美国国家公共电台 NPR Bob Cousy, 90, Still Rues The Assists He Didn't Make To Bill Russell

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SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

The duo of Bob Cousy and Bill Russell was one of the greatest. They were the Tracy and Hepburn, the Rocky and Apollo of the basketball court. They could anticipate each other's play. They could put themselves into each other's mind and movements as they won six championships for the Boston Celtics in the 1950s and '60s and buttressed¹ a dynasty that would win eight in a row. Bob Cousy was the point guard listed as 6-foot-1 - doesn't sound basketball tall today - a white man who grew up the son of poor French immigrants in Manhattan. Bill Russell was the center, 6-foot-10, a black man born in segregated² Louisiana. They became teammates in 1957 just after Martin Luther King's Montgomery bus boycott³. And they would play together through turbulent times of the civil rights movement and in a Boston roiled⁴ by bigotry⁵. Gary Pomerantz, the historian and journalist, has written a book about the Cousy-Russell partnership⁶ and the regrets one of them has about plays that maybe he didn't make. It's "The Last Pass: Cousy, Russell, The Celtics, And What Matters In The End." Gary Pomerantz joins us from New York. Thanks so much for being with us.

GARY POMERANTZ: A great pleasure, Scott.

SIMON: And from Worcester, Mass., Bob Cousy, one of the first members of the Basketball Hall of Fame. Thanks so much for being with us, Mr. Cousy.

BOB COUSY: Happy to be here, Scott.

SIMON: Gary Pomerantz, let me turn to you first. What, in addition to their sheer excellence⁷, what set apart this Celtics team in their times?

POMERANTZ: Well, we can look at the Hall of Fame and nine of them are members. That's almost two full rosters⁸. And, you know, Bob Cousy, Bill Russell - what was exquisite⁹ to watch, Scott, was Russell getting the rebound¹⁰, turning and throwing the outlet¹¹ past to Cousy, sometimes before, you know, Russell's feet had hit the ground, and then Cousy turning, taking that photograph in his mind of where players were. And he was the gold standard on running the fast break.

SIMON: Bob Cousy, the Celtics were integrated, black men and white men playing for the same team at a time so many other enterprises in America weren't.

COUSY: I'm 90 years old. I still, Scott, I cannot understand why you hate one person because of the color of their eyes or their skin or their hair and therefore you hate all people who have that color hair or - you know what I mean? It's so irrational¹², but I give the credit, really, to my Jesuit education. So when it came time to deal with it, in this case on a professional sports level, I was - at least my opinions and my attitudes were pretty much set.

SIMON: Gary Pomerantz, how did Bob Cousy and Bill Russell express different sides of this very talented group?

POMERANTZ: Russell spoke¹³ out about social injustice¹⁴. He was very rare among athletes of his time - of any time really - you know, at that time, Muhammad Ali, the boxer¹⁵, and Jim Brown in football and Bill Russell. He called out the NBA, properly so, for its racial quotas¹⁶ limiting the opportunities for African-American players. And he became fully¹⁷ engaged in the civil rights struggle.

SIMON: We should explain, you obviously spent a lot of time speaking with Bob Cousy. Bill Russell just doesn't - just doesn't talk to people these days, does he?

POMERANTZ: Well, you know, when he played games in St. Louis, for instance, he would hear the screams, the catcalls from fans - you know, black gorilla¹⁸, baboon¹⁹ - horrible racist²⁰ stuff. And at home in Boston, he faced the racist heat as well. There was one moment where vandals broke into his home, for instance, spray-painted racist graffiti on the wall and defecated on his bed - just horrid²¹ stuff. And Bill Russell would later say more than once that he played for the Celtics. He didn't play for Boston.

SIMON: Bob Cousy, did you know any of that was going on?

COUSY: Oh, yeah. Well, we were part of it, obviously, when it happened in public. We wouldn't sit there and discuss these issues, Scott. I think it was a personality thing that we couldn't - I mean, I never said to him - I was timid, he was angry. You know, neither one of us ever said after a game let's go and have a few beers together.

SIMON: And when you retired²², Mr. Cousy, a few years before Bill Russell did, he was deeply moved. He called you, I think, the best man he'd ever met, if I'm not mistaken.

COUSY: Well, you know, we shared - I didn't know that at the time. Guys don't have meaningful conversations, you know? They just don't. We mature later in life. That's why the - I hope the ladies take over the world pretty soon because we've kind of screwed it up for 2,000 years. But Gary knows - what was it? Fifteen years ago or so, Gary, I did an ESPN interview here at my house, and I don't remember too many details, but at one point in the interview, the question was about those days and about the racial conflict and how did we - you know? And I teared up responding to it. I started to say, you know, I probably should have done more. And you'll see, Scott. At 90, you'll start making your little list of everyone you want to apologize to before the end and...

SIMON: You wrote Bill Russell a letter a couple of years ago, I gather.

COUSY: I did. I had read a book, "Between The World And Me," a black father telling his son how to coexist in this racist environment. It was powerful. And I had - I wanted to do a mea culpa to Russ anyway. It was on my to-do list before the big basketball court in the sky. So I dropped him a note saying, Russ, you know, looking back on it, I should have done more to share your pain. I'm sorry I didn't. Please enjoy this book. It's very powerful. And that was it. Anyway, he didn't respond until about three weeks ago. The phone rang late at night, so I picked up and I heard this voice say, I'm calling to see how you're doing (laughter). And we talked - or I did most of the talking. So it was a difficult conversation, but I did say to him, Russ, I sent you a letter three years ago. You're a little late - whatever. And he said, no, we got the letter. Thank you very much, but I didn't read the book (laughter).

POMERANTZ: You know, most great athletes, as they grow older, embellish²³ and burnish²⁴ the stories they tell about themselves. You know, the fish they caught keeps growing and growing and soon it's a whale. But Bob Cousy is different. He's not doing that. He is admitting his flaws. He's even drawing attention to them. He's saying this is what I did, and his final declaration is, I did not do enough.

SIMON: Gary Pomerantz from New York and Bob Cousy, one of the greats of NBA history, from Worcester. Did I get that right?

COUSY: You did. Well done.

SIMON: Thank you. And the new book is "The Last Pass: Cousy Russell, The Celtics, And What Matters In The End." Thanks so much for being with us, gentlemen.

POMERANTZ: Thank you so much, Scott.

COUSY: A pleasure.

SIMON: There's just one story we couldn't leave out. One night, the Celtics were playing in Raleigh. Bob Cousy was with his friend and teammate Chuck Cooper, the first black player in the NBA. The hotel where the Celtics stayed wouldn't allow Mr. Cooper because of the color of his skin. So they hopped²⁵ the late-night train back up to Boston. Cousy and Coop headed to the Union Station and stopped for a few beers.

COUSY: And obviously we had to whiz, so we went looking for the men's room in Union Station. And we see the big white sign with the big black arrow - colored one way, white the other way. And I teared up because I couldn't - I was ashamed to be white. I didn't know how to explain this to now my good friend of two or three years. How the hell do I tell him we can't go and pee together? So I solved the problem. I took him out - it was midnight - out on the platform, not a lot of people around. We went to the end of the platform, and we peed together, Scott. It was a Rosa Parks moment that we couldn't talk about.

SIMON: (Laughter).