. . . It’s become a game for mathematicians, statisticians, clock-watchers, and coaches who are afraid to attack their problem at its sources.”

The new rule, which went into effect in the fall of 1954, was initially treated as an experiment. In the first games after the measure was adopted, someone simply stood on the sidelines with a stopwatch and after the twenty-four seconds expired yelled Time! But the new rule was such a success that by the end of the year all teams had invested in shot clocks. The owners without exception recognized the shot clock as a radical breakthrough that had completely reinvigorated professional basketball. The number of playoff games in which more than one hundred points were scored more than quadrupled. More important, over the next two years, attendance at NBA games increased by 50 percent.

 

3

 

IN THE FALL of 1954, when the twenty-four-second clock was officially introduced, the Boston Celtics were still a work in progress. Red Auerbach had been with the team for four years by then, and he had come to accept the fact that finding exactly the right players was an exercise in patience. Walter Brown was not as patient as Auerbach. The year he had hired Auerbach, the team had ended the season 25–16 and a rise in attendance cut his loss to a mere $11,000. But the following season attendance had fallen back, and the Celtics’ losses again began to exceed $100,000 a year. The team had yet to make it to the finals, much less win a championship, and only a victory like that, Brown believed, would excite Boston’s sports fans. The Celtics had an outsized payroll, and Brown began to feel he was not getting his money’s worth. When Cousy, the highest-paid man in the entire league, scored only four points in a losing game against the Warriors, Brown told the writers at a basketball luncheon: “That’s a lot of money per point. I don’t need an expensive club to lose games. I can lose just as easily with a cheap one.”

Brown blamed his coach as well, and after the 1954 playoffs ended with yet another loss to Syracuse, he cut Auerbach’s salary. “I hold him partially responsible for the poor showing of our team this year,” he said at the end of the season. Some sportswriters felt Brown should have gotten rid of Auerbach altogether. “Much to my sorrow, [Auerbach] will return to the Hub as chief of the Celtics,” wrote Tom Carey of the Worcester Gazette. “For my two points, Auerbach is the most overrated coach in the business.”

What Auerbach was trying to build was a team that excelled at fast-break basketball. In Cousy, his star, he had the man who could set the pace of the game, racing downcourt with the ball and then passing off or going in for the shot himself. In Sharman and Macauley, he had two terrific outside shots, while Bob Brannum provided him with some muscle. The problem was that Brannum, while strong, was just not very athletic, and Macauley, who had height, was simply too frail to muscle in for rebounds. The Celtics’ best rebounder was Jack Nichols, but he played only part-time because he was a dental student at Tufts College. As a result, the Celtics were weak on defense. That day Bob Cousy had arrived in Boston to join the Celtics, Auerbach had told him it was a big man’s game, and three years later Auerbach believed it more than ever. He knew that what the team still needed was one man who was tall and strong and could jump. The guy didn’t even need to be able to shoot. All he had to do was get the ball.

 

A year before, in the summer of 1953, Auerbach had met a player he was convinced could be the solution to all his problems.