Remembering the legendary NBA coach and Williamsburg native who built one of the greatest dynasties in the league’s history. 

GEOFFREY COBB | gcobb91839@Aol.com

Author, “Greenpoint Brooklyn’s Forgotten Past

We are entering the NBA playoffs and championship season again. May is also Jewish Heritage month, so it’s appropriate to celebrate a Jewish man from Williamsburg who was arguably the greatest NBA executive of all time and one of the NBA’s greatest coaches.  It is hard to think of the great Boston Celtic dynasties without thinking about Red Auerbach, the cigar smoking, red haired, Jewish basketball genius from Williamsburg. The brains behind the Celtics dynasty, Red won 16 NBA championships in 29 years as coach, GM, and president. Voted the greatest coach in NBA history by the Professional Basketball Writers Association of America in 1980, he entered the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1968.

Born in 1917, Arnold “Red” Auerbach grew up in Williamsburg. His family lived in a three-story building on Broadway near S. 5th. Auerbach’s father owned and operated a dry-cleaning business at N. 3rd and Bedford, and his older brother also operated one at N. 8th and Bedford. His brother Zang Auerbach, 4 years his junior, was a respected cartoonist and portraitist at the Washington Star who also created the iconic Celtic leprechaun logo.

Today, Red’s boyhood neighborhood is an area of Hasidic Jews, but in Red’s day it was the home to many tough first-generation kids like Auerbach. Asked when he first started playing basketball, Red answered curtly, “when I could walk.” As he got taller, he honed his court skills not only in school but also at the local Young Men’s Hebrew Association off Marcy, and at the Annex, a “tough, Irish working class” recreation center on McKibbin St. Boys clubs, like the Y.M.H.A. it offered neighborhood kids like Red a way to have fun and stay out of trouble.

Red went to High school during the Great Depression at Eastern District High School on Grand Street, which is now defunct, but the building survives as a Hassidic school. Red characterized his basketball teammates at Eastern District as “a real melting pot—we had Italians, Irish, Jewish guys, and one black player.” Auerbach succeeded both on the court and off, making the all-Brooklyn high school basketball team as well as becoming class president. Auerbach left Brooklyn after graduation, first on an academic scholarship to Seth Low Junior College of Columbia University, then being recruited by George Washington University in Washington D.C. where he played three years of varsity basketball.

After graduating in 1940, he briefly taught high school before joining the American Basketball League’s Harrisburg Senators for a year.  Then, he got his first pro coaching gig coach of Washington Capitals of the Basketball Association of America in 1946 before that league merged with the NBA.  In 1949, Auerbach became coach of the Tri-City Blackhawks in Davenport, Iowa, but his real break came in 1950 when he was named to be the coach of the Boston Celtics, where he would coach until his retirement from coaching.

The Celtics already had a Hall of Fame player, Holy Cross legend Bob Cousy, but it was not until 1956 that their dynasty began when the team drafted Hall of Fame Center from the University of San Francisco Bill Russell, who helped the team win the NBA championship in its first year. The next year the Celtics lost to their archrivals the St. Louis Hawks in the NBA championship. The following year the Celtics won again, and they would reign as champions through eight seasons, still an NBA record.

The Celtics’ reign was during 1960s, the period of the Civil Rights movement and crumbling discrimination. Auerbach had an excellent relationship with African American players like Russell and under his leadership the Celtics became the first N.B.A. team with a mostly black starting lineup. During their seventh championship, the Celtics seemed to have lost their passion.

After the Celtics lost Game One of the 1966 Finals, Auerbach shocked the basketball world by announcing that Russell would become his successor next season, making him the first black coach in any professional sport, and inspiring the Celtics to win their 8th straight title. Asked why he named Russell coach Red responded, “I did it because I knew that at that stage of his career, nobody could motivate Russell other than Russell, and he needed a challenge greater than just playing.” The controversial move, Red claimed “was in the best interests of the Celtics.” With Russell as player-coach, the Celtics lost to Wilt Chamberlain and his great 76er team of ’66-’67, but they rebounded to win two more titles, before Russell retired in 1969.

The Celtics would win two more titles, but by the 1979, the Celtics were in decline. Then, Auerbach made a legendary move as General Manager, using the team’s first round pick to choose a player who was not coming out of school for another year, NBA legend Larry Bird. The Celtics won 60 games in Bird’s rookie year, after which Auerbach created another dynasty by acquiring both center Robert Parrish and forward Kevin McHale in a trade known as “the steal of the century.”  In that trio’s first six years together, the Celtics won three titles and lost in the finals (to the Lakers) two other times.

In 1984, Auerbach retired as general manager of the team. Auerbach was elected to the American Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1991. He passed away in 2006 and to honor him, the Celtics named the basketball court at the Boston Garden “Red Auerbach Parquet Floor.”