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Boston, Massachusetts If it seemed like Red Auerbach would live forever, cigar flaring, opinions at the ready, perhaps he shall. For isn't that truly how we should celebrate a good man's death? Isn't what he left behind, both in our hearts and minds as well as in the record books, his final overwhelming gift to us? My last – and most lasting – moment with Red happened in a lifeless, smoke-filled room deep within the bowels of Boston's Garden. Hardly the same place Red ruled for so many years, this was slick and air-conditioned and probably heated, too, and named after a corporate sponsor. I was taken to Red by a gaggle of PR types, told I would have only a few minutes, warned to go gentle, as though it was a papal ceremony. And to a large degree, it was. Anyone granted audience felt blessed and, afterward, far better for having been there. He was sitting on a sofa, engulfed in cigar smoke, when I walked into the room. "Where the hell have you been?" he barked. "Good to see you, too," "No, I'm serious," he seemed angry. "Why don't you call me? I've been waiting for you to call." If my mother smoked cigars and owned 16 NBA titles, well...you understand. He punched the sofa cushion next to him and I dutifully sat. "Now," he chuckled, twirling the stogie carefully, "whattya want?"  Red Auerbach lit his famous victory cigar to celebrate Celtic victories. On this night, I had come to the mountaintop for the kind of wisdom only Red Auerbach could ever impart. It didn't matter if it were about coaches or players or officiating or the deteriorating situation in Bangladesh, you asked Red Auerbach his opinion and then sat back for the brutally honest answer. I had been doing just that for decades, having covered the NBA in his final years as a coach and then choosing to mine his tremendous sense of the game and its history. We met in his D.C. office a dozen times, in the basement racket ball center on the Georgetown campus where he and his pals played almost daily, at training camps and in the Garden itself. Sometimes I just took a notepad. Sometimes I went alone, just for myself. Most times I took a camera crew. Someday I will dig deep into the video library and revel in his magic. The finest few hours, however, came in the most unexpected of places – his sprawling, overcrowded townhouse off Massachusetts Avenue in D.C. I didn't expect him to agree to the visit, especially with camera in tow, but he met us in the parking lot that morning and led us happily upstairs to a land of basketball and travel enchantment. It was just the two of them, Red and Dorothy, but they had accumulated so much "stuff" during the decades that they had purchased the apartment next door, knocked out the walls and spread themselves farther. "It's like a Goddamned museum, this place," he admitted with a little laugh. "I never throw anything out. Dorothy keeps trying to clean this all up but, hey, it's me, you know?" One room was indeed like a virtual museum. I could have spent weeks there, poring through the books and photographs and trophies. There was the trophy, given to every NBA Coach of the Year now, Red sitting on the end of a bench lighting up the victory cigar. "Think that looks like me?" he asked. "Never did see the resemblance, but it's a nice thing, you know?" It was the only room in the flat that indicated what the owner had done for a living. The only place that said "basketball." The rest simply said "collector." "Oh, hell, I couldn't stop bringing stuff home," he laughed again. "All those trips. See, I wasn't just all basketball. I love everything. Every chance I got, I explored and learned things. Hey, I dunno, maybe that made me a better coach, couldn't tell you, but I think it made me a better person." He and some of his boys – Russell, Cousy, the Joneses, Heinsohn, later Bird and Havlicek and the others – circled the planet in the off-seasons doing clinics and making speeches...and collecting stuff. There were figurines of ivory from Africa, tea cups from China, statues from South America. In every room, save the kitchen, the remnants of a life richly led. "I could spend a lotta time in this place, just looking," I told him that day. "You do and you bring the dust rag!" Red Auerbach has left us now. But he has left us far richer. And perhaps even guiltier. "Why haven't you called me?" Author, producer and writer Jim Huber spent 16 award-winning years at CNN. His accolades include an Emmy for his writing during the 1996 Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta and the Edward R. Murrow award for excellence in writing. |
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