They All Boo When Red Sits Down

?If a pass is not caught it is almost always the fault of the guy who threw it.

?When a man has the ball, watch his hips. He can't go anywhere without them.

?Never rest on defense.

?You've got to have your best shooter shoot more, but the others have to shoot enough.

Auerbach is a great advocate of the balanced team. "That's where a lot of coaches make a lot of mistakes," he says. "They use their five best players, not the five who are going to win. Sometimes you have to pick a player for balance but, of course, sometimes balance shmalance. I've generally had one or two men on my team who had terrific desire or attitude—Bob Brannum, Jim Loscutoff. This is your job,' I'd tell them. 'Just do this and you're an important part of the ball club.' You play this game with one ball, not five balls. Oftentimes you keep a player like Loscutoff rather than one with more ability who would sulk if he wasn't playing all the time. Someone with less ability or an oldtimer understands. That's why I've had such success with oldtimers. Arnie Risen, Andy Phillip, Clyde Lovellette, Carl Braun, John McCarthy—you could reason with them."

As a consequence, Auerbach has little use for statistics. "I go by what I see," he says. "I'll be interested in statistics when they show me how they can measure intestinal fortitude, coming through in the clutch." When Auerbach recently asked his friend Allie Sherman, the coach of the New York Giants, why he had traded So-and-so, Sherman offered to show him movies that demonstrated the player was a half step slower. Auerbach wouldn't buy it. "If I'm an egotist," he says, "it's because I go by what I see. We pay our boys on the basis of performance, not statistics. Too many points are gotten when they don't count, in what we call 'garbage-up time.'

"I can show you a guy with 16 points, 15 rebounds, 10 assists and he was——. He threw the ball away, he wasn't running fast, he was showing me false hustle, he took bad shots, he messed up the good ones, his defense was bad, he did nothing in the clutch. When you can measure these, I'm interested."

At 6:15 one night last month, Auerbach stood in Convention Hall in Philadelphia raptly watching a preliminary game between the Philadelphia Athletic Club and the Reading Knights. The hall was almost empty; the Celtics- 76ers game wasn't until 8:30. "I always like to get the feel of the joint," Auerbach explained, sort of. "I like to get the feel of the locker room. Nothing specific—just the feel."

Auerbach is continually looking at basketball games. That afternoon he had sat in his room in the Sheraton Motor Inn, watching a televised game between Georgetown and Manhattan. "You can't see their sizes," Auerbach said. "All you can see is pattern, a few individual moves, and you enjoy yourself. You see that kid dropping back—ridiculous...Nice move.... Foul on No. 3. Oh, he called a jump. Lucky kid.... Nothing.... They're standing around a little too much.... Beautiful play, that Chlupsa.... He should have passed that, then gotten it back. He would have gotten it down quicker.... See, he looked up. That's what you watch."

The Celtics have no formal scouting system. Auerbach, with an occasional assist from one of his loyal old players, is just about it. "I got to be realistic," he said. "I got ninth choice. There's no point me looking at a Bradley." Although Boston has had last pick in the player draft for the past eight years, they have drafted such stars as Sam Jones, Tom Sanders and John Havlicek.