John Havlicek, Boston Celtics legend, dead at 79 | Fox News
He was drafted in the first round in 1962 out of Ohio State — where he helped lead the Buckeyes to the 1960 national championship — by a Celtics team stocked with stars Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, K.C. Jones, Sam Jones, Tom Sanders, Tom Heinsohn and Frank Ramsey.
The legend, described by the Celtics as “kind and considerate, humble and gracious,” went on to win eight NBA championships and an NBA Finals MVP award with Boston, setting Celtics career records for points and games.
Havlicek was named one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA history, and enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1984. The Celtics said his retired #17 jersey hangs in the rafters of TD Garden, the stadium home to the team.
Some interesting memories here.
It was a different game in college then. Ohio State was a huge power in 1960-61, and the odds-on favorite to win the NCAA championship again, after an overwhelming win over Cal in the final game the previous year. Cincinnati, led by dominant center Paul Hogue, was a contender, but not the favorite. Yet Cincinnati did upset the Lucas/Havlicek/Bobby Knight juggernaut, not just once, but twice in a row in the final games of 60-61, and 61-62. Moreover, it came within a whisker of winning the tourney three times in a row, losing in overtime to Loyola by two points.
I rooted like crazy for Cincinnati. Why? Because the best basketball player ever to come out of the Muncie Central Bearcats was named Ron Bonham, who elected, for reasons nobody could figure, to go to Cincinnati, a team also named the Bearcats. Well, who knows if he could foretell the future, but he led the Cincy Bearcats to a better record than the Buckeyes, who also recruited him heavily. (Along with just about everybody else, actually).
The concatenation between Bonham and Havlicek is that, while they were competitors each leading two great college basketball teams, they both ended up playing for the Celtics. In fact, Bonham and Havlicek both got NBA championship rings in the 64-65 season, although by then Havlicek had settled any “who was better” questions by being one of the leaders of the Celtics that year, while Bonham was only a sometimes substitute.
Anyway, a final fillip: Jerry Lucas, the big man of those Ohio State teams, ended up going to Cincinnati, where he was a star on a team that featured Oscar Robertson (another Indiana high school legend who once single-handedly defeated the Muncie Central Bearcats in the year following their iconic loss to Milan – immortalized by the movie Hoosiers – by a point in a semi-final tournament game everybody assumed would (and it did) decide the winner of the tourney overall.
It was all a long time ago.