1978. None of it possible without a healthy approach to managing his fear.

“I’m human, just like everyone else,” he says. “Fear is something we all have to overcome. I hope this book helps others take what I’ve learned and apply it to their everyday lives.”

The Wallenda name is synonymous with thrill seeking. We’re talking hundreds of years!

My family started performing in the 1780s in Bohemia, eventually making their way to Europe and into Germany, and then on into the United States in the 1920s. We’ve been at it for quite a long time, that’s for sure!


How did your family end up in the U.S.?

In 1927 they performed in Havana, Cuba. John Ringling, who was based in Florida, heard of this amazing high-wire troupe that he had to go see with his own eyes. So, he got on a ship and went over to Cuba to watch the show that my family was headlining. When the show’s owner caught wind that John Ringling was in the crowd, he went to my great-grandfather and said, “You guys have the night off tonight.” This didn’t make sense, especially since it was a packed house and everybody was there to see them. Long story short, the show’s owner knew that John Ringling would like what he saw, and that he would immediately poach my family and bring them to the United States. Well, John Ringling was a smart man, and he knew that there was a reason my family was pulled from the show. I’m sure it had happened to him many times before during his lifetime. So he sneaked back in the following day, saw my family perform, and immediately signed them as part of the “The Greatest Show on Earth” with Ringling Brothers. The next year, in 1928, they made their way to the United States, and my family headlined at Ringling Brothers for about 17 years.

Karl Wallenda

Was that when the press starting calling your family The Flying Wallendas?

It was around the time that my great-grandfather went out on his own, opening his own show in the 1940s. In 1947 he created the famous seven-person pyramid, and performed that until about 1962. That’s when they had that tragic accident in Detroit, Michigan. A couple of my family members were killed, and an uncle was paralyzed from the waist down. My great-grandfather sneaked out of the hospital the next day against the doctor’s orders, just to get back on the wire. It was an example of him living by the family legacy, and the now famous words, “The show must go on.” That’s something I still believe in, although I use the words “Never give up.” In fact, that’s how I sign every autograph.


Your great-grandfather was the legendary Karl Wallenda. He was about as fearless as they come.

Yes, he was fearless in many ways. He went on to create these amazing pyramids performed all over the world, and he walked the wire into his 70s. He walked across Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia with 30,000 people looking on, open-mouthed, and he walked it in places like Tallulah Gorge, Georgia, on a wire 1,000 feet across and 750 feet above the ground. He was 65 at the time, and his wife handed him a martini when he reached the other side – but not before he’d stopping midway to do a couple of handstands, one in honor of our soldiers in Vietnam, and another for laughs, so he was definitely a showman with a flair for the dramatic.

My great-grandfather eventually made his way to San Juan, Puerto Rico, where my family was headlining on a show that wasn’t selling many tickets. He decided to do a walk between two skyscrapers at the Condado Plaza Hotel to help promote show. He was 73 years old at the time. He got on that wire unaware that it had been rigged unstable; the guys who rigged it weren’t part of his normal team that included my uncle, who was performing elsewhere, and my father, who was home because my mother had just suffered a miscarriage. Long story short, because of the high winds and the improperly secured wire, he lost his balance, fell, and lost his life. That was in 1978, Less than a year later I was born, and that was the legacy that I inherited.

Nik Wallenda – Photo Courtesy Nik Wallenda

Karl Wallenda’s best friend was none other than Evel Knievel.

Yes, they were very close friends. They both shared the same passion for entertainment, and also for pushing the limits. It’s just like me being friends with David Blaine, Chris Angel, and many of the other daredevils today. I think because there’s not a lot of us, and because we are all part of the same small community, that a natural closeness develops. It was the same with my great-grandfather. He and Evel Knievel spent a lot of time together during their lifetimes. They respected each other a great deal. In fact, when Evel Knievel attempted his big jump in that rocket over the Snake River Canyon, he recruited my family to open for him. If you look at the ticket stubs you’ll see the Wallenda name right there. So they were close. They performed a lot and spent quite a bit of time together.


When did you start walking the wire?

My mom was six months pregnant with me and still walking on the wire, so I’ve been walking on a wire longer than my feet have been on terra firma [laughs]. As soon as I could stand up, they had me on a wire a couple of feet off the ground. Not on my own, obviously; my mom or my dad would grab my hand and sort of walk me back and forth. I have photos of me walking on a wire at 18 months old. My great-grandfather really said it best in the book that he wrote in the 1970s. He said, “Life is on the wire, and everything else is just waiting.” That is very true. For my family it is a very literal expression, but the reality of the situation is that everybody is on a wire. That’s one of the reasons that I wrote this book, because everybody is on a wire and everybody’s trying to get to the other side. My family just does it in a literal sense: Even though there are gases in the volcano, or heavy winds in the Grand Canyon, or heavy mists at Niagara Falls, we are still going to face our fears and make it across to the other side.

Nik Wallenda

In 2013 you performed that heart-stopping wire walk over the Grand Canyon with millions watching on TV.

Very early on, it was a dream of mine to walk across the Grand Canyon. In fact, I was making plans to walk across the Grand Canyon well before I sought permission to cross Niagara Falls. It was a long and tedious process of just figuring out where in the canyon I could walk. And then there was the engineering involved, which was just as much of a challenge as actually getting on that wire and walking it.


How did you train for that walk?

I trained with wind machines creating gusts of up to 90 mph. We knew that the winds were not going to exceed 50 mph, so training at 90 mph really helped me prepare both physically and mentally. I did have to endure a couple of 43-mph gusts while I was out there the day of the walk, so it did get fairly windy. What I learned from walking the Grand Canyon is that you can never train enough. I remember being out in the middle of the canyon and thinking that, even though I’d trained in 90-mph winds, I wish I had trained at 120-mph winds. When you’re in the real setting, you’re much better of mentally, emotionally, and physically if your preparation has gone above and beyond. Thankfully everything worked out. The result was a dream come true. It was an extremely successful TV special. In fact, my Grand Canyon walk still remains the highest-rated special in the history of the Discovery Channel, which is the largest network in the world. It was a huge success, and it opened a lot of doors.

Nik Wallenda speaks at a press conference in Chicago after successfully walking the wire across the Chicago River, Sunday November 2, 2014.
Jessica Koscielniak / Sun-Times, File

How do you cross the Grand Canyon on a wire, with no harness, and keep calm?

A lot of it is the power of our mind – where we allow our mind to go, and what energy we give our thoughts. I am a believer, so I give all of my thoughts to God. There are so many times in life where my mind will want to go to a negative spot. The Grand Canyon is a perfect example. When I got hit with those 43-mph winds, my mind naturally wanted to freak out. I was then able to counter that negative thought with the fact that I had trained and prepared for that moment. Everything was going to be okay. I’d practiced walking in 90-mph wind gusts. I’m going to be okay. So I sort of talked myself down, and before you know it, my heartrate dropped down to a normal level.


Your new book is titled Facing Fear.

In some ways, I guess I never realized what fear was because I was raised to be fearless. The reason I wrote the book was because of that 2017 eight-person pyramid fall while training in Sarasota, and the fear that I experienced after that. The book talks in depth about the process that I went through to overcome fear after that terrible accident.


How do you deal with fear after something like that pyramid collapse?

After that accident, I started to experience fear to the point where it became debilitating. I actually thought I was done walking the wire. I remember that crucial conversation with my wife, where she said, “Look, I support you, but the family lives by the words ‘the show must go on.’ You do what you do to inspire people. I think you may need to dig a little deeper.” Well, that really set me off on a faith journey, one that was about finding out who I was, and then realizing that, yes, fear was a part of it, and that the seed had been planted during that accident. Reality of what happened that day hit me – I’d almost lost my sister. She was torn up and in a coma, and had 73 screws and plates in her face alone. And even though I got back on that wire the next day, I came to the realization that I was avoiding a very essential fact: Despite what I might have looked like on the outside, I was running from fear rather than dealing with it.

Acrobat siblings Nik and Lijana Wallenda prepare to attempt a highwire stunt in the middle of Times Square in New York City.

Is it fair to say that you were in denial of that fear?

That’s very true. My pastor recommended seeing this amazing Christian psychologist in town. After spending an hour with her I remember saying, “I’m fine. I got back on the wire right away. I don’t need to talk to anybody.” She challenged me and said, “You’ve got to deal with it. You have to learn about your fear, but before you can do that you’ve got to acknowledge that the fear is real in your life. And then once you do that, then you can deal with the shame.” And I think that’s when it hit me. I was ashamed of the fact that here I was, Nik Wallenda – entertainer, daredevil, risk taker – and I’m supposed to be fearless…but I’m really not. I’m human. I’m real. I experience fear like anyone else. I had to work through all of those steps in order to work my way to that shame. Only then was I able to face the fear, deal with the fear, and then overcome that fear.

The book applies to my personal struggle with fear, but it is really written for people who are dealing with fear in their everyday lives. For example, I talk to people all the time who are miserable every day when they go to work. They do it because there is a paycheck on Friday and it covers the mortgage, but they really have dreams of a different occupation. Fear is preventing them from pursuing their dreams. What happens as a result? They prefer the status quo. They settle. I wrote this book because I wanted to inspire them. “Yes, you’re in a job that you don’t like. You have to be smart – you don’t want to walk away from your job without a plan, but you can take action and prepare for the job you really want.” My hopes are that people reading this book will use the lessons that I had to go through and apply it to real world situations in their own lives. If so, then they might not have to go as deep down in the valley as I did before reaching the mountaintop.


You mentioned preparation. That seems to be a key ingredient to conquering fear.

The amount of preparation that goes into what I do is incredible. Just to give you an example, my latest TV special was on ABC, where I walked over an active volcano – the Masaya Volcano, near Managua, Nicaragua. We studied volcanoes for four years as a team just to prepare for this event. We wanted to know the effects not only on the equipment, but also on the individuals who would be closest to volcano. We also worked with many volcanologists to understand this unpredictable environment as best we could, and then developed a training regimen based upon that science.


How do you train to walk across an active volcano?

We knew that I was going to have to wear a gas mask for this walk, and the science told us that wearing a gas mask would deprive my brain of oxygen. Actually, a gas mask can drop your oxygen level anywhere between 15-to-30%. So I trained on a wire that was the same length as what I would walk over the volcano, and I wore an oxygen deprivation mask that would cut my oxygen levels all the way down to 30%. That way, I was only breathing 30% oxygen during my practice walks. The logic being, if I could perform a walk with my oxygen level that low, then performing the walk at 70% oxygen was going to much easier.

The gases were a challenge in other ways. In fact, the gases were much stronger than anyone anticipated, including my team that had done all of the studies. There was a high degree of variability with this environment. We installed safety cables in that volcano crater that lasted two months before failure, and then we had some that started failing after 10 days. That’s because conditions inside a volcano change almost daily. Gas levels can be thicker from one day to the next, from one week to the next, so it was hard to predict what window we were going to be in. I not only trained with goggles to protect my eyes from the sulfuric gases, but I trained with goggles that were fogged up on purpose, so that I literally could not see through them. I wore special suits designed to keep me hot, so that my body would be prepared for the heat. I walked with weighted vests and also with the extra weight of an oxygen tank, in case the gases got so bad and that I needed oxygen. I walked the wire like this forwards and backwards, sometimes six times per training session. Oftentimes I’d practice with all of this gear on, walking a mile-and-a-half without stopping. That way I could prepare for those worst cases, so that when I am faced with them I’ve already been in much more difficult situations. It’s similar to somebody who is about to speak in front of a large group. The more you practice, the more comfortable you get. And the more comfortable you get, the better the chances of delivering a better message.

Mr. T(L) and Nik Wallenda attend Mr. T And Nik Wallenda Celebrate National Amazing Month.

Does this training also help your concentration?

Yes, absolutely. A lot of training is about not being distracted. That was especially true for my walk over Times Square. There’s no greater distraction than all of those giant LED screens, people, taxis, and noise that you have going on in Times Square. So yeah, concentration is a huge part of it – training to not be distracted, and to stay focused. To be honest with you, I have a little bit of ADHD. My mind is everywhere sometimes. But when I’m on the wire, that’s the one place where I feel like I can stay extremely focused.


Let’s talk Niagara Falls. More than a hundred thousand in attendance, and millions watching on TV.

Niagara Falls took changing 100-year-old laws in two countries in order to get permission to walk over, so just the political part of that event was an overwhelming, monumental task. Then there was the training and the actual walk itself, followed by the network coming in last-minute and ordering me to wear a tether. That was something that I’d never done before. It’s like telling Tiger Woods that he’s got to use a specially weighted golf club instead of his trusty driver just before he tees off in a major. It’s going to throw him off because it’s different. It’s unique. And here I was, risking my life while people watching thought that the tether was going to save me. While that is true in in the purest sense, the reality is that a tether presented a risk as well. A tether could have caused me to fall. I could have gotten tangled up in it. The reality is, I’d trained for this walk without a safety. It was an extremely uncomfortable change, especially in a situation where I had never done it before and didn’t get to train with it on. But the network made the decision 10 days before the walk, and they were determined that I had to wear it. It was nonnegotiable.

Nik Wallenda edges his way along the tightrope above Niagara Falls (Image: Reuters)

What was the diameter of the wire you walked on?

I walked on a cable that was 2-inches in diameter, which was also different for me. My entire life, I had walked on a 5/8-inch wire rope, which is what I’m comfortable with to be honest with you. If someone came to me and said, “Do you want a 3-inch wire rope, 2-inch wire rope, or a 1-inch wire rope?” I would choose a 5/8-inch roped every time. It’s much smaller, obviously, but it’s where I feel at home.


What role does creativity play in preparing to walk something like Niagara Falls?

Creativity is a huge element. We actually brought in airboats to create strong winds, as well as fire trucks to simulate the heavy mist created by Niagara Falls. It’s really hard to simulate real world settings, but I have a great team of engineers and family members that are extremely creative.

A lot of my walks are creative in the sense that we are doing things never done before. There were many, many unique challenges like that when it came to walking over Niagara Falls. For example, we had these pendulum-type weights installed to keep the wire from twisting. What we learned at Niagara Falls, we took with us to help make the Grand Canyon walk a little bit safer. Then we took what we learned from the Grand Canyon experience and applied it to the volcano walk. So, we’re always learning, always pushing, and always being creative in our work.

Lijana Wallenda and Nik Wallenda walk a high wire over Times Square during the Highwire Live In Times Square With Nik Wallenda on June 23, 2019, in New York City.
Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for Dick Clark Productions

Your faith is an important part of your identity. When you walked the Grand Canyon, you could be heard trusting each step to Jesus. How you use your faith to inspire and motivate others?

My faith is just like my wire walking. It’s who I am. I gave my life to Christ at three years old, so it’s really all I’ve ever known. I’m not preaching when I’m out there on the wire. When I’m on TV, I’m living my life. I think that’s why mainstream media respects it so much. There are no demands on our part to have the microphones on while I’m walking that wire. The networks could turn it off if they want, but they choose instead to keep it on. I think people respect that I’m not out there trying to change someone’s life or belief system. It’s just me being real, and that is what helps keep me calm. People are awestricken by the fact that I can stay that calm in those settings, but the Bible talks about a peace that passes all understanding. That is where I get my peace. If people’s lives are encouraged, inspired, or brought the faith because of that, then that’s me fulfilling my calling. Otherwise I just live my life by example, which is what the Bible calls us to do – to be Christlike. I don’t always succeed, but I try.


What have you been doing to stay relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic?

We opened up the drive-in thrill show, which has been a huge success. We’ve played a month now in two different cities, and have basically invited a bunch of my daredevil friends to perform with me. This is something we normally can’t do, because everyone is always booked up and performing elsewhere, but coronavirus changed all of that. So I called everyone up and said, “Hey let’s all get together and put on this awesome show.” People can drive onto a lot in their car, and the action takes place high above the ground. You can watch from the inside of your car, or the front of your car, and you can tune in to our radio station and see a great show. I speak from the wire for about 20 minutes, and use that time to hopefully motivate and encourage people during these crazy times.

PASADENA, CALIFORNIA – JANUARY 08: Nik Wallenda (L) and Erendira Wallenda attend ABC Television’s Winter Press Tour 2020 held at The Langham Huntington, Pasadena on January 08, 2020 in Pasadena, California.
(Photo by Michael Tran/FilmMagic)

Final Question:  If you could offer one piece of advice to inspire and motivate others, what would that be?

I would tell you that God has blessed us all with powerful minds. We have the ability to control what we allow into our minds, and also what we allow out. We have the power to filter out the negative thoughts and replace these with positives. If I am on the wire and get hit with 43-mph winds, I can immediately counter that with the thought that I trained in 90. It is definitely something that you have to practice. Fear can overtake us. Fear can debilitate us. Or, if we learn to face our fear, it can empower us.

Written By:  Michael D. McClellan |  

He is born to run, and for 16 seasons John Havlicek is an unyielding force of perpetual motion for the Boston Celtics, breaking down defenders and NBA records alike, winning eight NBA championships, first as Sixth Man extraordinaire, and then as an All-Star standout in the waning years of the Russell Dynasty, and finally as an All-NBA First Team selection, NBA Finals Most Valuable Player, and key protagonist in the NBA’s Greatest Game Ever Played. Havlicek, or “Hondo” to legions of adoring fans, will be forever immortalized by the most famous radio call in basketball history, but the most lasting image is that of an indefatigable small forward who, years before Boston Marathoner Bill Rodgers conjures legions of road racers, unbidden, out of the invisible fabric of the universe, runs an aging Oscar Robertson ragged on the way to the 1974 NBA Championship.

Havlicek’s story begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio, a small town on the West Virginia border. The son of Czechoslovakian immigrants becomes a three-sport star at Bridgeport High School, earning All-State honors in football, baseball, and basketball. Havlicek receives dozens of basketball scholarship offers. He chooses Ohio State, where he plays for the legendary Fred Taylor and teams with collegiate stars Jerry Lucas and Larry Siegfried, as well as with future coaching legend Bobby Knight. Havlicek’s time in Columbus is a fairy tale, as the Buckeyes roll to a 78–6 record over a three-season span and win the 1960 national championship.

Featuring six players drafted by the NBA, two future Hall of Famers in Lucas and Havlicek, and Knight, who goes on to become the winningest basketball coach in NCAA history, the Buckeyes lead the nation by averaging 90.4 points en route to the 1960 championship over California.

Ohio State reaches the title game the next two years, losing to Cincinnati in ’61 and ’62. Havlicek is selected by the Celtics in the first round of the 1962 NBA Draft. Boston, fresh off its fourth title in five seasons, is loaded with great players. It allows Havlicek time to assimilate. The unproven rookie finds his niche by bringing relentless energy to the court.

“Red loved defensive players,” Havlicek says. “At Ohio State, my role was to play hard-nosed defense. In Boston, I started out playing five minutes a game early in the season. My minutes increased as Red gained more confidence in me. I ended the year averaging 20 minutes per game, which was fourth best in the league for rookies.”

The Celtics capture their sixth NBA Championship, and Havlicek earns a spot on the All-Rookie Team. He puts in work during the summer, and then leads the team in scoring during the 1963–64 regular season. The Celtics, meanwhile, continue to roll, winning 59 games and easily defeating the San Francisco in the 1964 NBA Finals.

Havlicek’s signature moment comes during the 1965 Eastern Division Finals when the Celtics, winners of six consecutive NBA Championships, suddenly find themselves on the brink of elimination. Battling Chamberlain and the Philadelphia 76ers, and clinging to a 110–109 Game 7 lead, Bill Russell’s inbound pass hits the guide wire supporting the basket with less than five seconds left. Havlicek’s ensuing steal of Hal Greer’s inbound pass – arguably the most famous theft in NBA history – keeps the championship streak intact and sends the Celtics to the Finals. Fans all over New England hang on the words of Celtics radio broadcaster Johnny Most, whose call instantly becomes part of Celtics lore: “Havlicek steals it. Over to Sam Jones. Havlicek stole the ball! It’s all over! Johnny Havlicek stole the ball!”

Havlicek continues to reprise his role of Sixth Man through the end of the Bill Russell Era, winning championships in 1965, 1966, 1968, and 1969. With Russell’s retirement in ’69, Havlicek is not only starting for the first time in his professional career, but he’s also the unquestioned leader of the next generation of Boston Celtics. New head coach Tom Heinsohn installs an up-tempo offense, and Havlicek responds with the best statistical season of his career: 24 points, 7.8 rebounds, and 6.8 assists. But after winning six championships during the Sixties, the new-look Celtics are suddenly NBA bottom feeders.

It doesn’t take long for the Celtics to bounce back. With Cowens, White, and Havlicek forming the nucleus of a revamped roster, the 1972–73 Boston Celtics post the best regular season record in team history, going 68–14 and looking like a slam dunk to win the NBA Championship. All of that changes when Havlicek injures his shoulder during the Eastern Conference Finals against New York, allowing the Knicks to take the series in seven games. The loss puts the Celtics at a crossroads, but Boston rebounds the following season by winning 56 regular season games and saving their best effort for the playoffs. After dispatching the Buffalo Braves in the first round, Boston exacts revenge by beating the Knicks in the Eastern Conference Finals, 4–1.

Awaiting them are the Milwaukee Bucks, led by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Oscar Robertson. The series goes seven games, with neither team able to protect home court advantage. With the Celtics up 3–2 and returning to the Boston Garden, everyone in New England prepares to celebrate the team’s 12th championship banner and its first without Russell.

“Game 6 in the Garden,” Havlicek recalls. “We wanted to win the championship in front of our fans, and the Bucks wanted to have the same opportunity in Game 7 back in Milwaukee.”

Facing a do-or-die situation, the Bucks’ season comes down to one shot. Abdul-Jabbar’s baseline skyhook at the buzzer sends the Celtics back to Milwaukee for Game 7. Robertson plays 46 minutes on dead legs. Boston wins easily, 102–87, securing the team’s first championship of the post-Russell era.

The Celtics fail to repeat, falling to the Bullets in the ’75 Eastern Conference Finals, prompting Auerbach to trade Westphal for Scott. The transaction is made to counter Rick Barry’s Golden State Warriors, who sweep Washington in the Finals.

“Red wanted more backcourt speed,” Havlicek says. “Charlie was one of the fastest players in the league.”

On October 24, the Celtics open the season by running past the Houston Rockets, 109–94. Havlicek leads the way with 24, the first step in a journey that culminates with a championship over the Phoenix Suns. The ’76 Finals is best remembered for that triple-overtime classic in the old Boston Garden.

“I hit that running bank shot with two seconds left on the clock in double-overtime, and the Garden went crazy,” Havlicek says. “The crowd immediately stormed the floor, and we headed to the locker room thinking that we’d won the game. The refs put one second back on the clock, and pandemonium breaks out. The scorer’s tables were toppled over. Richie Powers—a referee—got into a fight with a fan. Then Gar Heard hits that long, turnaround jumper to put the game into triple-overtime. We were able to win it and then go to Phoenix and close it out.”

That 1976 title is the last time Havlicek walks off the court a champion. Havlicek retires in 1978, his 38-year-old body worn down from 16 seasons of NBA pounding. That the Celtics are in disarray doesn’t help; Havlicek, who plays the game at the highest standard, can’t stomach the new breed of selfish players like Curtis Rowe, who emerges from the shower after a humiliating 30-point defeat to announce, “What’s everybody upset about? The Ws and Ls don’t show up on the paychecks.” Ironic then that Havlicek—the Celtics’ unstoppable running man, and one of the best-conditioned ballers on the planet—simply decides he’s had enough and walks away.

“It was time,” he says, and then, without a hint of irony: “It didn’t end the way that I’d hoped, but it was a good run.”

You won a national championship while playing alongside four future NBA players:  Jerry Lucas, Larry Siegfried, Joe Roberts and Mel Nowell.  How were you able to put individual agendas aside and win it all?

We had a great head coach in Fred Taylor, and we played for a program that was known for its winning tradition.  Our team chemistry really fed off of those two things.  Red was able to accomplish this in Boston, while Fred created that same time of atmosphere at Ohio State.  Red had a theory that it’s not what statistics you have that measures your value to the team.  Everyone wants to score 25 or 30 points a game and grab 15 or 20 rebounds.  But you have to work together to be successful.  You have to make sacrifices in your game in order to make the team stronger.  That’s the same type of philosophy that Fred adhered to at Ohio State.  Sacrifice for the good of the team.  Put egos and agendas aside and do what’s necessary to be successful as a team.  And with a strong leader like Fred, it was easy for us to play as a cohesive unit.  So really, all of the credit goes to Fred for getting us to buy into that philosophy.


Looking back now, what do you remember most about winning the national championship against California?

Two days before the championship game I injured myself in the bathroom at Ohio State.  I cut myself on a paper towel dispenser, and I ended up with 10 stitches on the ends of my fingers on my shooting hands.  I remember being concerned about the injury and how it would affect my play in the game.  The other thing I remember was how good we shot the ball in the first half – I believe we only missed four shots and were up big at halftime.  We played extremely well in that game.  We were a sophomore dominated group, and many people didn’t think we would go very far that season, let alone reach the title game and then win big.


That 1960 championship team was also known for its academics.

The unusual thing about our team was that we were true student-athletes.  Everyone graduated.  We had seven guys get masters degrees.  Two received Ph. Ds and two received MDs.  There was one quarter during the school year that our team GPA was a 3.4.  That’s really hard to believe, but true, and I’ll bet that’s an NCAA record.  We considered ourselves students first and foremost, and we took a lot of pride in our accomplishments in the classroom.  And to a large degree, Fred [Taylor] was the architect of our academic success.  Fred told me when he was recruiting me that I was here for an education, and that was going to be number one on my list of priorities.  Number two was basketball.  Number three was a social life.  And after the first two, we all knew that there was not going to be much of a social life [laughs].


Please tell me a little about your coach at Ohio State, the legendary Fred Taylor.

Well, I don’t think I would have gotten anywhere without his tutelage. He shaped me tremendously, and I feel that he was the person most responsible for preparing me to play professional basketball.  He stressed the fundamentals, and he stressed defense.  Those were the things helped get me into the NBA, and those were the things that kept me there for all of those years.  The foundation of my professional basketball career was truly based on what I learned from Fred Taylor.


Coaching great Bob Knight was a teammate on that national championship team.  What kind of player was Coach Knight?

Let’s just say that Bobby wasn’t the quickest man on foot [laughs], but defensively he played hard.  When you got fouled by Bobby, you knew you had been fouled.  He definitely got his money’s worth [laughs].  Bobby played a reserve role and came off the bench quite a bit.  He was a shooter, but his calling card was defense.  If he’d been allowed to play more minutes he would have just fouled out, he was that aggressive [laughs].


Let’s talk Olympic basketball.  Many people were shocked when you failed to make the 1960 Olympic basketball team.  What happened?

That was probably the biggest disappointment of my athletic career.  I thought I played extremely well during the Olympic trials, and I felt that I deserved to be selected to play on that team.  The same argument could be made for my teammate, Larry Siegfried.  In my mind, he played well enough to be chosen for that team.  The system was a lot different back then.  The AAU and NCAA were feuding at the time, and it really became a big political thing after the first team was selected.


You were selected by the Celtics in the first round of the 1962 NBA Draft.  Boston had just won its fourth title in five seasons.

I was lucky to be drafted by the Celtics, no question about that.  I remember that when I learned that I was drafted by the Celtics, Bob Knight said that that was the greatest thing that could have happened to me because the Celtics played my style of basketball.  And like you just mentioned, I wasn’t forced to come in and be a savior or anything like that, because they had a lot of hall of fame players on that team.  You did have a Bill Russell, a Cooz, a Sharman, a Sam Jones.  You also had Heinsohn and KC [Jones].  You had Frank Ramsey.  It made my transition a lot smoother than had I been drafted to play elsewhere.  I was able to ease in.  I just sort of became a part of that process, where they were using me a little bit here and there, and whatever, and over time it evolved into a bigger and better leadership role for me.


What was it like adjusting to the pro game?

I think the people that you involve yourself with, and who help you along the way, these people all play a part in some sort of design or pattern in what you’re going to become.  The same was true with me when I joined the Celtics.  Looking back at when I was drafted, in my wildest dreams I didn’t think I’d be able to do what I did during my career with the Celtics.  I was able to learn from other people on that team, and you learn from winners like Bill Russell and KC and Sam and Cooz and Ramsey.


Hall of Famer Frank Ramsey was the team’s original Sixth Man.  Now here you come, competing for his job.  How did he handle that?

When I came to Boston, Ramsey could have felt threatened and could have made life hard on me, but he didn’t.  He was the opposite of that.  He said, ‘I’m so glad you’re here because you’re going to add two years to my life, because I can’t do it as much as I used to and I’m hoping you’ll step in and help me.’  That was totally different experience from what I expected as a rookie, because when you go to training camp everyone is working to protect their job.  They don’t want to see some guy come in and knock them off the team or take away their minutes.  It was totally different with the Celtics.  It was a secure team, and we embraced each other, and it was a great marriage.


As a rookie, how did you find your niche on team loaded with stars?

Well, one of the things that I knew about Red Auerbach was that he loved defensive players.  He understood that defense was what meant the difference between simply reaching the playoffs and winning a championship.  If you look at those early Celtics teams that he coached, they were very good on the offensive end but weren’t the best defensively.  All of that changed with Bill Russell.  When I arrived I knew that Tom Sanders, KC Jones, Russell and Sam Jones were all great defenders.  At Ohio State, that was basically my job – to be the defensive stopper.  So, I felt then and still feel today that the quickest way into the NBA is to play defense.  If you have NBA ability and can play defense you’ll have an opportunity to succeed, because great defenders are never a liability.  Offense is all about instinct, and with the great teams that I was on I had an opportunity to find my place on offense as well.  I had great hands, which really helped me, and I loved playing with Cousy that one year that we were together because the ball was going to be right where you needed it most of the time.  As I started out as a rookie I was playing maybe five minutes a game early in the season.  But as I gained more confidence, and as Auerbach gained more confidence in me, I ended the year with about twenty minutes per game, which was about fourth best in the league for rookies.  So, that’s how I fit in with the Celtics – I came in, played solid defense, and I worked hard on the offensive end to earn the trust of my coach and teammates.


Were you surprised to be selected by the Celtics?

No, not really.  It never hurts to be on a team that is successful, and I knew Red Auerbach often times would draft a person based on the type of program the person was involved with.  He was well aware of Ohio State’s program and the success that we’d enjoyed, and he knew the caliber of players we had on those teams.  He knew that we had won a national championship, and that we were competing for a championship every year.  So there were a lot of good things about me that he took into consideration based on the kind of program that I came from.  He knew that if I could contribute at a high level on such a successful team, he figured that I should be able to make the transition to the pros and be able to help the Celtics.


Your rookie season with the Celtics was also the final season for the incomparable Bob Cousy.  Even though you only played one season together, what were you able to learn from one of the greatest players in NBA history?

As a rookie, I quickly came to appreciate Cousy’s court vision.  I think that was the one thing that I learned from him, and I was able to develop it because Bob Cousy was such a visionary on the floor.  I think that you pick up a lot from your teammates. I was never a great ball handler or anything like that, but I tried to never lose sight of the ball at any time while I was on the basketball floor. The other thing is that I had a lot of movement to my game, a constant motion that really challenged defenders on a number of levels.  I was never standing around. And that creates a lot of opportunities.  Cousy always had the presence of mind to find me in situations where I was able to move and free myself for an open shot.  His court vision was unbelievable, and it helped me to see the court better – the passing lanes, the angles, things like that.  Those are the things that I took away from my rookie season with Bob Cousy.


You were such a great athlete that the Cleveland Browns also drafted you, intrigued by your potential as a wide receiver.  What was it like experimenting with a career in the NFL? 

I had decent speed, especially for that era, but it wasn’t great speed.  I believe I was timed at 4.6 in the 40-yard dash.  That’s slow by today’s standards.  Today you have plenty of defensive linemen who run faster than that.  But I could catch the ball.  I had really good hands.  That, and my height, were the things that really caught the Browns’ interest.


Please tell me a little about the Browns’ hall of fame head coach, the late Paul Brown. 

Interestingly enough, Paul Brown and I really liked each other.  I really appreciated  the way he ran things as a coach, the way everything was so precise.  He was very meticulous, very detail-oriented, which really matched who I was as a person, so Paul Brown was definitely my kind of coach.  I enjoyed my time in a Browns uniform, even though it became clear early on that football wasn’t my strong suit athletically – especially when compared to playing basketball.  Brown was very nice about it when he let me go.  He knew I had something to go to, that I had a future playing professional basketball.  So it really worked out best for everyone involved.


Were you really serious about playing football for the Browns? 

I was going to try and play both sports. But the good Lord has a way of playing a part in those types of decisions.  I think He made it pretty clear that I was cut out for basketball and not football.


You’ve mentioned the great Bill Russell, and what he meant to turning the Boston Celtics into world champions.  Please tell me what it was like to play with Russell.

There was no bigger winner, no better champion in basketball history, than my friend Bill Russell.  Russell was the kind of player who never concerned himself with personal goals – he put his team above all else, and in the process he made his teammates better players.  If you were a scorer, you were six-to-eight points better because Russell was around.  If you were a good defensive player you became a great defensive player, because with Russell hanging around you were able to do things that you weren’t ordinarily able to do.  You could take more chances, apply more pressure, knowing that Russell was back there protecting the basket. 

Obviously, playing with Russell for all of those years meant that you were going to be in the mix for a championship, and winning those titles were the most important things in my career.  Forget about the points, rebounds and assists or whatever, the championships are things that they can’t take away from you, and with Russell being involved, and being involved with him, you always knew that you had a chance.  And obviously, eleven championships in thirteen years is quite a remarkable feat, and that’s exactly what Russell accomplished during his career with the Celtics.  I was happy – and fortunate – to be on eight championships teams, six of them with Russell.


You followed Ramsey as the next great Sixth Man.

Coming off the bench never bothered me, because basketball is a team game.  It takes a total team effort, and it takes everyone buying into their role and playing it to the best of their ability.  The sixth man role is very important to a ball club – it was back then, and it is equally as important today.  I had confidence in my game, and I knew that I had the ability to start, which is something that evolved over time, but joining a team loaded with talent meant that I would have to wait my turn.  We had Tom Heinsohn, Satch Sanders, Frank Ramsey, Jim Loscutoff and Gene Guarilia.  All of these guys played the forward position, and all of them had the NBA experience that I lacked as a rookie.  So coming off the bench didn’t affect me in a negative way.  Like I said, I was confident in my ability to play the game of basketball.  Besides, one thing I learned from Red Auerbach was that it’s not who starts the game, but who finishes it, and I generally was around at the finish.


You were involved in one of the greatest plays in NBA history.  Take me back to that famous steal in the closing seconds of the 1965 NBA Eastern Conference Finals.

Well, it’s Game 7 against Wilt Chamberlain and the Philadelphia 76ers.  We’re up by a point with five seconds to play, 110-109, and we have possession of the basketball.  Bill Russell takes the ball out of bounds and hits the guide wire, and Philadelphia immediately regains possession.  At this point, everyone was concerned about the ruling because of the guide wire, but we quickly learned that Philadelphia was going to retain possession of the ball.

Red always said that you always needed to figure out some way to find an edge.  Some of the things he would come up with were just ridiculous [laughs], but he really drove that into us from the very beginning.  So, when I found myself on the court in that situation, I said to myself that the only thing that I could do to get a possible edge, is that when the ball is handed to Hal Greer, who was taking the ball out of bounds, I could actually try to time the pass and have a shot at deflecting or stealing the inbounds pass.  I knew that as soon as he was handed the ball that he had five seconds to put in in play.  So I counted.  One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three…

Most of the time the ball is delivered within the first three seconds.  But I get to one thousand four, and the ball hasn’t been inbounded yet.  So at that point you’re trying to keep visual contact with the man out of bounds with the ball, and with the person that you’re defending.  When I got to four a gave a little look, and it allowed me to see the play develop a little better.  Had I had my back to the ball, Hal Greer would have lobbed the ball right over my head.  But that little look allowed me to get a better perspective, and it convinced me that I could get a hand on this one.  And I got up in front of the ball, and momentarily controlled it before kicking it out to Sam Jones.


Bill Russell acted as player/coach of the Boston Celtics following Red Auerbach’s retirement in 1966.  Were you ever interested in coaching?

No, not really.  I knew very early on that I wouldn’t enjoy coaching, in large part because I was such a disciplined player.  I felt that I was a very coachable player because of that, but that isn’t always the case when it comes to the relationship between the coach and the players.  Oftentimes, players don’t get on the same page as the coach, and I would have found that frustrating.  I would have been very hard on myself.

The Celtics used to call me about coaching, but they pretty much knew what the answer was going to be, so they finally stopped calling.  Whenever the Celtics were changing coaches in the 70’s and 80’s, Red Auerbach would call and say, ‘Okay, for the record, do you want to coach?’  I’d always say, ‘No,’ and then he’d say, ‘Goodbye.’  I think Red knew that coaching wasn’t for me, but he wanted to extend the offer anyway.  It was a show of respect on his part.  The Celtics were a family, and for the most part he looked within the family when hiring his coaches.  Russell, Heinsohn, Satch Sanders, Dave Cowens, KC Jones.  Red hired his guys because he trusted them, and he knew that they were going to do their best to help the Celtics win another championship.


You had an up-close view of those great battles between Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain.  What stands out in your mind?

It wasn’t a matter of Wilt-versus-Russell with Bill. He would let Wilt score 50 if we won, and there were times when that was the case.  The most important things to Bill were championships, rings and winning.  He was never after the personal stats.  Wilt could raise the level of his game, he could do things that were eye-popping when you reviewed the box score, but he could never figure out how to make his teammates around him better.  Bill was always there to win the important possessions, to grab the key rebounds, to make the key blocks, to trigger a key fast breaks.  He played a completely different game than Wilt.  It was a mental game, a psychological game.  And it was a big weapon whenever Bill went up against Wilt, because in Wilt’s mind, Bill already had Wilt’s number.  The battle was already won before it ever started.  Wilt would never admit it, but Bill knew he was in Wilt’s head.  And he used that to his advantage.


What makes the Lakers-Celtics rivalry so special? 

Well, it started in the 60s, with all of those great battles in the Finals.  Jerry West and all of those guys going up against Bill Russell, Sam Jones and the rest of us.  And then you had the Bird-Magic rivalry that increased the intensity to a completely different pitch, because you had two great players who basically saved the league from irrelevance and also took it to a new height.  In the nineties you had the Dream Team, with Larry and Magic on the same team, and that added something to it.  And then you had a renewal of the rivalry with Paul Pierce and Kobe Bryant going at each other in the Finals.  You had Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen going for their first title.  You had Paul injuring his knee in that first game, only to come back and win the MVP award while leading the Celtics back to the title.

Today everything has gotten so big.  There is some much media coverage, in so many forms.  Newspaper, radio, television, the Internet.  Those things all help fuel the fire when it comes to great rivalries.  I don’t even think there were people who traveled with us when we won some of those early championships [laughs].


The continuity of those great Celtics teams is truly remarkable. 

The Celtics always had an older, more experienced person to pass along the team philosophy.  Bob Cousy and Bill Sharman were a great backcourt tandem, and they passed that along to KC and Sam [Jones].  Frank Ramsey passed the Sixth Man role to me.   Russell retires, and along comes Cowens.  It’s just the way we did things, and it was a big part of our success.

With Red, he was very loyal to his players.  The first eight or nine years of my career we never even made a trade.  We picked people up off of waivers, but Red had this ability to see a player, and see the talent that he had, and basically mold that individuals talent into a team effort.  It wasn’t who scored the most points, or who did this or that.  He always said it was about your value to the team.  And everyone had a certain value.  As I mentioned before, Tom Sanders and KC Jones were great defensive players.  Of course there’s no one like Bill Russell.  He was the guy who made the Celtics great.


During your Celtics career you played for Red Auerbach, Bill Russell and Tom Heinsohn.  What did these men have in common, and how were they different?

Red Auerbach was a person who was able to motivate people, and I think that this was probably his strongest asset.  Red had a situation where he could yell at people a little bit and get away with it.  He was intense.  What made him so smart was that he knew which players he could yell at and which ones he shouldn’t.  He yelled at Tommy quite a bit, but you didn’t see him doing those types of things to Bob Cousy.

With Russ, I knew that we were going to have basically the same system, and also pretty much have the same core group of players.  I think Russ’s biggest adjustment as coach came with cutting players in training camp, because cutting players was something that he really didn’t like to do.

Tommy was totally different that Red and Russ – he was far more relational with his players.  When I was a player, Tommy and I were roommates, and we used to call him the social director because he knew where all of the good restaurants and movie houses were at the time.  Didn’t matter what city, Tommy always had those types of things figured out.  Suddenly I find him as my coach, and all of a sudden all of these things have restrictions and limits to them [laughs].  But Tommy was the right man for the job of rebuilding the Celtics after Russ and Sam Jones retired.  I think he was more patient than Russ or Red would have been, which was crucial since he inherited such a young club.


You won six championships playing alongside Bill Russell, and following his retirement the Celtics were in a rebuilding mode.  How difficult a period was this for you?

Well, it was really quite difficult for me, and I was short-tempered a lot of the time.  During my first seven seasons we had veteran teams, and I was really the kid on those teams.  Suddenly everything was flip-flopped; I was the old man on a team loaded with young players.  When all of the rookies came in, I can recall the first exhibition game we played in 1970.  You had Dave Cowens, Jo Jo White, Don Chaney and Garfield Smith on the court with me.  The referee turns and looks at me, and asks if this is really the Boston Celtics on the floor [laughs].

Rookies and younger players are going to go out there and make mistakes, and that’s exactly what happened.  I tried my best to help them get over these rough spots, but I really had a hard time with it.  That’s why I don’t think I could have ever been a coach.


The 1972-73 Boston Celtics posted the best regular season record in team history, going 68-14 and looking like a slam dunk to win the NBA Championship.  All of that changed during the Eastern Conference Finals against the New York Knicks.  What happened?

I thought all year long that we would win the championship.  We won 68 games during the regular season, had the best record in the NBA, and heading into the playoffs I thought we were playing with tremendous confidence and momentum.  We won our first round series against the Atlanta Hawks, and really didn’t have much trouble in that series against them.  Three of our wins were blowouts.  Unfortunately, I separated my  shoulder during the series with the Knicks, and it became an issue.  The injury kept me out of a key game that we lost in double overtime. I thought that ’72-’73 was going to be our year, but the shoulder injury just devastated the whole thing.  Injuries are an important factor in any championship run.  You have to be fortunate not to lose players or have people laid up, because if you do then it is going to take something away from the team.  Suddenly you’re not as deep, the rotation is different, the combinations aren’t the same, the chemistry might not be what is was before the injury.  That’s what happened to us.  We didn’t have the same confidence, and everything was suddenly a lot more difficult.  Credit goes to the Knicks for beating us.  They capitalized on the injury and beat us in seven games.


By 1974 the rebuilding was complete – the Boston Celtics were world champions once again, defeating the Milwaukee Bucks in a thrilling seven game series.

That particular championship was probably the one I enjoyed the most, because it was probably the one that I played the best in.  I can recall that double-overtime game when Don Chaney deflected the ball and I ran down the court – there were fifteen seconds left on the clock, and Heinsohn was calling timeout.  Well, I shot the ball, followed the miss and put it back up and in the basket as time expired.  That sent the game into double-overtime.  I hit three shots in the period, we were up 99-98, but then Mickey Davis hits a big shot to take the lead.  We ran a play with time winding down, and I make a shot on the baseline to put us back up by one.  The Bucks responded by running a play for Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar], and he hit that famous hook shoot along the baseline as time expired to beat us on our home floor.

Many people came up to my after the game and said that I didn’t look like the same person who started the game.  I can understand that, because I played 58 minutes, and it was a grueling experience.  But I was prepared to continue, and to play as long as it took to win that game.  Unfortunately we lost it, which meant that we had to travel to Milwaukee for Game 7.  We were determined to win that game, and that’s exactly what we did.  It was an unbelievable feeling.


That 1976 title would be your last, and the eighth time that you would walk off of the floor as an NBA champion.  Did winning ever get old for you?

Winning never gets old.  It only gets old if you lose, and that’s what made it so special to play for the Celtics.  The organization was committed to wining, and this started with [team founder and original owner] Walter Brown, and was reinforced daily by Red Auerbach.  Those two men created a winning atmosphere within the Celtics organization, and this made it easy for the players to put team success ahead of individual accomplishments.  If you look at any of those great championship teams, you’ll see players who could have easily put up big numbers on lesser teams elsewhere.  But we were interested in team goals.  Winning championships never got old to any of us.


Your career in Boston spanned two distinct eras – the Bill Russell Dynasty of the 1960s, and the Dave Cowens Era of the 1970s.  What was it like to be part of both periods in Boston Celtics history?

When you have the greatest defensive player in the history of basketball anchoring your team, everything is going to be predicated on defense.  Defensively, Russell revolutionized the game.  He could dominate without scoring a point.  You also had KC Jones on those teams, you had Satch Sanders.  Great defensive players.  But as we moved into the 70s, we shifted the emphasis from defense to offense. Again, Russell was the greatest defensive center the game has ever known.  Dave Cowens couldn’t come in and take the place of Russell, at least not by trying to imitate him.  Cowens had to play the game to his strengths.  He was a better shooter than Russell.  KC was a great defensive player.  Jo Jo White was a better shooter.  I was counted on more to carry the scoring burden on those later teams.  So we were much more offensively oriented during the 70s.  But make no mistake, those Russell teams could also score – as obvious as it sounds, you have to be able to outscore your opponent to win a game, and we won more than our share during the 60s.


Your conditioning and fitness levels were the stuff of legend.  Over the course of your career you ran countless defenders ragged trying to keep up with you.

Running was a very important part of my game, no question about it.  And I knew from the first time I played a basketball game that the toughest guy to score on was the guy who kept after me all the time, nose-to-nose, basket-to-basket, on every single possession.  So I stayed in motion, and I used the constant movement to my advantage.  I also knew that the opposite was also true. The toughest guy to defend against was the guy who kept running. The guy who never let up, never stopped moving, never let you relax. I knew that I could be successful doing those types of things, and that over the course of a game it would wear down the guy guarding me and open up valuable scoring opportunities late in the fourth quarter.  Those were the types of advantages that I wanted to have, especially in the close games.  If you were in better shape than the man guarding you, you could take advantage of the fatigue factor.   That’s the edge I wanted to have.


Final Question:  If you could offer one piece of advice on life to others, what would that be?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  Never give up.  I had hundreds of shots blocked during my career, but I always focused on making the next shot.  You’ve got to take chances, and you can’t dwell on the negatives.