Air Force Academy basketball coach Bob Spear is flanked by a couple of future Basketball Hall of Famers, Bob Davies, left, and Tommy Heinsohn, during the 1963 USAFE clinic at Wiesbaden. (Stars and Stripes)
WIESBADEN, Germany — The Boston Celtics go into the 1963-64 National Basketball Association season for the first time in 14 years without the services of their sensational Mr. Everything, Bob Cousy.
Some NBA railblrds are tch-tching, indicating the departure of the ball-handling and scoring wizard might spell the downfall for the Celtic empire which has picked up six NBA championships in the past seven years, including a record-setting five in a row capped by their vanquishing of the Los Angeles Lakers last spring.
But more astute followers of the pro sport point out that the Celtics still have Big Bill Russell, the club's defensive great throughout those banner years.
But an even closer inspection of the Celtic roster also reveals the presence of Tommy Heinsohn, who first donned the Celtic uniform in 1956-57 when the Beantowners started their championship spree.
While Russell was picking the backboards clean of rebounds and ramming shots back into the startled faces of opponents and Cousy was befuddling the Celtic rivals with his masterful ball-handling and remarkable field generalship, it was Heinsohn who was carrying the scoring load during Boston's successful run for six league titles and thwarted attempt for a seventh in 1957-58.
The 6-foot, 7-inch ex-Holy Cross star reached the magic 10,000-point level in his first game of the past season and is preparing to enter his eighth NBA campaign with nearly 12,000 tallies to his credit.
Tommy Heinsohn, foreground, poses with USAFE basketball clinic participants Bill Lee of Chicksands, England, Eddie Verswyvel of Belgium and George Brestle of Celle, Germany. (Stars and Stripes)
The season begins for Tom next week when the Celtics open practice. And his last week of "freedom" was spent mostly within the confines of the Wiesbaden Air Base gymnasium where he helped instruct USAFE's coaches and players in the finer points of the nation's most popular spectator sport.
Heinsohn has joined forces with Bob Davies, a former NBA great in his own rights, and Air Force Academy coach Bob Spear in presenting the game's fundamentals and various systems to the attentive students from USAFE's far-flung athletic map, who gathered here for the 1963 USAFE basketball school — due to conclude Friday.
It has largely been the chore of Heinsohn to demonstrate the fundamentals of shooting, cutting and passing.
"If a player is not thoroughly grounded in the soundness of fundamentals," Heinsohn pointed out, "then the success of any system employed by a coach is doomed for failure.
"If they can't shoot, cut and pass, then what good is an offensive system?
"It's taken me 17 years (of high school, college and pro ball) to learn what I know now, and perhaps some of this may prove beneficial to the coaches and players on hand here."
Tommy Heinsohn demonstrates his point to the clinic participants. (Stars and Stripes)
Heinsohn readily admits the absence of Cousy presents a major problem for the Celtics, but "I'm looking forward to this season perhaps more than any in the past for it presents a challenge for us all."
Stretching his long, muscular 220-pound frame along a rubbing table in the Wiesbaden Air Base gymnasium during a break in instruction, Heinsohn poured out word after word of praise for his former teammate.
"He was the chief chef, the bottle washer of the club, our leader and inspiration. ... He was always there to pull us out of a jam. ... He was real smart and he had the physical equipment, ability and knowledge of the game that no other player ever had. ... Some players may come along, such as Oscar Robertson, and excel in certain phases better than Cousy, but there was only one Bob Cousy. And so it went, but it all boiled down to one point: "Bob Cousy's presence on the court made all the rest of us more effective."
Even with Cousy's departure, Heinsohn feels the team's possession of a "tremendous amount of pride" and "refusal to quit" will carry the Celtics through.
He wasn't rash enough to predict any championship, but then, as he pointed out, even during the Celtics' finest moments "I never would claim we would win this title or that one."
"There is so much luck in winning a championship," Tommy admitted. "We have had and now have fine material, but we also are blessed with one of the smartest coaches the pros have ever known." And he was referring to Red Auerbach.
"He's always been successful, so it's not just a matter of having the ball players. It's just as important to be able to fit them in properly to the scheme of things and Red knows how to do that. Nobody knows the rules and the game better than Red."
Tommy Heinsohn talks to clinic participants. (Stars and Stripes)
How the Celtics fare next season and thereafter will depend upon how well "we fill the gaps."
As for Tommy Heinsohn personally, the 29-year-old Worcester, Mass. native envisions three to five more years of NBA campaigning for himself "depending upon how the injuries go." .
A graduate from Holy Cross as an economics major in business administration, Heinsohn is an insurance agent in the offseason and also serves as president of the recently formed NBA Players Association.
He has planned ahead for himself, his wife Diane and their three children while earning his livelihood in the mentally fatiguing pro sport.
"Basketball is an emotional game and sometimes it gets sort of hard to reach that feverish pitch required to make you run, run, run.
"With 15 preseason exhibitions, 60 regular league games and the playoffs that adds up to about 108 nights of coming out to play. And over that many games it gets sort of hard to keep that 'smile on your face'."
But Heinsohn has worn that "smile" all week long here and the coaching students who benefit from the instruction given should wear similar smiles next season.
