Breaking Great

The year before, he had experienced crushing defeat. This time, he would be carried off the Kiel Auditorium court and into the locker room. Bob Pettit deserved every second of the ride. His Hawks, who had lost the NBA title to Boston in an epic, doubleovertime Game 7 showdown in 1957, had vindicated themselves by whipping the Celtics, 110-109, to win the 1958 world championship. Pettit, the future Hall of Fame forward, had scored 50 points in the deciding Game 6 victory to warrant being borne about the arena on a sedan chair—not just carried around by a bunch of sweaty guys—with teammates’ sprinkling rose petals in advance of him.

It was the first and only title for the Hawks’ franchise, which was based then in St. Louis, and it was only one of two times the Celtics would fail to win it all during a 13-season stretch from 1956-1969. In that moment, as the Hawks and their delirious fans were celebrating Pettit and the title, no one could have known the extent of the Boston dynasty. It was more a vindication for the previous year’s disappointment than one of the two speed bumps the Celts would encounter during their dominance.

“It wasn’t me; it was the team,” Pettit said in the jubilant locker room after the win. “I’m so happy to be with this group.”

There was no denying Pettit’s heroics in the game and the series—he averaged 29.3 points—but the 6-9 forward had plenty of help, most notably Cliff Hagan and Slater Martin. Boston, meanwhile, was not at full strength, thanks to injuries to Bill Russell, Bill Sharman and Jim Loscutoff. Still, it would be wrong to consider the victory any less legitimate. Injuries play a part in every season, as some of the Celtics’ victims during that span would note. Even Boston boss Red Auerbach was unwilling to denigrate the Hawks’ triumph.

“They deserved the title,” Auerbach said. “They outshot us and won the close ones, but we made ‘em go all the way down to the wire to beat us, and Bill Russell, willing as he was, was far from the Russell of mid-year.”

However, Pettit reached top form in the final series. In the fourth season of an 11-year career that featured All-Star appearances in each campaign, he continued to stake his claim as the League’s top frontcourt man—Russell was just a second-year man at the time—by scoring in bunches and pounding the glass. In the finale, Pettit scored 19 of the Hawks’ final 21 points.

He was no secret to the Celtics, who had endured his outbursts for a while, particularly in the previous season’s Finals. Forward Tom Heinsohn played against Pettit while at Holy Cross, when the Crusaders beat LSU in the Sugar Bowl Classic. He knew Pettit was “pretty good” then. Once the forward joined the NBA, Heinsohn became even more impressed.

They deserved the title. They outshot us and won the close ones, but we made ‘em go all the way down to the wire to beat us.

“He immediately became a terrific pro,” says Heinsohn, who continues to handle color commentary on Boston TV broadcasts. “He could score, was a terrific jump shooter and knew how to use picks. He was a fabulous rebounder and was a difficult guy to defend.

“He had all the stuff you needed.”

• • • When Heinsohn coached the Celtics, he was on the sidelines for one of the wildest Finals games ever, the triple-OT Game 5 slugfest with Phoenix in 1976 that featured enough plot twists to fill an entire season of a Netflix drama. But when he was a rookie in 1956-57, he played a key part in one of the most dramatic games in Finals history. The seventh game of the 1957 Finals, played in Boston Garden, not only went two extra periods, it featured St. Louis head coach Alex Hannum having to play after four of his players fouled out.

Heinsohn was magnificent in the game, scoring a team-high 37 points (Pettit had 39 for the Hawks) on 17-of-33 shooting and playing excellent defense. The 125-123 verdict capped a series in which neither team ever led by more than a game. And it gave the city of Boston its first title since the Bruins took the Stanley Cup 16 years earlier.

“We were just getting together that year,” Heinsohn says. “Russell was a rookie. I was a rookie. [Frank] Ramsey was just getting back from the service. Winning the championship was a big deal for the franchise.”

The Hawks and Celtics already had a history when they squared off for the ’57 crown, and it was quite a history. As the 1956 NBA Draft approached, St. Louis had the second overall pick, and Boston owned the seventh. Auerbach, who also handled personnel for the franchise, a job he had proven quite adept at when he was the boss of the Washington Capitols in the late ‘40s, coveted Russell. Boston was loaded with perimeter players, including Sharman, Ramsey and the great Bob Cousy, and Auerbach wanted a big man. For him, Russell was the big man.

“I had to have somebody who could get me the ball,” said Auerbach, who never actually saw Russell play before he acquired him. “I had been tipped off about Russell by my college college, Bill Reinhart. Bill said Russell was the greatest defensive player and greatest rebounder he had ever seen.”

Rochester, which had the first pick, didn’t have the resources to offer Russell the contract he would command. Moreover, the Royals already had a terrific young frontcourt anchored by Jack Twyman and Maurice Stokes. They needed shooting.

So Auerbach set his sights on the second pick. He called Ben Kerner, who owned the Tri-Cities Blackhawks when Auerbach was the team’s coach, and offered future Hall of Famer Ed Macauley to Kerner if he selected Russell with the second pick. The Hawks’ owner wanted more, so Auerbach offered Hagan as well. Kerner jumped at the opportunity.

Russell averaged 14.7 points and 19.6 rebounds per game in his first season, which was cut short by his participation on the U.S. Olympic team. By the time the Finals came along, Russell was a force all over the court.

“By that time, he was dominant,” Heinsohn says. “People didn’t know what to do with him. He made other teams change their offenses. He changed the game.”

The 1957-58 Celtics posted a 49-23 record, eight games better than Syracuse, which finished second in the Eastern Division and the same amount ahead of the Hawks, who won the West by eight games. The team looked every bit the repeating type, thanks to a starting five more talented than any in the League. Even though Auerbach deployed a nine-man rotation for much of the year, which he sometimes stretched to 10 by using rookie—and future backcourt stalwart—Sam Jones, his first five were the key producers. Each scored at least 1,000 points during the 72-game season, with Sharman’s 22.3 ppg leading the way. Russell’s scoring production jumped to 16.6 ppg, but he was still the team’s fourth-leading scorer. His biggest value was on the backboards (22.7 rpg) and the defensive end.

The Celtics had great players, but their MVP might well have been Auerbach, the master psychologist and consummate leader. He may have been known (and loathed in other NBA circles) for his victory cigars, but Auerbach’s true genius lay in his ability to imbue players with responsibility and a sense that the game belonged to them. He still had ultimate say—“Red was the complete boss, and we accepted that,” Ramsey says—but he wasn’t so imperious as to dismiss his players’ ideas about what would be successful. During timeouts when the team was struggling, Auerbach wouldn’t dictate. Instead, he would try to reach a consensus with the players on the best course of action.

“Red was a terrific competitor and fabulous manager of people,” Heinsohn says. “Many times when I speak about managing people, I point to him and how he got people to be committed to the whole team. He was a shrewd guy who utilized people’s ideas to make them feel part of a bigger thing.”

Heinsohn says being part of the Celtics was like “being part of basketball’s Cosa Nostra (mafia or organized crime),” because Auerbach was able to create an insular sensation within the team.

“It was our thing,” he says. “We were always involved in the decision making. If there were two minutes left in a game, and we were down 10 points, we would come back and win, and people would say Red was a basketball genius. He was a management

There were very few shots, if any, that a defensive man could stop against [Pettit]. He really shot the eye out of that ball all night. —Andy Phillip

genius. He would ask, ‘Does anybody have anything that might work?’ After we gave our thoughts, he would say, ‘Let’s go with Heinsohn’s thing first and then try Cousy’s thing second.’”

The Celtics dispatched the Philadelphia Warriors in five games to take the Eastern championship and gain a second straight Finals berth. Meanwhile, out West, the Hawks had posted the first winning regular-season record in franchise history. The team had begun its journey to St. Louis—and ultimately Atlanta—as part of the old National Basketball League in Buffalo, where it existed as the Bisons for all of 36 days.

It moved to Moline, Illinois, where it was re-branded the Tri-Cities Blackhawks (Rock Island, IL, and Davenport, IA were the other two cities represented in the name) and joined the NBA in 1949. The coach? Red Auerbach. After one season, which featured plenty of trademark Auerbach wheeling and dealing, the coach quit, because owner Ben Kerner traded away his favorite player, John Mahnken.

The franchise moved to Milwaukee in 1951 and St. Louis for the 1955-56 season. By then, Pettit had arrived on the scene. The second overall pick in the 1954 Draft was named Rookie of the Year in ’55 and MVP the following season. But he didn’t have much of a supporting cast until the Hawks traded the rights to Russell to the Celtics for Hagan and Macauley. In the long run, it turned out to be a great deal for Boston, but both of the new Hawks were future Hall of Famers, although Macauley was in the last few seasons of his career.

Hagan and Ramsey had grown up 50 miles apart in Kentucky and had played for Adolph Rupp at UK together. Hagan was a 6-4 wing with good scoring instincts and the ability to rebound well. That season, he had earned the first of five consecutive All-Star selections.

“He had a good hook shot that he could shoot with either his right or left hand,” Ramsey says. “He could make that shot almost with his eyes closed.”

Despite their 34-38 record in 1956-57, the Hawks finished in a three-way tie with Fort Wayne and Minneapolis atop the Western Division. The following year, they were the class of the bunch and were primed for some revenge against the Celtics.

It didn’t seem like too many other people were, as the city was focused on hockey. Game 1 of the Finals was merely the matinee ahead of the marquee evening playoff matchup between the Bruins and Rangers in the same building. Only 3,652 fans rolled around the Garden in the opener, which St. Louis captured, 104-102, behind 33 points from Hagan and 30 from Pettit and despite committing 27 turnovers. The Hawks fell behind early and trailed, 23-17, after one quarter but used a robust 42-point second stanza to forge a 59-53 halftime advantage.

The final 24 minutes featured plenty of lead changes, and the game remained in doubt until the final 2:12, when Pettit hit a free throw and used a Hagan pass to score the game’s final basket and give the Hawks the victory. Boston had two chances to tie it in the final minute, but an Arnie Risen hook shot and a Cousy jumper missed the mark. St. Louis had stolen the homecourt advantage.

The next day, Boston reasserted its primacy in a 136-112 victory. This time, 10,249 fans showed up to watch, and the Celtics didn’t disappoint. Cousy was a maestro, leading the way with 25 points and 10 assists, while Russell added 22 and 27 rebounds. Perhaps more important was his improved eye from the foul line. After missing 6 of the 13 free throws he attempted in Game 1, Russell converted 8 of 10 in the second contest. Sharman (22 points) and Lou Tsioropoulos (12 points, 11 boards) were also sparkplugs. But perhaps the biggest surprise was the play of the rookie Jones, who in nine games against the Hawks during the regular season played only 36 minutes and scored but 13 points. This time, he put up 16 points in 19 minutes. Not that anybody expected it, especially Auerbach.

“I sent Jones in on a hunch—and I’d be a liar and an egotist to say there was any planned strategy,” he said.

The main story for the Hawks in the 111-108 Game 3 victory was not Pettit’s 32 points, or Ramsey’s 29 points and 10 rebounds, or the Celtics’ 22 missed free throws. It was Russell’s ankle injury, which occurred in the third quarter, as he swatted away a Pettit shot. To add insult to injury, he was whistled for goaltending.

“No one pushed me or shoved me,” Russell said. “I just fell after leaping up and landed most of my weight on the right foot.”

St. Louis held an 82-67 lead in the third quarter and was in front by 12 in the fourth, but Boston battled back and trailed 110-108 with 39 seconds left after Jones drilled a 30-footer. Both teams failed to convert opportunities after that, and Martin’s free throw with two seconds left to play sealed the victory.

The game was played in front of a raucous Kiel Auditorium crowd, and some of the more unruly patrons threw wads of paper onto the court to protest the officiating. The Hawks were no happier than their fans, although they didn’t try to pelt the refs with projectiles. After the game, Hannum and Kerner protested to the NBA’s head of referees, Jocko Collins, about Auerbach’s “ranting and raving” during the game. Hannum was angry that the Boston coach’s antics provided his team with unwarranted rest.

“From the time in the third quarter, when Auerbach ran all over the floor and in effect had extra timeouts, without being charged for them, everything went against us,” Hannum said. “If Auerbach can run out there and yap all night, I want the right to speak my mind, too.”

The big news before Game 4 was Russell’s attire—street clothes. Although his ankle was healing, he wasn’t available to play. Not that it mattered. The Celtics rolled to a 109-98 win, thanks to a balanced attack led by Cousy’s 24 points. Sharman contributed 21, while Ramsey added 18, and Heinsohn had 17. Boston’s offense was crisp and efficient,

but its defense may have been even more impressive. The Celts held Pettit to 12 points, on 3-of-17 shooting. St. Louis missed 22 free throws, tying a Finals record set three days earlier by Boston.

Russell didn’t play again in Game 5, and this time, the Celtics couldn’t overcome the loss of their defensive leader. Although Pettit made just 7-of-21 from the field, he converted 19-of-22 from the line and led the Hawks with 33 points. In the battle of point guards, St. Louis’ Martin scored 25, while Cousy managed just 10. Nevertheless, the Hawks, leading 99-90 with 2:12 to play, had to withstand a furious Celtics rally to hang on for a 102-100 victory. The Hawks were on the cusp of the franchise’s first title and were heading home with an eye on clinching.

Even though Russell played in Game 6, he managed just 20 minutes and scored only 8 points, with 8 boards. It didn’t help that he picked up four quick fouls in the first half. “St. Louis was a good team, but I don’t think they would have beaten us if Russell had been able to play,” Heinsohn says. While Russell struggled, Pettit soared. In the biggest game of his career, he scored 50 points, on 19-of-34 shooting, and pulled down 19 rebounds, to lead the Hawks to a 110-109 win. Nineteen of his points came in the last quarter, including 11 straight at one point. His tip-in, with 16 seconds remaining, gave the Hawks a 110-107 lead that the Celtics did not surmount. His ride off the court, due as much to his exhaustion as to his teammates’ jubilation, was entirely warranted.

“There were very few shots, if any, that a defensive man could stop against him [in Game 6],” said Boston forward Andy Phillip of Pettit. “He really shot the eye out of that ball all night.” And brought the Hawks their title.

By Michael Bradley