RIP Tommy Heinsohn: Boston loses another sports legend

 

News that Boston Celtics legend and Basketball Hall-of-Famer Tommy Heinsohn (as both a coach and player), died today at the age of 86 hit Baby Boomers especially hard.
We grew up with Heinsohn as a player on the teams with Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, Sam Jones, K.C. Jones and Bill Sharman – to just name some of those great players from the 1950s and 1960s Celtics championship teams that won 11 of 13 NBA titles, with Heinsohn on eight of those teams.
As a coach, Heinsohn, in 1974 and 1976, guided the Celtics to banners 12 and 13, including that incredible Game 5 Triple OT win in the 1976 NBA Finals against the Phoenix Suns.
Then, in the tradition of Johnny Most, Heinsohn was arguably the voice of the Celtics in the broadcast booth, where he was unabashedly a “homer” and, like Most, was routinely critical of the referees.
Heinsohn’s No. 15 is among the numbers retired by the Celtics, and hangs in the rafters of TD Garden, after being up there with so many other Celtics greats in the old Boston Garden.
More recently, he was a great broadcast partner with the equally superb Mike Gorman on the team’s telecasts, and his “Tommy Award,” given out by him to an outstanding player of each night’s game, will likely live on.
Fans of all ages should honor Heinsohn, but his loss is unfortunately one more indication that we Boomers are aging and losing so many of our sports greats. (Baseball lost a slew of legends this year.)
Cousy, by the way, is 92 years young!

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