Auerbach, Red

Born Arnold Jacob Auerbach, September 20, 1917, in New York, NY; died of a heart attack, October 28, 2006, in Washington, DC. Basketball coach. Red Auerbach, perhaps the greatest coach in professional basketball history, made the Boston Celtics into a dynasty with his aggressive personality, ground-breaking coaching, and shrewd deal-making. “He was a combative figure who always sought an edge, whether taunting his foes by lighting premature victory cigars on the bench or going jaw to jaw with the referees,” wrote Richard Goldstein in the New York Times. Auerbach led the Celtics to nine championships as coach in the 1950s and 1960s, a record, and another nine as general manager and as club president in the 1970s and 1980s. He spent 60 years in pro basketball, including 55 years with the Celt-ics, coaching eleven future Hall of Famers.

By the time he died in 2006, Auerbach had grown more important to basketball than statistics and championship rings could show. “Beyond his incomparable achievements, Red had come to be our basketball soul and our basketball conscience,” said David Stern, commissioner of the National Basketball Association (as quoted on SI.com). “The void left by his death will never be filled.”

Though almost everyone called him Red, he was born Arnold Jacob Auerbach, in the New York borough of Brooklyn in 1917, to Hyman Auerbach, a Jewish immigrant from Russia who owned a dry-cleaning business, and his wife, Mary Thompson, an office clerk. He got the name Red while working at the dry cleaner. Auerbach played basketball as a guard at Eastern District High School in Brooklyn and at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education. After graduating, he coached high school basketball and taught physical education and history. He joined the Navy during World War II.

Auerbach became a professional coach in 1946, taking over the Washington Capitols of the new Basketball Association of America. The Capitols won the Eastern Division title that year with a 49-11 record. He coached the team for three years, then spent one as coach of the Tri-Cities Blackhawks in Illinois.

In 1950, Boston Celtics founder and owner Walter Brown hired Auerbach as coach and gave him full control over personnel decisions. He hoped Auerbach would turn around the team’s poor record and meager popularity in Boston compared to baseball’s Red Sox and hockey’s Bruins. Auerbach did just that, coaching young guard Bob Cousy to become a popular rookie of the year and picking up talented front-court shooter Ed Macauley. The Celtics made the playoffs for six straight seasons. In 1956, he drafted center Bill Russell, whose speed and athleticism far exceeded other centers of the time. Russell was the final player the team needed to become a dynasty. They won the 1957 NBA championship, lost in the 1958 finals, and then won eight championships in a row.

Though Auerbach had a gift for spotting prospects who would grow to be stars, teamwork was central to the Celtics’ approach to the game. Auerbach said he would rather work with a good team player than someone more talented but selfish. “He’d bark and growl at his players, but there was always a reason for it, and they got the message,” former Celtic and NBA coach Wayne Embry once told the Chicago Tribune (as quoted by Goldstein in the New York Times). “On the Celtics, you accepted your role and took pride in being the best.”

Another ex-Celtic, John Havlicek, agreed. “His greatest talent was knowing how to handle men and how to react to any game situation,” he wrote in the foreword to Auerbach’s autobiography, according to the New York Times’ Goldstein. “He would curse us, coddle us, maybe even enrage us. Anything he thought would make us perform better.”

As he filled the Celtics with talent, Auerbach paid no attention to race. That made him a pioneer. In his first year, 1950, he drafted Chuck Cooper, the first black player ever picked in an NBA draft. He was the first coach to introduce an all-black starting lineup, in 1964. And when he moved from coach to general manager in 1966, after his eighth straight championship, he made Russell the NBA’s first black head coach.

For his work as a coach, Auerbach was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1969. The Professional Basketball Writers Association of America named him the greatest NBA coach of all time in 1980. It took four decades for another NBA coach to equal Auerbach’s record of nine championships. Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson finally matched the feat in 2002.

While general manager, Auerbach continued to work sharp deals to bring new talent to the Celtics. The team won the 1968, 1969, 1974, 1976, 1981, and 1984 championships while he held the position. In 1978, he made his most brilliant move as GM, drafting Larry Bird while he was still a junior at Indiana State. Bird went on to lead the Celtics to three championships. After the triumphant 1983-84 season, Auerbach turned over day-today control of the team to new general manager Jon Volk, his former assistant. The team honored Auerbach with a ceremony at Boston Garden, then the Celtics’ arena, in January of 1985, with 40 current and former Celtics surrounding Auerbach on the court as a banner commemorating his work was lifted into the rafters. In 1986, the team won the NBA championship again.

Auerbach retained the title of president of the Celt-ics until his death on October 28, 2006. He died of a heart attack near his home in Washington, D.C. He was 89. His wife of 59 years, Dorothy, died in 2000. He is survived by his daughters, Nancy and Randy, a granddaughter, and three great-grandchildren.

Sources: Los Angeles Times, October 29, 2006, p. B12; New York Times, October 30, 2006, p. A23; SI.com,http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/basketball/nba/10/29/auerbach.reaction.ap/index.html (October 30, 2006); SI.com,http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/basketball/nba/10/29/obit.auerbach.ap/index.html (October 30, 2006).

—Erick Trickey