More Fun and Unusual Celtics' Records

Connors, who would later go on to much greater fame as the star of TV's "The Rifleman," broke the backboard at Boston Arena before the Celtics' maiden home opener against the Chicago Stags. Contrary to popular belief, he did not do it with a dunk.
"During the warm-ups, I took a harmless 15- to 20-foot set shot, and, crash, the glass backboard shattered," Connors recalled in a 1986 interview. The backboard crumbled because a worker had not installed a piece of protective rubber between it and the rim. The game was delayed an hour while a truck picked up a spare backboard from Boston Garden, where a rodeo was taking place in front of a packed house.
In 53 career games with the Celtics, Connors averaged 4.5 points per game. After leaving basketball, he tried his hand at baseball, playing briefly for the Brooklyn Dodgers and Chicago Cubs, before finding his niche in Hollywood as The Rifleman

By adding rising young stars Dave Cowens and Jo Jo White to its veteran cast of John Havlicek, Paul Silas, Don Chaney, Tom Sanders and Don Nelson, Boston raced to the top of the standings. The Celtics notched 68 victories, one shy of the record set by the NBA Champion Lakers the year before. But the Celtics came unglued in the playoff, losing in seven games to the Knicks in the Eastern Conference finals. No other NBA team has won so many games and not emerged as champion. [Dallas came close, winning 67].

A dispute over the height of the basket at Kiel Auditorium before game 3 of the 1957 NBA Finals led to a confrontation between Celtics coach Red Auerbach and Hawks owner Ben Kerner. When Kerner began screaming obscenities at Auerbach, the Boston coach decked him at midcourt in front of a sold out crowd. Kerner, who suffered a bloody nose, was escorted back to his seat while Auerbach returned to the Boston bench and the game proceeded. Auerbach was fined $300 for the punch. If the move was designed to fire his team up, it failed to work. St. Louis won 100-98.   

Fidel Castro, Winston Churchill, and George Burns may rank as the world's most famous cigar smokers, but Auerbach is the king of the sports world. He liked to fire up a fat stogie on the bench during the final minutes of NBA games when his team had the victory well in hand. Considering that Auerbach coached the Celtics to nine NBA Championships, he had plenty or opportunities to blow smoke at the opposition. The fact that Auerbach lit up before the game was over struck many as arrogant, though he viewed it differently. Auerbach believed that casually puffing on a cigar when your team is far ahead was more sportsmanlike than aggressively pushing your team to pad the score. As he once said: "You got a team by 30 points, there's three minutes to go. The coach is still pacing up and down on the sidelines and yelling. For what? He's on TV. He wants to show that his team fights and is active for the full 48 minutes and he's and integral part of it. My feeling was that once the game is decided - and you could tell - then sit down and relax." Tempting as it may be, not other coach will copy Auerbach's trademark gesture or threaten his unofficial record. Since smoking is now prohibited in NBA arenas, the victory cigar has become an indulgence reserved for post game celebrations. Although, when Darko Milicic was with the Pistons, he was never put into games until the game was decided and they called him "the human victory cigar."

Statistically speaking, Russell usually came out second best to his great rival Wilt Chamberlain, but not in the stat that mattered most. Russell won 11 NBA titles to Chamberlain's two, and was an incredible 10-0 in Game 7 during his storied career. Of the 10, eight were won in Boston and two on the road, and five came in the NBA finals.

Before game 7 of the 1969 finals, Boston's Bill Russell got his hands on a script that described plans for a post game Lakers celebration that included a rendition of Happy Days Are Here Again to be played by the University of Southern California band. When the Celtics walked out on the court to begin the game against the heavily favored Lakers, they saw 5,000 balloons suspended in nets from the ceiling. But as was often the case during that era, the Celtics found a way to win. Don Nelson's late jumper, which bounded off the back rim straight up into the air and down into the basket, was the key to a 108-106 victory. The triumph gave the Celtics their 11th title in 13 years.