Red Auerbach.

A chat with the iconoclastic icon who built the most legendary team in NBA history all by himself - no assistants, no scouts, and no drafting aides!

COACH: We know you grew up in the New York hotbed of basketball and played your college ball at George Washington University, then became

RED: There were just two. I played for Gordon Ridings when I was in junior college at Columbia University and then for Bill Reinhart at George Washington. They're the only people who taught me anything. Gordon was terrific. He won the Ivy League his first three years.

COACH: What were the circumstances that attracted a pro team to a high school coach?

RED: The guy who owned the arena and the team, Mike Uline, never saw a basketball in his life. While in the Navy, I promoted a basketball game between the Redskins and the Eagles at Uline Arena and got to know Mike and the people who ran the building. So when the pro job opened up, they brought me back as coach.

COACH: So what kind of offense did you bring with you to the pros and how much did you change it?

RED: I didn't make many changes from what I had been running in high school. The game, in my opinion, is basically the same at every level. You have to put the ball in the hole and not let the other team do it. I was a great teacher and believer in fundamentals.

I also felt that a lot of pro players were fundamentally unsound. For example, all of their careers they'd hear, "I told you to box out. Why didn't you box out?" But had anyone ever shown them how to box out?

Or when they got called for an illegal pick. No one ever showed them that you had to stand still and let a teammate use you. You don't move and block anyone out.

So I would say that I was basically a fundamentalist. And I believed in having good discipline and being in control. I always felt that if I was going to lose my job, it wasn't going to be because some ballplayer got out of whack and I catered to him and lost all my chemistry with the team. You can't win without chemistry and team morale.

So those were my theories way back. In fact, I wrote a book on fundamentals in 1952 that became the best-selling basketball book ever. It sold way over a million copies in six languages. I have copies of it in Russian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, and Burmese.

COACH: But not English?

RED: Believe it or not, everything in there is still applicable today. That shows you the game really hasn't changed. I revised the book four or five times and every once in a while I added a chapter.

For example, when Bill Russell came along, I added a chapter on shot blocking. But basically everything is the same.

COACH: Obviously the fundamentals are important, but what did you do in terms of a set offense or set defense?

RED: No good coach has a set offense or defense. Your offense and defense have to vary not only with your personnel but from game to game. So anybody who has a set kind of offense is stupid.

COACH: Four years after reaching the pros with Washington, you were hired to coach the Celtics. You struggled for a little while and then along came a player named Bill Russell.

RED: No, we didn't struggle at all. We improved our record by 29 games in one year. But as soon as we got Russell and he showed what he could do, I knew we had tremendous potential. Remember, you can't do anything without the ball and Russell was the greatest rebounder ever and I knew we were going to have the ball. As long as we used the fast break offense, we'd always be a contender and be good to watch.

COACH: When you look around today, you see many NBA clubs having trouble keeping their players in line. How did you manage to keep your operation running so smoothly? We can't remember a time that you had internal problems.

RED: I coached in the NBA for 20 years and I never fined anybody, which is unheard of. I don't think fining is an answer. All that does is antagonize the players. If a guy continually breaks your rules, it's time to get rid of him. You deal with athletes; you don't handle them. If you have a problem, you bring the guy in and you talk to him and you resolve it. If it can't be resolved, you either get rid of him or trade him.

COACH: This philosophy you've just espoused: Where did it come from?

RED: It's all common sense. I still get aggravated by coaches who have rules for everything: "If you're late to practice, this will happen. If you miss curfew, you won't start the next game. If you miss curfew by a large amount, you'll be suspended for a game."

That's the height of stupidity. If the guy is a bad guy, get rid of him. But if he's just breaking these rules, make sure the punishment doesn't affect his teammates - or you!

I never had any written rules. I'd tell them just don't do this or that. If you do, you and I will get together and we'll decide what's going to happen.

I've seen coaches who'd fine their guys like crazy. A guy is 10 minutes late for practice, $300. He's too loud, $500. Ridiculous.

COACH: We look at the fabulous players on your teams - Russell, the Jones boys, Heinsohn, Havlicek, Sanders, Cowens - and we suddenly realize that all of them were drafted by you. That's phenomenal picking. What precisely did you look for in evaluating college players?

RED: First, I made mistakes too. Second, the draft was solely my responsibility. I had no assistants and no scouts. I was a one-man band.

Since we didn't have the finances to go in any other direction, I built an alumni network and I listened to them. We'd be drafting last. So I'd call up Bones McKinney at Wake Forest and say, "Bones, anybody down there who can play ball?" And he'd say, "Red, I got a kid who could be a sleeper, a helluva player. His name is Sam Jones from North Carolina A&T."

Comes my pick in the draft, Sam Jones.

COACH: Sight unseen?

RED: Absolutely. But that didn't happen often. But you've gotta have faith in the guys who've played for you and are trying to help you. Hey, I couldn't do anything else. The only way I could scout was if we played on a Wednesday and the next game was Friday, I'd have practice Thursday morning, get on a plane to New York, watch a team practice in the afternoon, watch the doubleheader on Thursday night, and come back late that night or the following morning for the game in Boston.

I was working 20 hours a day with no scouts, no television, no film. When TV came along, I'd see a guy named Paul Westphal and draft him, and another time it would be a player named Danny Ainge.

COACH: Besides your coaches, Reinhart and Ridings, where else did you look for basketball philosophy? How about clinics and books.

RED: I never read a basketball book and I preferred giving clinics, not going to them. I liked to watch other teams play and I felt that most coaches in those days didn't do enough on offense and defense to excite me. So why did I have to read their books?

However, I did have a lot of bull sessions. Clair Bee and Bobby Knight used to be down at the New York Military Academy during the summer and we'd get together for regular bull sessions.

Clair Bee was very bright and he was a good fundamentalist. That's why he was so successful. People don't know that. He'd take guys like Marius Russo and Art Hillhouse and teach them how to shoot. Everyone on all his teams had to shoot his way.

Like I said, there are a lot of college coaches who expect the high school coach to teach all the fundamentals, which is wrong. As a result, they spend all their time on zone defenses and conditioning and things like that.

They don't teach.

COACH: The two greatest dynasties were your Celtics and the Chicago Bulls. Who would have won a seven-game series?

RED: That's like asking who's better, Muhammad Ali or Jack Dempsey. But I'll tell you this: We'd win our share of games, at least half and probably more. Contrary to what they say, we'd control the boards. Talk about Rodman all you want, he's no Bill Russell.

And we wouldn't fall into their trap of playing a half-court game. They'd have to play our game. We'd be pressuring them and running them. And if there's anyone who could do a halfway decent job on Jordan, it would be Havlicek. He's the same size. So I'm not concerned about that at all.

People have a habit of saying the players today are bigger, faster, stronger, smarter, quicker, and all that kind of stuff. When I coached back in the '50s and '60s, the NBA could put a team on the floor that was as good if not better than the Dream Team of today.

For example, we'd have Russell, Chamberlain, and Jabbar at center. Our cornermen would be Bob Pettit, Elgin Baylor, Dolph Schayes, and Dr. J. And our guards would be Cousy, Havlicek, Oscar Robertson, and Jerry West. That team would be bigger than the Dream Team.

The biggest difference between that era and today is that there are more great players today. In those days, I could probably put together two great teams. Today, you could put together five great teams.

But as far as one team is concerned, I feel we were better than the Dream Team we had at the 1992 Olympics. People say the current team has great big guards. What's small about Oscar and Havlicek and West? And Cousy was bigger than Stockton. (Ed. note: Cousy was a full half-inch taller.)

COACH: You said you'd put Havlicek on Jordan. Is there anything special you might do in addition, more help-side defense, whatever?

RED: Jordan would have to be in the condition of his life to stay with Havlicek for a whole game because John never stopped moving. I'm not taking anything away from Jordan he's the best, no question - and maybe John could not do it by himself, but he'd make it a little more difficult than most of the guys trying to do it today.

COACH: One of your alumni, Larry Bird, did a fabulous job in his rookie season on the bench. Did it come as a surprise to you?

RED: His dedication I knew of. His desire to win, his competitiveness, is always going to be there. But his ability to deal with his team, their great chemistry, was the only thing that surprised me at all.

COACH: Incidentally, do you really need a head coach and three or four assistants to run a 12-man team?

RED: That's a heckuva thing to ask a guy who never had an assistant. The game is simple. Sometimes I think that huge coaching staffs tend to make the game more complicated than it deserves to be. If you use the assistant coaches in the teaching process, okay. It saves the wear and tear on the head coach. But you don't need more than one or two.

COACH: Every generation has had its "Best Player of All Time." You've mentioned Baylor, Jabbar, Bird, Erving, and, of course, Jordan. But can you visualize the type of player who will become "The Next Michael Jordan?"

RED: The next Michael Jordan will have to be a player who has his hands on the ball, a la Magic Johnson - a 6-9 backcourt guy who can do it all. It will take that kind of guy playing on championship teams that will challenge Michael's greatness.

I don't think that a big man, who's a great rebounder and scores some points, like Olajuwon or David Robinson or Ewing, or somebody like that, can challenge Michael's supremacy. But a Magic Johnson-type can or maybe a guy like Bird. As long as he has leadership quality and makes everyone around him play better plus he has his hands on the ball so people are focused on him, that's the kind of player who can really step up.

COACH: They just made you the chairman of the rules committee. Any new rules you'd like to see implemented?

RED: I don't believe in messing with the game too much. Hey, I put a lot of rules in myself. I was the guy, believe it or not, responsible for the elimination of the jump ball at the start of every quarter after the opening tip.

I figured out that the team with the biggest guy, 7-6, 7-7, 78, gained possession of the ball four times. If a team is a four-point favorite and I give them the ball four times, which is two more times than I get it, those two extra possessions could make the difference. Four possessions means about five points, two possessions mean about three points. That's a big advantage. So I said, let's make it even. Let each team have it twice.

COACH: Of course you didn't do that when you had Russell as your center.

RED: Yes, I did. But remember there were a lot of big guys. You know, it might have been after Russell, in which case it was because of Jabbar.

COACH: One last question: What about picking your all-time team? You get three forwards, three guards, two centers, and no coaches - because we know who wins that one unanimously!

RED: I can't do it anymore. There are too many. There's no way to name less than 14, 15 guys and even then you've got to leave someone out.

For example, a lot of guys wouldn't agree with me if I named Cousy, because as great as he was, they'd say he wasn't all that great. But actually he was, for the type of offense we used. We ran the fast-break offense and for running the ball on the break, there was only one guy better than Cousy and that was Magic because his size allowed him to see the court better. But Cousy was right close with him.

Then you've got the stats of Oscar. He averaged a triple double. And then you've got Jerry West and Havlicek. And today you've got guys like Gary Payton. And when you go to your corners, you talk about Baylor and Pettit, and what about Bird and Dr. J and Karl Malone. And your centers, you've got Russell and Chamberlain and Jabbar and Olajuwon. There are so many. It's impossible to do it.

COACH: Okay, Red, how about a favorite gripe?

RED: One of my biggest gripes about college basketball or any basketball is when the teams walk off the court before the playing of The Star-Spangled Banner. It bugs the hell out of me.

You know how that started? It was the black power salute at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. It made our coaches afraid of potential embarrassment, so they pulled their teams off the floor. But that's ancient history. In fact, the athletes who did that back in '68, became more patriotic than anybody else after a while. But the coaches have kept doing it.

I'm appalled that all of our college commissioners have never insisted that their coaches and teams stay on the floor for The Star-Spangled Banner like they do in the NBA, NHL, baseball, football and all the other sports.

COACH: What do you think about all the head coaches in the NBA and the colleges who don't come out for pre-game warm-ups?

RED: Yeah, That's another thing that bugs me. I always came out with my team and I used to watch both my team and the other team warm up, looking to see if a kid has a bad ankle or he's limping a little bit for some reason or whatever. I was just looking for a little edge.

You know why they don't come out now? They don't want to take the verbal abuse from the crowd. I always thought that if you're out there, you've got to take the good with the bad. Take your lumps. Let 'em yell at you.

COACH: So much for your pet peeves. How about finishing with a pet passion?

RED: The Red Auerbach Basketball Camp. It's now in its 38th year. It's the oldest camp of its kind. We've had some great, great players come through it. But we no longer cater to the outstanding athlete. We're for the average kid on the block, kids trying to make their high school team, or just to become better players and better fans.