Red and Russell

Just a little story...

I live in DC and went to a presentation at the Smithsonian Museum tonight 
that featured a "roundtable discussion" with Red Auerbach, Bill Russell, 
David Stern, Billy Cunningham and Marty Glickman (longtime Knicks 
broadcaster) celebrating the NBA at 50 thing.

It was basically Red telling stories about his entire reign in Boston and he 
was brilliant. Russell told some great stories, and Cunningham and Stern 
chimed in as well, but Red just told hilarious story after hilarious story. 
As he neared the end of each one, he'd all of a sudden change the subject 
and say "which reminds me of another time, when...." The rest of the panel 
and the entire audience was cracking up the whole two hours.

I don't live in Boston and am not exactly a Celtic expert, but one of the 
more interesting stories he told was about his famous victory cigar. I am a 
huge (and fairly longtime) NBA fan, but had never heard about the 
origination of his cigar. He said he used to watch some coaches who were 
winning by 20 points with a minute left in the game and they would be 
ranting and raving and calling plays etc... Red said he would always yell 
"The game's over for crissakes, sit down!" So he decided that to show how 
ridiculous these guys were, he wanted to look as relaxed as humanly possible 
when the game was "over" and so he came up with leaning back in his chair 
and lighting up a cigar.

Russell's highlight was a bunch of stories about his yearly contract 
negotiations that were a riot.

Anyway, it was just a night of reminiscing and reliving old memories and it 
was completely delightful. Just thought I'd share.

 -- Nunn