Remembering Celtics legend Tommy Heinsohn: A life in photos
Drafted by the Celtics as a 21-year-old in 1956, Tommy Heinsohn has been associated with the C's for 61 of the past 64 years, establishing himself as a legendary player, coach and broadcaster.We look back at the unbelievable career of the man who both scored and handed out thousands of Tommy Points.
A native of New Jersey, Heinsohn picked Holy Cross over Fordham and Georgetown -- and immediately led the Crusaders to the NIT Championship in 1954.
Heinsohn, who set a school record with a 51-point game against Boston College in his senior year, was the school's all-time leading scorer when he went to the NBA, and still holds a host of program records, including:
Rebounds (1,254 -- 168 more than any other player)
Rebounding average (15.5 per game)
Rebounds in a game (42)
Rebounding average for a season (21.1)
Free throws made in a season (232)
Heinsohn was named Rookie of the Year in 1957, thanks in part to teammate Bill Russell only playing 48 games while playing in the Olympics.
Heinsohn averaged 16.2 points and 9.8 rebounds a game as a rookie, then scored a team-best 22.9 points per game in the postseason (along with 11.7 rebounds per game) as the Celtics knocked off the St. Louis Hawks for the first of their 17 titles.
"As a rookie, I just didn't feel any great pressure."
That's how Heinsohn described competing for an NBA title in his rookie season -- but he rose to the challenge in Game 7 against the Hawks, pouring in a team-high 37 points (to go with 23 rebounds) in Boston's thrilling 125-123 double-overtime win over St. Louis.
Heinsohn and Russell combined for 56 points and 55 rebounds in the game.
Heinsohn's Celtics had many battles against Wilt Chamberlain, and the two players didn't always get along -- including in the 1960 Eastern Division Finals. Heinsohn came up with the key play, tipping in a shot at the buzzer of Game 6 to send the C's back to the NBA Finals.
“Wilt didn’t like me to begin with,” Heinsohn said in a 2018 interview. “He was pretty easy-going, but for some reason I seemed to get under his skin. I scored 22 points in that game, including that tap-in at the buzzer. It was a great feeling to score like that.”
Between 1957 and 1969, the Celtics won 11 championships over a 13-season span. In January 1963, Heinsohn and the C's visited the White House and met with President John F. Kennedy.
Left to right: John Havlicek; Buddy LeReux; Clyde Lovellete (rear); K.C. Jones; Bob Cousy; Red Auerbach; Jim Loscutoff; President Kennedy; Sam Jones; Frank Ramsey; Tom Heinsohn and Tom Sanders.
In 1964, the Celtics matched up against Wilt Chamberlain in the NBA Finals for the first time in a series that featured 12 Hall of Fame players and two Hall of Fame coaches.
When all was said and done, Heinsohn, Red Auerbach and Bill Russell were carried around the Boston Garden floor by elated Celtics fans after the C's beat the Warriors in five games.
The Celtics had won six titles in a row (and seven in an eight-year span) when Heinsohn was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated on October 26, 1964 along with the headline "We'll Win Again."
That proved accurate -- with the C's winning the NBA championship in 1965 in Heinsohn's final year as a player, along with titles in 1966, 1968, 1969, 1974, 1976, 1981, 1984, 1986, and 2008.
In 1965, Heinsohn retired at age 30 and saw his number 15 raised to the rafters, and despite Red Auerbach asking him to take over for him as the Celtics coach when he retired the following year, Heinsohn declined, saying "there was only one other person who could coach and motivate Bill Russell – and that was Bill Russell.”
But after Russell retired as a player in 1969, Heinsohn became the Celtics' head coach. As fate would have it, his first game on the bench was against the Cincinnati Royals, led by another rookie head coach: Heinsohn's long-time teammate, Bob Cousy.
Heinsohn, who won eight rings in a nine-season playing career, added two more rings in eight-plus seasons as the C's head coach, winning championships in 1974 and 1976 with a core including John Havlicek, Jo Jo White and Dave Cowens. He also was named the NBA Coach of the Year in 1973 when he led the Celtics to a franchise-record 68 wins -- the fifth-most in NBA history.
Heinsohn's 427 coaching wins are second in team history behind Red Auerbach.
In between his time as a player and coach, Heinsohn spent three seasons broadcasting games on the radio after being asked by Red Auerbach.
His "teammate" at that time was long-time Celtics radio voice Johnny Most, who helped to spark Heinsohn's career as a broadcaster. As Heinsohn described it, "he helped me after I started broadcasting the games in ’66. So I roomed with Johnny Most on the road when I did the game. We did twenty-five road games. I would room with him, and he helped me learn how to broadcast."
In 1981, on what was then known as PRISM New England, a broadcasting dream team was formed when Mike Gorman and Tommy Heinsohn paired up for their first Celtics game together.
Gorman was extremely prepared for the game, but Heinsohn had a different approach, as Gorman later recalled.
"The very first game I did with Tommy, I had my sheet in front of me, and it was multi-colored. I had scoring averages and free throw percentages, how many brothers and sisters this guy had, who his father was and what they did -- and Tommy came walking into the booth and he looked down at my sheet and he said, ‘What’s that blank?’ and I said, ‘Uh, that’s what we’re going to use during the game to talk about.
"And he took it and crumpled it up and he threw it off the first balcony and he looked at me and he said, ‘We’ll talk about what happens in front of us.”
Getting inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame once is an incredible honor, but in 2015, Heinsohn got the call to the Hall for a second time.
He's one of just four people to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach, alongside John Wooden, his former teammate Bill Sharman, and Lenny Wilkens.
In addition to 39 seasons alongside Mike Gorman calling thousands of Celtics games, Heinsohn also worked for CBS Sports, calling both NBA and college basketball games in the 1980s.
His list of accolades is impressive -- 10-time NBA champion, six-time NBA All-Star, two-time Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductee, 1957 NBA Rookie of the Year, 1973 NBA Coach of the Year -- but his impact goes well beyond those accomplishments.
Since he was drafted in 1956, he has been affiliated with the Celtics as either a player, coach, or broadcaster for 61 of the last 64 years.
There will never be another Tommy Heinsohn. And the entire basketball world -- especially the Celtics -- will miss him.
