Pro Basketball: And Still Champions

When Bob Cousy hung up his sneakers at the end of last season, pessimists predicted a dark future for the team he left behind. "Cooz" was the playmaker the spark plug, the bandy-legged magician who had led the Boston Celtics to five straight National Basketball Association championships. His ball hawking inspired the Boston defense, his passes launched the fast break, his dribbling killed the clock. With Cousy the Celtics were unbeatable, but without him, the pundits predicted, they would be just another ball club. But what a ball club!

The 1963 season is two months old, and the only team that has won a game from the Celtics is the Cincinnati Royals—by one point, when Boston blew a 14-point lead in the last few minutes of play. Last week the Celtics wreaked a special vengeance on the Los Angeles Lakers, the same team that had battled them on almost equal terms through six games in last season's championship playoffs. Slender Sam Jones poured in 14 points in the first quarter, and Boston Coach Red Auerbach cleared his bench. But even the substitutes were merciless: all twelve men wound up in the scoring column, and the Celtics clobbered the Lakers 114-78. Before the week was out, they had won two more, run their record to 15-1.

There is not one rookie on the ball club, and the bench is so strong that if Boston fielded two teams instead of one, they would probably wind up playing each other for the N.B.A. title. Each Celtic is a specialist. John ("Hondo") Havlicek is a 205-pounder who chose basketball over pro football (he was drafted by the Cleveland Browns), boasts the most efficient elbows in the league. Guard K. C. Jones may not yet be in Cousy's class as a playmaker, but says one insider: "All he needs is a little more time on the job." Sam Jones and Tommy Heinsohn are "gunners"; on any other team they might average 30 points a game. But in Boston they have to share the wealth: hardly a game goes by without half a dozen Celtics scoring in double figures. Towering (6 ft. 10 in.) Center Bill Russell is a moody defensive genius who takes special delight in letting an opposing forward get off his shot—then sticking up one great hand, ramming the ball back down the shooter's throat.

The Celtics have not forgotten Bob Cousy—although they would like to. The memory serves mostly as a goad. "He's an opponent now," says one Celtic, "a kind of shadow that we're playing against." Says Russell: "Nothing much has changed. Now, when we take the ball out of bounds, we give it to Jones. In the past, we gave it to Cousy. That's the only difference."