Welcome to this League Uncut in the rule of.
Twenty four hour NBA News. This is you, Chris Haynes.
It's time, works time, it's so time. This League uncut is underway and on fire. This should be a good one.
Hey, everyone, welcome in to a very.
Special pre finals edition of this League Uncut. Chris Haynes is on the move, so I'm here, but not solo. This is an absolute treat for me, a treat and an honor to be joined by truly one of the best who has ever done it in our business and knows more about the Celtics, the favorites in these NBA Finals than anyone I've encountered on press row. I think the last time we actually covered something together was at the Rio Olympic in twenty sixteen.
But I am thrilled to be able.
To connect with him now, the one and only Bob Ryan from the Boston Globe. Mister Ryan, an absolute pleasure, sir to have you on well.
Thank you for the flattering introduction.
And these finals it's so much about the Celtics, obviously. I live in Dallas, I'm based in Dallas. I talk Mavericks all day. I wanted to get the.
Full on Boston perspective.
So just from your seat, I mean, you've seen this team and I don't know how many of their twenty three finals appearances. Close to all of them, I'm sure, but this team in particular, facing so much championship or bus talk.
How do you think they're going to deal with that pressure?
Well, for the record, my first one I actually went to in person was sixty six Red Aurbacks last game, Game seven against the Lakers. That's a story in itself, and how we got the tickets. Anyway, there is one very simple fact, and my opinion their co equal about this finals. When the tournament, as Bill Parcells would call it started, there were sixteen teams. Fifteen of them. We're playing with house money.
From day one.
One had the weight of the world on its shoulders. That one is the Boston Celtics. This is win or bust for them. It's you know what or get off the pot for them. And because they have knocked on the door now with this or pair for several years and they don't have they haven't closed the deal, and here they are with really no excuses except what can not condition what porzingis will be in having missed thirty seven days since he's last played, so.
We don't know how good he's going to be.
But they now have their team intact for the first time since period one of the first game, and they have no excuses.
They got to win. That's that's their perspective, So that's that's it.
They really haven't been tested because of course the East has been absolutely racked by injuries. But my sense is they're not going to apologize for that because they have this enormous pression. You're going to take a berth in the finals anyway it comes. But I really am curious now, just as overwhelming favorites, how they are going to cope, not only with expectations but obviously the challenges that Doncic and Irving present to a defense.
When when the playoffs started, our number one question with the Celtics was how would they fare with score tied and two minutes to go against a good team because they had just romped through the league and including winning three games by fifty points. I said five oho not and it's no one that's ever done. And they were a little suspect. They lost two games to Denver unless minute or so during the season which which gave you know, people so well. See Denver knows how to do it
and they don't yet. Okay, so there's an open question. They haven't fosd the deal.
You're right.
They they were lucky in that they played Miami without Butler, and they played Cleveland without with Mitchell hurt and then Haliburton got hurt. So in each series there was somebody missing. Now in Cleveland's case, Garland stepped up and made great against them. Andy and I got some contributions for people as well, Siakam, et cetera. Anyway, they haven't been tested fully, but they've done without their Keith component. And that's Forzingis now,
as far as Dawis is concerned. From our perspective here outsiders watching the West in the second half of the season, we're focused on the battle at the top with those three teams who went up in a tie, as it turned out, not to mention the plight of the Warriors, the plight of the Suns, and the plight of the Lakers. Nobody's paying attention to DAWs at all outside of Dallas. And there they go, and they went sixteen on eighteen in that run. And then they lose their last two.
I don't know what happened there, but but but they end up great. But off the radar screen completely, no one's talking about them. Their fifth seed, right, it was about Minnesota case and you know, and Denver, so they had. They don't have outside pressure at all, you know, I don't know what internal pressure they've created for themselves. They deserve to be here. They won fair and square. They beat these teams, and those two guys, the two stars, the super are playing as well as they can play.
Irving it's a you know, Irving is coach is a juicy subplot, you know, because of the return to Boston and all that nonsense. But they've earned it and Nico Harrison got a just reward yesterday and then Jason Kidd's reputation is being polished up now as a coach.
And it's all good with Dallas.
They lose, won't they won't be happy, But the rest there's no disgrace involved unless they get swept or something not just like that, which I don't think is going to happen.
Yeah, for me, it's really a second half surge kind I don't know that we've ever seen anything like it. And we always talk about how rare it is to make a trade and then win it all. Obviously the Clyde Drexler to Houston in ninety five, but the Rockets were defending Champs.
Rashid Wallace to Detroit, No, the one I.
Always think of. They don't win without him, and that was a crucial Yeah.
And then Marc Gasol to Toronto in twenty nineteen.
But like for this to come together, the MAVs made two trades for it to come together this quickly, the sixteen and two run you reference. I mean they were twenty eight and twenty three on the morning of the trade deadline. You're right, nobody saw any of this coming. But of course, now with Kyrie going back to Boston, how vitriolic do you think it's going to be? I mean, that's one of the questions everybody's asking in the build up to Game one.
I don't think it's going to be as bad as the outside will thinks will be. They'll be booze, there's no question, I don't think. I don't think they'd be throwing tomatoes at him or anything else. There was a nice story in the Boston Globe today talking about how he's been so well received in Dallas, and he's saying kind of the right things, if you will kind of explain away a little bit about way he was here
and what he wasn't said. They were outside circumstances. There was a like a death in the family, and there was other outside issues that were bothering him. On top of whatever basketball is. Shoes still were and that was five years ago. Now it's five years ago, So come on, A lot lots happened. He's thirty one years old. At thirty two, whatever he is, you know, he may have abandoned some of his conspiracy theories and he seems to be in the best place that he's ever been as
a professional in his head. You know, he never explained why he left Cleveland. That was impetuous and stupid and youthful indiscretion. Never explained it. For we knew he wanted his own show, but he wouldn't say it. And when he was here, I'll tell you I said three things about him when he was here. One he's not as smart as he thinks he is. Two, this won't be his last stop a boy? Was that correct? Three he's searching for something in life, but he doesn't know what
it is. Well, I'm starting to think he may finally have found it and got more power to him. Fine, now, there's never been a question about his talent, this offensive talent he goes to. He's a skill to guard at his position as we've ever seen. The Mavericks are getting the full benefit of you, of that blossoming if you will, So you know, I don't wish him any of your will.
He seems to be a happy, happier guy and good.
But yeah, there'll be some the action, but I don't think it's going to be the story.
You reference the nineteen sixty six finals being the first you attended. I'm gonna guess that was still as a young fan and not already.
Oh no, I was a junior Boston College. And here's the story. They win Game six in LA and tickets go on sale for Game seven. In those days, they weren't selling out.
Automatically every night, even in the playoffs.
They would always get there and you could buy four tickets per person, and we sent one of our guys in the dorm down to sleep overnight at.
The Boston Garden with you to how you did it. That's how you got tickets.
You slept overnight in the lobby and you got tickets, and so he would get one set of those tickets and the other three tickets were a lottery, and I won one of the lottery, you know, the dorm lottery to get that ticket, which is how I got the red hour backs last game.
So that's how it was.
How do you plan to consume these finals? Do you still go to the home games? Or you just take it all in at home?
That graciously granted me a credential because I retired officially at twenty twelve. I haven't covered anything since twenty twelve, but I still do podcasts.
I do stuff.
I write Sunday every other Sunday anyway, So I'm planning on being in present and accounted for on Thursday night at the Boston Garden.
Yes, given your scene it all status, and again I mean you you know, I'm not sure how many of the listeners, but you know I've certainly studied it to agree.
I'm sure there's a lot I don't know.
But of course I got to work for Dave Smith in Dallas, and I know he was your former sports editor with the Globe, and the way I've always understood the stories that the two of you, in essence basically created the Sunday Notes page that I love so much. When you were still a Celtics beat writer.
Dave took the boss of BILP sports section and turned it into a piece of journalistic art, if you will, and emphasis heavily on the notes. I first met my first notes column in the summer in nineteen seventy, after my first year on.
The beat in sixty nine to seventy.
The person who set the bar raised the bar for the notes columns was Peter Gammons with baseball period. Peter's baseball notes columns were unsurpassed, and I did my very best, and we were friends from day one. We started the Globe the same day June ten, nineteen sixty eight, this summer interns and which used to have an anniversary coming up next Monday. But anyway, I did my best to match Peter Gammons's expertise in baseball with my basketball. But
Dave was a tremendous sports editor for the Globe. At that point, it was just a Sunday sports editor. He later became the sports editor. That Sunday sports page was his baby. At the time, and he turned it as something that really has never been equaled, frankly.
In American sports journalism, not the way it was at the Globe in those days.
I still try to do Sunday notes, but it just doesn't look quite as pretty on a computer screen as it does when it when you have a whole page of NBA notes, That one full broadsheet newspaper page with nothing but NBA on it is.
You know, we had in our peak, of course, in addition to the four major sports golf, tennis, we had the great Bud Collins, the greatest American tennis writer or whoever lived Bud Collins writing. We had Jokin Caannon who wrote road racing when that was you know, in the aftermath the Bill Rogers winning the Marathon at seventy six and set off a road racing craze around here. So in college college notes as well, all these notes are you know, is uh. At the same time those days
are gone, the big four are still around. You know that we still have our notes on football, basketball, hockey, and baseball, but but we don't have the notes the way we used to have all the others.
That was that was the golden era, the old the eighties were the golden era for a lot.
Of things, and and and and the NBA particularly and certainly journalism.
It was.
So Having covered the league for as long as you have, I'd love to hear your thoughts on Dancic.
What strikes you about his game, what you like, what you don't like?
Give me just your view of There's only one don't you make of donches to this point, there's only.
One don't like, and it's what everybody knows. You know, stop complaining. You know, the whining thing is, it's tedious, it's old. Now you you've been around to stop it, you know, come on, just play now. Everything else he's extraordinary, and the shot making, the court vision that the remarkable.
Way that he goes about at his pace.
I'm going to use a reference that probably will be over the head of too many of the younger people. He doesn't go at seventy eight, he doesn't go at forty five. He goes at thirty three and at third rpm, and no one disrupts him. He does his piece, that's his pace, and no one can bother him. He goes wherever he wants to go, and nobody stops him. He's a pleasure to watch. It's all there's to it. And
then the shot making, I mean obviously is extraordinary. You know, he's just he's great, and he and djokitch of you know, you have to stink of them in the same vein that.
Really and they are.
They're remarkable and you know, the world's ucky to the best bowl, world's lucky to have him.
I mean all season long, when I've talked about the Celtics, I mean, look, their regular season resume is ridiculous.
It's one of the best we've ever seen.
Okay, they didn't make a run at seventy two or seventy three wins, but apart from that, their regular season resume has everything. But I have to admit from Afar from fifteen hundred miles away, and I haven't seen them as much as you, but I still don't fully trust them. Maybe it is the crunch time failings that you stick with me, but like I haven't fully shaken the skepticism. And this is the series that they're going to have to do it and can do it once and for all.
But Tatum and Brown as a duo, just where do they kind of fall in terms of the Celtics pantheon and how they're viewed locally.
Well, one of the problems when you come along in Boston is that you're now bucking the history.
You're now being thrusted into the history.
Of course, we've had some duos, of course, starting out with Kuzi and Russell, and later Cowans and Hablet check shall we say, and of course Bird and the Kale.
But Parish makes.
Three, you know, yeah, and now the latest one of course when the championship was Garnett and Pierson down grenad and Pierce.
They're making their mark there.
They needed they need a ring that fully enter into the discussion. But both you know, but the Tatum, particularly his hors historical ranking. You know, we've got you know, our Rushmore all Time five kind of thing going, and and he's knocking on the door to get included in that all time five thing.
It's no doubt.
Uh, they're they're not the same player, They're different, you know, he and Brown. I think they've become very complamentary. That's what a E as well as I. And it's it's a power. It's a formidable duo. And they can go out and get you sixty and they've done it. You know, more than one stif each had thirty point games. Tatum has made himself into a pretty damn good defender. Brown originally that was his calling card, and he's back playing
the way he used he once played defense. Uh, the big problem with Brown has been ball handling and turnovers and bad judgment and drimming into crowds.
And he doesn't go to his left particularly well even now. But boy does he go to his right strong. And he's a great finisher and his three point shooting has gotten better in the current NBA.
They're in the discussion is the best duo and sixty four wins is certainly a testament to that. And you're right, your skepticism is warranted. That's still the story here until they do it. You know, the people are not fully buying into their any historical greatness or anything like that until they win a championship. Until they and you have to figure somewhere along the way, you're going to have to do it in the finals by winning a close game.
You're not going to win four games by twenty.
That final exam. It's a final exam, and we'll see how they they pass.
It's past fail.
Well, every guy in this team can shoot the three ball, and that's something Dallas hasn't seen. Oklahoma City and Minnesota, their last two playoff opponents, definitely had limitations when it came to stretching the floor, and Dallas exploited that this is going to be a completely different situation.
But just I think I know the answer.
But I want to ask you a team that shoots from deep as much as these Celtics, what is that viewing experience like for you?
You're talking to someone who is who believes that the three point shot is the worst thing that happen in basketball in my lifetime, and it has distorted the game at every level and now is unfortunately, it's become the currency of the game. So you know, it's a live by it, die by it circumstance some nights. And this is why I get so frustrated. And this is where Perzingis now can fit in in a way that they
have not had in the past. They've got an option now than a seven foot three guy who actually does know his way around basket as well as being able to shoot the three. But he gives you an option that you don't have to rank up another three.
It worries me.
I mean, you know there are highly dependent on it and yet are good at it. They had a game this year which all starting five at at least three each, and to come off the bench with two three point shooters Richard and Hauser. Now, Sam Hauser has been in a slump. He had a very good year, but he's had a bad he's had a bad playoffs so far shooting and well the time off, you know, has he been able to get a shot back in this ten days? It'll be between their last game and Thursday night. But
right A Horford shoots threes. They all shoot threes, You're right, and back where both of them do, White and Holiday and of course Tatum and Brown. Yeah, it's the three shot. Point shots are everywhere. But that's the tricky thing for any team that is it. Do you will you accept oh it's not our knight and go try to win another way? You know that that's been a question here.
Yeah, and then Porzingis.
And when Porzingis was in Dallas, I was amazed, obviously having covered pretty much every dribble of Novitzky's career, and you know, he really is the one who to me, revolutionized the game. In terms of making it acceptable and even desired for the seven foot or to step out and shoot the three.
But porzingis I mean he range. He shoots it with such.
Ease, five seven, ten feet farther away than the line sometimes, I mean he just makes it look so easy.
He shoots it from Caitlyn Clarkland, which we used to call curry Land but now it's Clarkland. My mouth drops open sometimes when I say I'm going he's not going to it? Yeah he is, He's got I'm serious. Yeah, you're absolutely right, that is at seven to three. That the range of factor is not just his foot's on the line. Boy, I know you're right, he's three and four feet behind that line.
Yeah, it's it's a phenomenon.
It's it's the new world, you know. And look at when Beyana. You know he's going to he's the next one. He shoots them from from down there. And I'll tell you he had a tremendous year. And right from the beginning he was impactful, and he was impactful in defense as well. And he passes better than I had no idea whether he's had any court vision.
At all, Well, he does. And he had a really outstanding year.
But the number one thing has been, you know, keep him on the floor. It's always been the case, and and they weren't able to do it so far in the playoffs. And now here he is and we'll see how far he goes.
Yeah, I mean, his playoff resume is so limited as it is.
And now, like you said, you know, he's missed nearly forty days and has to come back and play a key role in the series. I mean, it's as much a key variable as anything in this series.
But a good thing about having him back against this team is with those two young aerial artists centers there, Gafford and Lively, you know, we know the nature of their game, we know how they play, we know the things that they bring to the table for Dallas and absent him, they're not too big. But with him and there, you know, there's a possible you know, antidote to the antics of Messrs Gafford and Lively.
But I mean, I think Lively is going to be a really good player.
Now that's going to turn out he's the god's end of their So.
That's going to turn out to be a hell of a pick. And you know, I mean Gafford is that think he does what he does.
He's not going to bro out in this game, but lively, I think he really got something nice there.
Well, as you mentioned, you're still writing every other Sunday in the Globe and you remain must read to this day. And I wanted to ask you because I know you wrote a piece about Bill Walton, someone we both dearly loved being around. I know you got to cover him. I didn't get to cover him as a player. I
only got to know him in his broadcasting incarnation. But I would love to hear a reflection or two just about Bill, because I think he's just one of the truly, truly unique and enduring characters that this league has ever seen.
Yeah, there was nobody like him.
He occupied a specific niche first of all, as a player, he was a human clinic as a five man, all that nobody occupies today because the center position has been devalued and changed. But in the old days, when we played real basketball, before the three point hostile takeover of the sport, you know, this guy showed you how to play a position as well as anyone who's ever played it. Health was his issue, of course, and you know in fourteen seasons. He missed three full seasons and his final
season only played ten games because of injury. So his career doesn't stack up the way with the great players, but.
His short term does, and at his best.
He was as good as has ever been at both ends of the floor, bust, rebounding, and of course the best passing center until Jokich now who is challenging him for that historical honor and no one else. Those are the two, So let's stop the discussion right there. So it's either one of those two or the best passing center ever. As a guy, Bill was just the most enthusiastic. He was enthusiastic about everything. When he got into something, you get into something, you know. You could start with
the grateful dead thing, you know. I mean that is well documented. I have been to his house to see the collection of grateful dead instrument that he has in his first floor of his house, among many other incredible collection of things he has in this he had in his house. But the dead thing was when he got into them. He got into them, you know, and you know we all know that. But he was just an enthusiastic person. And this is from a guy you know, and you know everyone who knows him.
Though.
He was famous for ending communications and ending phone conversations by saying, I'm the luckiest.
Man in the world.
This is a guy who at one point had such debilitating back pain that he considered suicide. And at one point, this goes back about twenty some years ago before he finally got picked up and got some fusion and got his back straightened out to a where he could refunction.
But that this is a guy. So here's a guy who had a near.
Death experience who's telling us he's the luckiest man in the world, and he believed it.
There's no replacing Bill Walton. He was especially even.
Being Yeah, no question, I mean I got to know him.
I was My first job covering the league was as a Clippers beat writer. He was a Clippers announcer, and very soon into my beat writing life, he would call me and ask me for reflections, information, rumblings, and I'm sitting there thinking every time, I was so what can I tell Bill Walton in the basketball He made you feel like the most important person.
He gues and so many people, I mean the breadth of reaction, you know, the people, so many people that he would make feel where you're, you know, your best if not your best friend, you're in their inner.
Circle, you know. I mean, he God knows how many hundreds of people with that that came away with that takeaway from him.
Last thing before I let you go here, there's about twenty five more things I want to ask you about.
But I did want to ask about this.
One because I heard you tell this story once and I just I had to ask about it again.
I think it was the seventy six finals.
You said you covered it and Paul Westfall by that point was a son now and just covering that finals after covering him previously. Just if you could walk me through the seventy six finals.
The whole thing was that at that point Tommy Heinsen and I were having a bit of a of a journal of a professional falling out, shall we say, And after the first game of the series, I wrote a column and he came in and was fuming about the column and saying that I that people could get their game plan by buying the paper and it was not not so It's ridiculous.
He was.
He just was over the top of it. So when we got the Phoenix for games three, and four. Rather than the state at the hotel with everybody else, I stayed at west falls house and we went back for a game six.
I stayed at west Fall's house.
So this has got to be the first and only time that the primary journalistic, uh you know, person of covering a team stayed at the home of the best player of the other team. And but I gotta tell you quick my favorite anecdote that comes out of that.
So Paul had a pool.
Swimming pool, and of course we we have a time difference in my you know, I have that right quickly to get back to Boston.
So I'd be done writing about three or four o'clock in the afternoon.
At Phoenix time, and I'd go to the pool with Paul and his neighbor, Alvin Adams lived down the street, and somebody else came. And there was another guy who would come and he had nowhere else to go, something to do, hung out at the pool. And he was the guy who was the thirteenth man on the twelve man roster. He was the son who got left out, some guy named Riley. So yeah, thattt Riley was just very happy to have a chance to hang out of Paul west Fall's pool too, So it was a very social series.
But that's what I say now.
The longest and the short of it is that I got off the beat that year and I didn't have to be around Tom Heinsen for but we we vounded each other at a testimonial dinner for his old roommate, Jim Blusketof, and I was there and he was there, and I want to him with the bar and I said, well, it's spoiled your evening if I say hello.
And he said now.
And that was the beginning of forty two years of we were friends, no problem.
It was over. No longer the day to day and it was over.
So with all that all came out of the seventy six, the seventy six series against Phoenix.
I mean, I'm trying to picture it.
I've now heard you tell the story twice, but I still can't really imagine hanging out with Westy and Ryles like that during the finals.
But Riles, Yeah, Ryles, that was he was, you know, he was the guy left off the roster and yeah he got you know, his path to becoming pat Riley and he worked a carpenter or something at one point and then of course he was chick. He then became Chick Hern's you know guy, his color man, not the chick ever needed one or made much use of one. And then eventually he was assistant coach and West had got fired and he got the job, and and and
the rest is, they say, is great NBA history. Pat Riley becomes the great.
Guru, another one of a kind of personality in this league, as are you, sir, and I am so grateful that we were able to connect and do this. I won't be at Game one or Game two, but I hope I make it to five or seven so I can see you in person, shake your hand and thank you for doing this. Fantastic to get your perspective on these Celtics.
Entirely welcome.
There he goes the Hall of Famer Bob Ryan.
That will do it for this edition of This League, Uncut.
Chris and I will.
Be back together again very soon for another episode. As always, please follow rate review the show, stay tuned.
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