by Larry Bird
It’s just as well they never did ask me about Dominique, because I would have told them it was a big mistake. From day one I knew there was no way that one would work out. Dominique was at the end of his career, only he didn’t know it. He still had a superstar’s mentality. He thought he was good enough to run the show, but his skills had deteriorated and he just didn’t have the same mobility or lift that he had in his prime. But what bothered me the most about that signing was that Wilkins wasn’t a Celtics kind of player. A true Celtic is a guy that’s going to do everything for the team. Dominique was always one of those guys who wanted to do it all himself. You can’t win that way.
I had some great battles with Wilkins during the eighties, when he played for Atlanta. He was so good back then. There’s no question he’s a terrific basketball player, but I always felt we could beat his teams, because one guy can’t beat five guys, and Dominique always died trying.
We were involved in a classic playoff series against Atlanta in 1988. The Hawks were a young, up-and-coming team, but even though people considered our “old” Celtics team dead and buried, we knew we still had what it took. The series against Atlanta was in the Eastern Conference semifinals, and Dominique and I got into some major scoring duels. Wilkins was at the top of his game, but even after seeing him score all those points I never doubted that we’d come out winners, because our guys knew how to make the pass to beat them. When the game was on the line, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish and I never worried about who was going to take the shot. We just made sure it was the best possible one we could take. We beat Atlanta in seven games because we played together. After that series the Hawks were never the same. In fact, I think they lost in the first round of the playoffs the following year.
Dominique was a big name, and that’s why Boston went for him. You have to understand that at that time the fans were getting antsy. I was retired, and Kevin was retired, and Robert Parish had gone to play for Charlotte. The Celtics felt they needed a draw, and they were convinced Dominique Wilkins was going to do that for them. But they should have listened a little more closely to the people around them who knew basketball. Chris Ford, who was the coach at that time, didn’t want the Celtics to sign Dominique either. He was mad at Wilkins from his first day of camp because he showed up out of shape. The whole relationship was doomed from the start. Wilkins had a terrible year in Boston. He was unhappy with his minutes, the way Chris used him, everything. That summer the NBA locked out their players while they negotiated a new collective bargaining agreement, and Dominique used that to escape to Europe. The Celtics were lucky, because by then the fans had turned against Wilkins, and it was getting pretty ugly. I honestly felt sorry for ’Nique. He’s not a bad guy at all. He got set up to be some kind of savior, and that was never going to happen.
It must have seemed to Chris Ford that he never got who he wanted. In 1994, when the Celtics had the eighth pick in the draft, he wanted the guard from Temple, Eddie Jones, really bad. I could see why. I liked Eddie Jones too, because he was tough and athletic and played really good defense for a college kid. But the Celtics ended up taking the big center from North Carolina, Eric Montross. Somehow it came out that I was against taking Montross, but that really wasn’t true. I wanted to take him, because I knew Parish was going to sign somewhere else as a free agent, and both Red Auerbach and I realized how vital it was to have a center. I figured if it turned out we didn’t like Montross, we’d always be able to trade him. I mean, the kid was seven feet tall, and he was a hard worker.
Besides, the Celtics had just signed Dee Brown to a big six-year contract, and he and Eddie Jones played the same position. There’s no doubt in my mind that Jones would have come in and beat out Brown for the job, but then what are you going to do? You’d have a veteran sitting on the bench making all that money and being very unhappy. I don’t think the Celtics wanted to deal with that. Dee had talent, but Eddie Jones would have beaten him out.
Anyhow, Montross had a really solid rookie season. I thought he might be the best backup center in the league at that time, even though we were asking him to start games. Ever since then, it’s been all downhill for him. Part of it was that Chris Ford got fired after Montross’s first season, and M. L. Carr took over as coach, and he just didn’t use him the right way. The kid lost all his confidence, and then he got traded to Dallas, and has been traded again twice since. I think Montross still could be an effective backup if someone would just spend some time with him and help him get his confidence back.
Of course, the Lakers ended up drafting Eddie Jones with the tenth pick, and he was a steal. He’s been to two All-Star games and has proven he can be a big-time scorer as well as a great defender. No wonder Chris Ford wanted him so bad.
Most of the time when the Celtics ignored my advice I didn’t really say anything. Hey, it’s Gaston’s money, it’s his team. But there was one time, in 1996, when they were talking about trading their number six pick in the draft plus their first-round pick the following season to Toronto. The idea was to get the Raptors’ number two pick in the 1996 draft so the Celtics could take Marcus Camby. For some reason, Gaston and M. L. were really hot on the idea of getting Camby, but I told them I strongly objected to the deal.
They kept talking about how Camby was such a huge star at the University of Massachusetts, and how he would be a big draw, but I couldn’t see that. I was really upset about it, because I felt strongly that either Antoine Walker, who was a scoring forward from Kentucky, or Ray Allen, who was a shooting guard from Connecticut, would be much stronger picks, and would be there when we selected sixth. Plus, we knew Boston wasn’t going to be that strong in the upcoming season, which meant the draft pick in 1997had a chance of being a very high pick (number three, as it turns out). Even after I said all this, I could sense they were still going to do it. I was flying back to Indiana that day and I remember after the meeting I told Gaston, “I can’t leave town knowing you might make that trade. Tell me you won’t make that deal.” He never gave me an answer.
Thankfully, they didn’t make the trade, and Boston drafted Antoine Walker with the sixth pick. Walker is a terrific talent, a superstar in the making. I love the way he plays. He passes the ball so well for a big man, and he can rebound the ball. He takes a lot of bad shots, but he’s still very young, and a good coach will get that straightened out. Camby has talent too, but it’s hard to say how good he is, because he’s injured so much. Maybe now that he’s been traded to New York and will be around all those veterans, his game will blossom.
As it turned out, in the summer of 1997, after Walker’s first season in Boston, Gaston came to me and said they were ready to replace M. L. as head coach. He asked me to put a list together of the names I thought would be good choices. I asked him if he had talked to M. L. about it, and he assured me M. L. understood they needed to go in a different direction, and that M. L. was going to be taken care of, with a different job in the organization.
I started quietly making up my list. Not long after that, I noticed M. L. was acting a little funny. Something was definitely wrong, so I went in to talk to him, and he was really hot. He started saying to me, “How could you do this behind my back?” He was really mad. He said he had gotten a call from someone in Cleveland who said I had contacted the Cavaliers to see if the Celtics could get permission to talk to their coach, Mike Fratello, about the coaching opening they would have at the end of the season. M. L. said that was how he found out he was going to be replaced.
The funny thing about that was I never did call Cleveland to ask about Fratello. It’s not because I didn’t think Fratello would be good, it’s just that I knew he was under contract and doing a good job there, and I didn’t expect he’d be available. I was concentrating on finding people who I thought might be ready to move on.
Anyhow, M. L. was really upset. He said to me, “How could you betray me, after all we’ve been through together?” That’s when I told him, “Listen, you better call up your boss, be
cause Gaston told me you knew all about this. He told me you knew everything. You’re mad at the wrong guy.” I could tell M. L. didn’t believe me, so I closed the door and I called up Gaston in New York and got him on the phone. After a minute or so, Gaston admitted, with both of us listening, that he made a mistake by not telling M. L. He told M. L., “I’m sorry. I forgot.”
I can understand M. L. being upset, but I wasn’t out to hurt him. I thought he had been told he was being replaced. I think M. L. was feeling I might want the Celtics coaching job, and I was going back-door on him to get it, but I had no interest in doing that. I had already made up my mind I was leaving the Celtics as soon as I finished the coaching search. I just hadn’t told them yet.
M. L. and I go back a long way. He was one of the best teammates I ever had, but our relationship will never be the same. I hope he understands I was just trying to make the franchise better. I was also following orders.
M. L. wasn’t the only one upset about the coaching job. Dennis Johnson, who was an assistant coach with Boston and had played with me on the 1984 and 1986 championship teams with the Celtics, was hurt that his name hadn’t appeared on the list of candidates. D. J. and I won a lot of big games together, and I always said he was one of the best clutch players I’ve ever seen. I think D. J. would make a good coach, but I knew Gaston had someone a lot more high-profile in mind. He had no intention of hiring D. J., that’s for sure. My understanding was that D. J. would be kept regardless of who the head coach was. That turned out not to be the case. He was fired later that year. By then, I was in the middle of negotiations with the Pacers, and talking about putting together my own coaching staff. I found out later that D. J. was upset because I didn’t offer him an assistant’s job in Indiana, but I thought he was set in Boston. I also thought he wanted to be a head coach. Besides, I had already made up my mind that I was going to use two assistants, not three.
It was clear to me that Paul Gaston wanted Rick Pitino to be his coach, so I called up Pitino and asked him if he was interested. He said he liked his situation in Kentucky, but he asked me a lot of questions. I probably talked to him two or three times, and it was always the same: he said he wasn’t interested, then would pump me for more information. He’d ask me things like, “So what are the Celtics going to do with M. L.?” Later on, he started asking me about Red and his role in the organization. Every time we talked, I sensed he was getting closer and closer to taking it, even though he kept insisting he didn’t want it.
Until those phone calls, I had no past history with Rick Pitino. I scouted his Kentucky teams for the Celtics, and I was impressed with the way they trapped and applied defensive pressure—it was hard not to be, really—but I had no relationship with him at all. I have very few memories of him as coach of the Knicks, other than that those teams always played hard and gave us trouble. But in terms of having a personal opinion about him, I didn’t. I had no feelings for him one way or the other.
Even though I felt from the beginning that Pitino would end up with the job, my first choice would have been Kansas coach Roy Williams. I thought he was a perfect fit for the Celtics. His system would be great in the pros. His teams run, but they can slow it up. And his style is right to the point. That’s what I like. His players always seemed disciplined, and fundamentally sound too.
Williams sounded really flattered when I called. He said the pros might be something that would interest him someday, but he was happy with his job and wasn’t ready to make a move. At that time Kansas had a lot of talent, with Raef LaFrentz and Paul Pierce, and he said the timing just wasn’t right. I could tell he was being sincere, not using it as leverage, and I appreciated that. So I crossed him off the list.
The other name I gave Paul Gaston was Bob Hill. I always felt he had done a good job as head coach of the Knicks and the Pacers. I liked him because he’s firm and he knows the game, and I felt he’d have the respect of the team. But when I brought up his name to Gaston, I could tell it wasn’t going to happen. Bob Hill might be a good coach, but he wasn’t a big enough name for the Celtics.
Larry Brown was a big enough name, and everyone knew he was unhappy in Indiana and looking to make a move. I checked with some of my contacts, and they all said there was no way he’d be back with the Pacers next year, so I called the Pacers and asked permission to talk to him about the Celtics job. They said yes. By this time Pitino had told the media he was not leaving Kentucky. I remember being surprised when I heard that, because I really thought he was ready to come to Boston, in spite of all his denials. Gaston told me to call Bob Hill and tell him they had decided not to interview him, and I felt bad about that, because I figured they could at least talk to him. But the feeling I was getting was that Larry Brown was now their man, and I was very happy about that. He is the perfect coach to bring in when you want to turn something around. He runs a great practice, he’s a perfectionist, and he lives for basketball. If Larry Brown ended up as the Celtics coach, there was no doubt in my mind he’d get them back on track. He seemed like he was the front-runner, but I was guessing. Once I gave the Celtics my list of coaches, I was frozen out. The Celtics weren’t telling me anything.
Brown interviewed with the Celtics and called me afterward. He sounded excited. He told me, “I think I’ve got the job.” He said Gaston told him he needed just a couple more days, and he’d get back to him with the details. I congratulated him and wished him luck.
Next thing you know—BOOM!—Larry Brown is not the next coach of the Celtics. A couple of days turned into a week, and suddenly Pitino was back in it. I don’t know how it all happened, because I was out in the cold at that point, but various newspapers later reported that Larry Brown and Rick Pitino were playing in a golf tournament in California and Larry told Rick he thought he had the Boston job and he was just waiting for the owner to wrap everything up. The next thing you know, Rick is back into the picture and Larry Brown is out of a job.
When I heard what happened, I was sick about it. Larry called me up and said, “What is going on?” I couldn’t give him an answer. The truth was, I had no idea what was happening. I called up Gaston and said, “What are you doing? You’ve got this guy sitting over here wanting the job and you’re messing around with him. You’re leaving him hanging. Do you want him or not?” But Gaston wouldn’t really tell me. He said if Larry Brown wants to get another job, then he should do that.
That’s when I knew Pitino was in and Larry Brown was out, and it really ticked me off. It was done all wrong. I had no problem with Rick Pitino being the coach—it was the way it was handled that bothered me. Larry Brown should have been treated with far more respect throughout the process, and Paul Gaston should have been more straightforward with me. But neither one of those things happened. In the end, all I could do was call Larry and apologize and tell him I was sorry. Soon after that, the Sixers hired Larry Brown. I bet the first thing he did was circle all the dates on his schedule when his team played Boston.
I knew what was coming next. Pitino officially accepted the job as coach of the Celtics and fired a whole bunch of people who had been with the team for years, which is what I would have done too, if I had taken over some management role in that organization. There’s no question that a fresh start was the best way to go with the Celtics. Actually, Pitino was smart enough to have Gaston fire all those people before he came on board, but everybody knew who was calling the shots. Pitino didn’t fire Red Auerbach, but he changed his title of president to vice chairman of the board.
I felt really bad for Red, because he’s the reason the Boston Celtics were the best organization in basketball. As far as I’m concerned, he saved the NBA, not just the Celtics, by the way he coached and won championships. From what I understand, Red was pretty upset about it, but he wasn’t too happy with me either. During the process of finding a coach I did an interview with the Boston Globe, and in the story I said I could never be coach of the Celtics because I would have to make some tough changes, including firing
people I really liked. I said there were too many people trying to make decisions for the team, and then I made a comment about how I hardly ever agreed with Red on anything, so how could I coach his team? It was a joke, but I guess Red didn’t find it very funny. The thing is, he took it the wrong way. I’m telling you right now: if I ever had taken the coaching job or general manager’s job for the Celtics, I would have had Red right there beside me. He would have been president forever if I had any say in it. I have the highest regard for him, and I always will.
I don’t understand exactly what happened between me and Red, but I’m just as stubborn as he is. If Red’s ticked off with me, that’s fine. I always say if you don’t like somebody, then don’t be around them. But I think there’s mutual respect there, even if we never talk again the rest of our lives.
I did call him after the article, because I heard he was steaming about it. I said, “Red, I understand you are upset about some things I said.” He told me, “No, Larry, that’s a bunch of bull. We’re fine. Larry, you were always one of my favorites.” I told him, “I don’t really care whether you like me or not, Red, just as long as your wife, Dot, still does.”
By the time we hung up, I figured everything was fine. But then about two weeks later a friend of mine called me up and said, “I talked to Red today, and he was killing you. He’s really mad at you for saying that stuff.” So I guess we’ve got a problem. All I can tell you is that it hasn’t changed my feelings for the man.
It’s too bad my time with the Celtics ended that way. I had some great years in Boston, and I still love it out there. I’d love to go back someday, but things have changed, and that whole organization is completely different than it was. There’s nothing for me there now.