A look back at the best of the best from the iconic duo throughout the years.
With the NBA season paused by the coronavirus, it has kept Celtics fans not only from watching their beloved Green on the court, but it's prevented from hearing and seeing the NBA's longest-running broadcast duo bring the games to them.
Mike Gorman and Tommy Heinsohn will enter their 40th year together broadcasting Celtics games next season. Year 39 has obviously been unlike any other with the season now shut down, but fans, players and broadcasters are hopeful that a return is on the horizon.
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The duo joined Chris Forsberg — each on video conference calls, of course — for this edition of the Celtics Talk Podcast:
And the chemistry of the legendary pair is apparent even in casual conversation.
Lately, Heinsohn, 85, the Celtics legend who is one of only four members of the Basketball Hall of Fame inducted as both a player and coach, has been able to see and hear himself call some of the great C's games of the past on NBC Sports Boston's "Classic Celtics" series as the NBA shutdown continues.
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Those include Heinsohn's work on CBS national telecasts of Celtics playoffs and NBA Finals games.
"CBS was a different experience," Heinsohn told Forsberg. "Mike and I have been broadcasting for so long. We got a feel for the flow of the game. We don't kill the game with conversation.
"[At CBS] I was working with Dick Stockton, who his nickname at CBS at the time was the Heisman Trophy because when he's doing a broadcast and if you interrupted what he's saying or you're going to interrupt, he puts his hand over, straight out [like the famous pose of the statue on the trophy]. So, they called him the Heisman Trophy. It was difficult."
"Mike never puts his hand out," said Heinsohn. "What he could complain about with me is I give him an elbow from time to time."
Listen and subscribe to the Celtics Talk Podcast — or watch Mike & Tommy on YouTube:
With the fierceness of the Celtics-Lakers rivalry, how did Heinsohn stay neutral back in the '80s as Larry Bird's C's took on Magic Johnson's "Showtime" bunch?
"You couldn't win in that situation," Heinsohn recalled. "That I found out."
"The way I was doing the CBS broadcast, I would get scouting reports and I would prepare myself to bring up how each team was going to beat the other team by working on their weaknesses. Well, that was the first time the Laker fans ever found out the Lakers had a weakness."
The network had Heinsohn show his neutrality with a fashion statement.
"At one point we had a little fun with these series. They got me a tie which was purple on one side and green on the other," Heinsohn remembered. "It showed I was 50/50 with each team."
Why has it continued to work for so many for Mike and Tommy?
Gorman describes it simply, starting with their first C's game in 1981.
"The very first Celtics game we ever did together, he came in and took one look at my notes in front of me and rolled them up into a ball and threw them off the first balcony and said, 'We're going to talk about what's happening in front of us,' " said the Dorchester native, who used to sneak into the Garden to watch Heinsohn and other Celtic greats play. "And that's what we've been doing for the last 40 years."
It's just some of the stories the pair shared in the Celtics Talk Podcast, which can also be viewed on YouTube:
