Remembering Tom Heinsohn, an NBA legend and Celtics icon

Last week, Tom Heinsohn passed away at the age of 86. He was a living link to the NBA’s past and a true legend. 

For the NBA, the 1964 All-Star Game was not just another exhibition game. After nearly two decades of play, the league still had not found a foothold and its continued existence was not guaranteed. This game, though, would be nationally televised and was a chance for the league to showcase its best players to potential fans who had never had the opportunity to watch an NBA game before. Who wouldn’t be won over by watching Jerry West, Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor, and Bill Russell all playing on the same court?

As the countdown to tip-off intensified, the players were still in the locker room, making no moves towards the court. The Celtics’ Tom Heinsohn was the leader of the union and had made it clear that the players would not take the floor unless the players were finally guaranteed a pension plan. After years of delay and unfulfilled promises, the players had reached a breaking point. After a protracted stand-off, the owners relented and the game went on as scheduled. It was a major gain by the fledgling union, one that empowered them and made possible all the advances that would come in later decades. It may not have been the most famous achievement of Heinsohn’s lengthy time associated with the league, but it may have been the most consequential.

Tom Heinsohn, who passed away last week at the age of 86, was named to six All-Star teams, four All-NBA teams, and is one of just a handful of people to be inducted to the Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach. He was also the 1957 Rookie of the Year, though his teammate and fellow rookie Bill Russell — who missed the first half of the season to play in the Melbourne Olympics — always joked that, if he’d played the whole year, the award would have been his. They ended their rookie season as NBA champions, winning the Celtics first-ever title after a grueling Game 7 that went to two overtimes with Russell and Heinsohn often carrying the Celtics themselves. In a game where Bob Cousy and Bill Sharman combined to shoot 5-of-40, the two rookies combined for 56 points and 55 rebounds. It was the first of eight championships Heinsohn would win in his nine-year playing career.

Tommy Heinsohn was a shooter, a man who never saw a shot he did not like. He was nicknamed “Tommy Gun” for obvious reasons and “Ack Ack” for less immediately clear ones (it was supposed to represent the sound a shooting tommy gun would make). For every assist he recorded, he took nine shots. Though, to be fair, it’s not like he really needed to pass that much since he played the entirety of his career alongside one of two Hall of Fame point guards. He was also Red Auerbach’s whipping boy, the player Red would take all his frustrations out on, knowing that if other players were too proud to withstand his verbal assaults, Heinsohn did not care enough to let it bother him.

Tom Heinsohn had a Hall-of-Fame career as an NBA player and as a coach

Heinsohn played just nine years in the NBA, retiring after the 1965 season. He was an old school player who smoked cigarettes and spurned conditioning, leading Auerbach to quip that he had the “oldest 27 year-old body in the history of sports.” Also, he had a life outside of sports, selling life insurance in the offseasons for extra money, which he initially planned to make his full-time job before Auerbach came calling a few years later.

After the 1969 season, Bill Russell retired as both the Celtics’ center and coach. Red Auerbach offered the job to Heinsohn, a man with no prior coaching experience but one who was, despite that lack, already the consummate Celtic. To Red, that was much more important.

Heinsohn’s coaching tenure began inauspiciously, as the Celtics — missing Russell and Sam Jones, who had also retired — had their first losing season in two decades. However, they quickly rebounded, spurred by John Havlicek blossoming into a superstar, the addition of several valuable role players, and the drafting of JoJo White and future MVP Dave Cowens.

Under Heinsohn, the Celtics defeated the Milwaukee Bucks and the Phoenix Suns in the 1974 and 1976 Finals to give the franchise their first two championships of the post-Bill Russell era. However, arguably the best Celtics team of this era failed to win a championship. The 1972-73 Celtics went 68-14, and were on their way to the championship but a shoulder injury to Havlicek helped the Knicks advance and win the Finals themselves. After eight full seasons as coach, two titles, and five division championships, Heinsohn stepped down midway through his ninth and transitioned into a broadcasting career where he found his home for four decades.

Heinsohn was a part of the NBA from the moment he entered the league as a rookie in 1956 until his death 64 years later, as a player, coach, and then announcer — it was a lifetime spent with the league he loved and helped make. He was a living link to the NBA’s uncertain days, when its future was not assured and players had to work offseason jobs in order to make ends meet. Without him, the league will be a less colorful place. There will be no more Tommy Points handed out, no more endless excoriating of the refs from the broadcast booth, and one less legend able to share their stories of this lost era. His achievements with the Celtics, both on the court and on the sidelines, to his ones as the union’s leader, will endure long beyond the span of his lifetime. They don’t let just anyone into the Hall of Fame after all, let alone twice.