Bob Cousy - Basketball Or The Road?

It wasn't a foregone conclusion that Cousy would play professional basketball. The salary wasn't all that much, and Cousy could have easily made more money putting his business degree to use. In addition to entering the draft, he also contemplated opening up a driving school. Cousy opted to try his luck with the draft, and was picked up by Tri-Cities Blackhawks. He was then traded to the Chicago Stags, but that team folded before the season ever began.

A new team, however, the Boston Celtics, had been playing for three years in the Basketball Association of America, but had recently joined the NBA in the 1949-50 season. Since they had finished last in the eastern division, they were the team with the first pick in draft. They had not, however, chosen Cousy. When the Stags folded, Cousy's name, along with two other players, was thrown into a hat. The Celtics wound up with him anyway, with a contract for $9,000 a year.

In his first year with the Celtics, they had a winning record. Cousy averaged 15.6 points and 4.9 assists per game. People were drawn from all over the New England coast to the Garden to watch Cousy and his style of play. Just as in college, however, Celtics' coach Arnold "Red" Auerbach was not yet sold on the Cousy showman-ship, but it was hard to overlook his excellent timing, outstanding reflexes and deft touch.

By his third season, Cousy would win his first of eight straight assists titles, averaging 7.7 assists per game (remarkable in an era before the shot clock). In Game two of the 1952-53 season's division semifinals against the Syracuse Nationals, Cousy played a game that would become one of the most talked-about of his career. With a bad leg giving him trouble, he scored twenty-five points in regulation, tying the game at seventy-seven with a free throw. In the first overtime, he scored six of the team's nine points, then in the second extra period, scored all four points for the Celtics. In a game that didn't seem to want to end, Cousy found eight points in the third overtime, tying it yet again with a twenty-five-foot jumper in the final seconds.

Down 104-99 in the fourth overtime, The Cooz put in five straight points, and the Celtics would finally defeat the Nationals 111-105 in a game that went three hours and eleven minutes. Cousy finished with fifty points, including a record setting thirty free throws in thirty-two attempts.