Red Auerbach RIP

Funeral will be the first thing to get the Fleece, er, New Garden jumping in a very long time.

I'm presuming the funeral will be there? Packed house, I assume.

 

They did (no words were said, when they were done both took out a cigar and puffed away). Best thing they did all night (before I turned it off).

 

Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

 

Thanks Red. You made "Red on Roundball" in the '70s something for me to enjoy as a Kid. I do believe in a better place for people like you to go once your life ends here on Earth. For you, Red, Heaven is a parquet floor .. and I say that will all due respect.

Rest in peace, Red.

 

Great point. The ROR he did with Pete Maravich demonstrating his ballhandling drills looked like a better magic show than anything Doug Henning did, except it was really happening.

 

This line, in and of itself, had me laughing.

 

Michael Gee: You blew it on the Jello. You should have taken the Jello, and then offered to trade it for something.. A sign and trade.

 

Red made an at-home visit to my grandfather's house stumping for some NE school (my uncle was a fairly big-time college basketball player in the early-80s.) Hung out for two hours, had dinner with the family and smoked a cigar with my grandfather. 25 years later my grandfather still talks about it.
I interviewed him for a story about 3 years ago. He didn't remember much about the guy I was interviewing him about (though the interviewee swore he would). He felt bad, so we talked about basketball for about 20 minutes. Didn't write a word, it was just awesome.

 

From Simmons' take on Red, not bad BTW, but here's this gem. Guy just didn't get working for a newspaper.

The Celtics haven't won a title in nine years. The Garden has been torn down, replaced by the generic Fleet Center. With the franchise floundering under coach M.L. Carr, Red spends most of his time in Washington now. And maybe that's a good thing. Meanwhile, I'm covering high school sports and answering phones for the Boston Herald. Perusing the computer files in the sports system one night, I find an entire section devoted to prewritten obituaries of older Boston sports legends like Ted Williams, Harry Sinden, Bob Cousy, Johnny Pesky, Bill Russell and, of course, Red Auerbach. It's the weirdest thing ever. None of these people are dead yet. It's downright creepy.

I end up reading Red's obituary from beginning to end. Where it says his "age" at the time of death, they have "age XX" in there. I find this to be deeply disturbing. How can you write an obituary of someone who's not dead yet? So when Red dies, they'll just fill in the "age XX" and run this thing in the paper?

I glance around the news room. Nobody's looking. I'm going to delete Red's obituary from the system. That's the decision. It's the only way. Of course, I don't have proper clearance to delete anything. I'm just a lowly intern. So Red Auerbach's obituary keeps staring at me, pulsating in green letters on a crappy computer, and part of me wants to flip the computer over and be done with this lousy job once and for all.

 

My next door neighbor growing up played high school hoops with Arnold (as he called him) at Eastern District. He always used to say that if the Knicks had him, we would have won 10 titles.

 

The king of the fucking universe has spoken.

 

No. I understand some of you thought the joke was dumb. Maybe it was. It came off the top of my head within a newsroom conversation.
What bothers me is that it's not about a "dumb joke." It's about piling on, and you all know what I mean. Pathetic.
I'm sure this post won't make it any better, but hey. Whatever gets you off.
And Montezuma, you're right. We're all idiots here. I just wish I had come up your handle first. Hilarious.