Celtic Chalk Talk
Top 10 Boston Celtics of ALL TIME!
Celtics Countdown #6: The 6'9" Center Who Guarded Kareem Straight Up — and Won
===
squadcaster-3c0h_1_08-11-2026_145631: [00:00:00] Welcome to another week of Celtic Chalk Talk. This week I will continue to go through the top, my top 10 all-time Celtics. I'm at number six, but before I do, my name's Steve Purciello, a lifelong Celtic fan, go back to the Bill Russell days when and I can remember so much about it. Go a long way, got a lot of stories to tell.
Before I begin that, I just wanna remind people that this Peach Basket Network is a network of independent contributors who all do pods and write. We are not affiliated with anything except the Peach Basket. We're fans of basketball. We write our opinions, and we do podcasts with our opinions. I really suggest that you sit down and listen to it and listen to the other pods and check out thePeachBasket.net, the network, and you might find other pods [00:01:00] very good, and you might become a subscriber.
Take a shot. You'll like it. This week I get to number six. Number six for me is Dave Cowens, and Dave Cowens was a player the Celtics drafted in '70, and let me go backwards to give you a little bit about that. In 1969, Bill Russell retired with the title in the '69, '70 or whenever the Celtics had Henry Finkel playing center for a year.
Boston was not very good. I believe they were 32 and 50 and they were not very good and Boston knew it when Russell retired. Tommy Heinsohn was the head coach. He was a new coach. He had a lot to learn. After the year, the fourth pick in the, the overall pick in the draft from Florida State was a guy by the name of Dave Cowens.
Now, when he was drafted, he was 6'9", he was a center, and you wondered, can a 6'9" guy survive in the NBA? He, Russell was one of the many people that [00:02:00] recommended him and thought he was good. They loved his heart and loved his abilities. As a rookie he got 17 points and 15 rebounds.
Now understand, if you go back and look at the numbers in the NBA at that time, guys played unusually large minutes, as I'll tell you as we go through Cowens, but they also grabbed a lot of rebounds, particularly centers. And Cowens as a rookie, like I said, he was-- shared the Rookie of the Year award with a guy by the name of Jeff Petrie from Princeton who played for Portland.
He was a guard. In fact, Petrie ended up the general manager of Portland for quite a few years. In his second year, he played a, a lot of games, let's put it that way, i-in the early years with him. Seventy-nine games second year, played 40 minutes a game, and he was 18 points, 15 rebounds. They lo- the Celtics lost to the Knicks in the playoffs.
Now they were back in the playoffs, and they were getting better now. They had Jo White and a great John Havlicek along with other players, but [00:03:00] those were the key players on the team. By the '72-3 '72-73 season, he played all 82 games. Again, they lost to the Knicks in the playoffs. This was a little different.
He was the '73 MVP. In this year, Boston had the best record. They won over 60 games, and they got to the playoffs. They played the Knicks, and in game three, then John Havlicek hurt his shoulder. And I think he separated it, but in game three, he sat out game four and came back, and he really played left-handed.
Amazing in today's world. And he still did well, not as well as he usually did, and Boston lost to the Knicks in that series in seven games. If I remember correctly, and I do remember, Boston in game seven had it back at home. They were down in the series, came back, beat New York in New York, came back home, and everybody thought they'd win, and they played horribly.
The Knicks won easily, and Dean Meminger, a reserve on the Knicks, had a [00:04:00] tremendous game to really hurt the Celtics. But now we get to '73-74. Coming off the MVP season, Boston again was real good. They won 56 or so games that year, and they had an interesting year. They went in and they got into the playoffs, and they beat Buffalo and got to the finals.
They beat two teams and got to the finals and played the Bucs. Now, Tommy Heinsohn's the new coach. This was an interesting series. Milwaukee had this guy by the name of Lew Alcindor. You might know him as Kareem Jabbar, and he was great like he was throughout his career with the Lakers. The series was a three-three tie going into game seven.
Interesting part of that was both teams only won one game on their home court. So now they're going back to Milwaukee for game seven. Boston lost game six to set it up at home, and it looked like Milwaukee was gonna win it. Tommy [00:05:00] Heinsohn decided to make a change. He wasn't gonna double Kareem.
He was going straight up with Cowens defending him. And he let it go. It was a Sunday afternoon game. I remember it well. Boston went out, took a lead, and held that lead throughout the game, giving them the world's championship. It was a great win beating Kareem and the Bucs, and it would propel Kareem at some point to look to get traded and to go to another team.
And he wanted either Los Angeles or New York, but he ended up in Los Angeles. But the Celtics win the championship The next year, Boston didn't do as well. They lost in the playoffs. Dave Cowens, 40 minutes a game averaging, which is just crazy in today's NBA, 19 and 16, 19 points, 16 rebounds a game.
Pretty good. Great numbers every year. And [00:06:00] by then, they got close. They won a championship. When they won the championship against Phoenix, and that's a famous game six, I believe, in that series, they played Phoenix. That's the game where Garfield Heard hit some shots with one second left, and it went into triple overtime.
And a guy by the name of Glenn McDonald won the game. Boston won that series. Glenn McDonald was a Celtic first-round pick, and his only claim to fame was coming off the bench late in that game and helping Boston win. There's a picture you might have seen. There's JoJo White late in the game, and there's some foul shooting or something going on.
He's sitting on the court. He's playing, but he's sitting on the court because he's so tired. It was a great game. It's considered one of the great NBA playoff games of all [00:07:00] time. It's something, if I were you, I would look into YouTube and try to see a little bit about that. The Celtics, from that point on, they went downhill.
The Celtics, after that season, things just didn't go right. And the next couple of years, they did poorly. In fact, and Cowens took a leave for about-- for some games after the start of the season, and the word was he was burnt out. There was rumors that he was disappointed that the Celtics didn't re-sign Paul Silas.
Paul Silas was a, a, a four man, a rebounder, great rebounder. Not a great shooter, but a great rebounder, key figure in the Celtic titles. So he was upset about that. Him and Heinsohn weren't always getting along, so he walked away. That's the rumors. The truth that was put out back then was that he was burnt out, basically.[00:08:00]
He sat out, then he came back mid-season. Celtics hung on, got into the playoffs with him, but lost. His numbers got a little less. By '78, '79, it gets really interesting. He became the player coach of the team. I think Red Auerbach figured that would motivate him to stay with it. His attitude more or less was while he's in the game, Bob McKinnon, one of the assistants, and K.C.
Jones, another, would handle the team. When he was out, he would coach it. He had a lot of trouble adjusting, and he real-- I don't think he really liked that. Now when we talk about Mr. Cowens and we think about-- And by the way he did finish his career as a head coach. Not his career, but he did become a head coach at Charlotte after he was done playing.
He did briefly make a comeback for a year with Milwaukee. That didn't really pan out well. He also coached Golden State for a year or two and didn't have much success. But [00:09:00] what made him so popular? It's a great question to me, and I think what you have to understand is here's this 6'9" guy banging with everybody, and he was strong, banging with everybody, this tall redhead.
But the other piece to it is he'd dive on the floor. He would do anything for a win. He's today considered a legend in Boston. Why? Because not only of his great numbers and great ability, he was a, a hard playing guy that epitomized Boston really, because he was a blue collar player who just gave you everything he had.
And if you think about it, you can understand him burning out and sitting out a bunch of games because he just became just tired and worn down from the career. But that was how it ended. Now I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk just a couple things about his, some of his awards. He won two titles.
He won the MVP in the MV-- NBA in '78. He was an eight-time All-Star. I [00:10:00] believe, no, MVP in '73. I was mis-miscr-- misquoted. But he was also All-Defense three times. He was the Rookie of the Year, as I said earlier. Also 50th and 75th anniversary basketball teams chosen, that means 50 guys in the 50-year anniversary and 75.
In the 75th anniversary, he was chosen to those teams. He-- number was retired, number 18, and it's one of the many numbers in Boston Garden that you'll see that had been retired. The other thing was he was a Hall of Famer, of course. So his career and his achievements are legendary. In Boston, he's still a legend when he's up there.
He prefers to leave a q- lead a quiet life, but the impact of him in the '70s for Boston was great. You have to understand one more thing. Russell retires. Auerbach is not considered the [00:11:00] genius he became, who he was. He goes out s- one year, one year, Boston's not real good when Russell retires. The next year, he's got Cowens, and Boston sud- they didn't make the playoffs that year, but suddenly becomes good again with Havlicek and Jo White and Paul Silas and people along that line.
Steve Koberski was on one of the t- on the team. They had some players, and that is Red Auerbach putting it together, and Cowens would be the first. They'd win two championships in the '70s. They'd win three more with Larry Larry Bird in the '80s. So Red Auerbach established himself as a great GM through putting, any not anybody, but most people can win one title.
But what Au-Auerbach did was not only did he win during the Russell years, but with a new group, he won another title, which makes him one of the great GMs. But that's another day and another discussion. [00:12:00] That's it for today. That's my little talk on Dave Cowens. I really suggest you go to YouTube and just watch him play.
Energy and played hard and fun to watch, and he could shoot the ball fairly well, got rebound, just did it all. But thank you and we'll see you again when we see num- when we-- I talk about number five, my number five guy on the Celtics all time. Thank you.
Top 10 Boston Celtics of ALL TIME!
Celtics Countdown #6: The 6'9" Center Who Guarded Kareem Straight Up — and Won
===
squadcaster-3c0h_1_08-11-2026_145631: [00:00:00] Welcome to another week of Celtic Chalk Talk. This week I will continue to go through the top, my top 10 all-time Celtics. I'm at number six, but before I do, my name's Steve Purciello, a lifelong Celtic fan, go back to the Bill Russell days when and I can remember so much about it. Go a long way, got a lot of stories to tell.
Before I begin that, I just wanna remind people that this Peach Basket Network is a network of independent contributors who all do pods and write. We are not affiliated with anything except the Peach Basket. We're fans of basketball. We write our opinions, and we do podcasts with our opinions. I really suggest that you sit down and listen to it and listen to the other pods and check out thePeachBasket.net, the network, and you might find other pods [00:01:00] very good, and you might become a subscriber.
Take a shot. You'll like it. This week I get to number six. Number six for me is Dave Cowens, and Dave Cowens was a player the Celtics drafted in '70, and let me go backwards to give you a little bit about that. In 1969, Bill Russell retired with the title in the '69, '70 or whenever the Celtics had Henry Finkel playing center for a year.
Boston was not very good. I believe they were 32 and 50 and they were not very good and Boston knew it when Russell retired. Tommy Heinsohn was the head coach. He was a new coach. He had a lot to learn. After the year, the fourth pick in the, the overall pick in the draft from Florida State was a guy by the name of Dave Cowens.
Now, when he was drafted, he was 6'9", he was a center, and you wondered, can a 6'9" guy survive in the NBA? He, Russell was one of the many people that [00:02:00] recommended him and thought he was good. They loved his heart and loved his abilities. As a rookie he got 17 points and 15 rebounds.
Now understand, if you go back and look at the numbers in the NBA at that time, guys played unusually large minutes, as I'll tell you as we go through Cowens, but they also grabbed a lot of rebounds, particularly centers. And Cowens as a rookie, like I said, he was-- shared the Rookie of the Year award with a guy by the name of Jeff Petrie from Princeton who played for Portland.
He was a guard. In fact, Petrie ended up the general manager of Portland for quite a few years. In his second year, he played a, a lot of games, let's put it that way, i-in the early years with him. Seventy-nine games second year, played 40 minutes a game, and he was 18 points, 15 rebounds. They lo- the Celtics lost to the Knicks in the playoffs.
Now they were back in the playoffs, and they were getting better now. They had Jo White and a great John Havlicek along with other players, but [00:03:00] those were the key players on the team. By the '72-3 '72-73 season, he played all 82 games. Again, they lost to the Knicks in the playoffs. This was a little different.
He was the '73 MVP. In this year, Boston had the best record. They won over 60 games, and they got to the playoffs. They played the Knicks, and in game three, then John Havlicek hurt his shoulder. And I think he separated it, but in game three, he sat out game four and came back, and he really played left-handed.
Amazing in today's world. And he still did well, not as well as he usually did, and Boston lost to the Knicks in that series in seven games. If I remember correctly, and I do remember, Boston in game seven had it back at home. They were down in the series, came back, beat New York in New York, came back home, and everybody thought they'd win, and they played horribly.
The Knicks won easily, and Dean Meminger, a reserve on the Knicks, had a [00:04:00] tremendous game to really hurt the Celtics. But now we get to '73-74. Coming off the MVP season, Boston again was real good. They won 56 or so games that year, and they had an interesting year. They went in and they got into the playoffs, and they beat Buffalo and got to the finals.
They beat two teams and got to the finals and played the Bucs. Now, Tommy Heinsohn's the new coach. This was an interesting series. Milwaukee had this guy by the name of Lew Alcindor. You might know him as Kareem Jabbar, and he was great like he was throughout his career with the Lakers. The series was a three-three tie going into game seven.
Interesting part of that was both teams only won one game on their home court. So now they're going back to Milwaukee for game seven. Boston lost game six to set it up at home, and it looked like Milwaukee was gonna win it. Tommy [00:05:00] Heinsohn decided to make a change. He wasn't gonna double Kareem.
He was going straight up with Cowens defending him. And he let it go. It was a Sunday afternoon game. I remember it well. Boston went out, took a lead, and held that lead throughout the game, giving them the world's championship. It was a great win beating Kareem and the Bucs, and it would propel Kareem at some point to look to get traded and to go to another team.
And he wanted either Los Angeles or New York, but he ended up in Los Angeles. But the Celtics win the championship The next year, Boston didn't do as well. They lost in the playoffs. Dave Cowens, 40 minutes a game averaging, which is just crazy in today's NBA, 19 and 16, 19 points, 16 rebounds a game.
Pretty good. Great numbers every year. And [00:06:00] by then, they got close. They won a championship. When they won the championship against Phoenix, and that's a famous game six, I believe, in that series, they played Phoenix. That's the game where Garfield Heard hit some shots with one second left, and it went into triple overtime.
And a guy by the name of Glenn McDonald won the game. Boston won that series. Glenn McDonald was a Celtic first-round pick, and his only claim to fame was coming off the bench late in that game and helping Boston win. There's a picture you might have seen. There's JoJo White late in the game, and there's some foul shooting or something going on.
He's sitting on the court. He's playing, but he's sitting on the court because he's so tired. It was a great game. It's considered one of the great NBA playoff games of all [00:07:00] time. It's something, if I were you, I would look into YouTube and try to see a little bit about that. The Celtics, from that point on, they went downhill.
The Celtics, after that season, things just didn't go right. And the next couple of years, they did poorly. In fact, and Cowens took a leave for about-- for some games after the start of the season, and the word was he was burnt out. There was rumors that he was disappointed that the Celtics didn't re-sign Paul Silas.
Paul Silas was a, a, a four man, a rebounder, great rebounder. Not a great shooter, but a great rebounder, key figure in the Celtic titles. So he was upset about that. Him and Heinsohn weren't always getting along, so he walked away. That's the rumors. The truth that was put out back then was that he was burnt out, basically.[00:08:00]
He sat out, then he came back mid-season. Celtics hung on, got into the playoffs with him, but lost. His numbers got a little less. By '78, '79, it gets really interesting. He became the player coach of the team. I think Red Auerbach figured that would motivate him to stay with it. His attitude more or less was while he's in the game, Bob McKinnon, one of the assistants, and K.C.
Jones, another, would handle the team. When he was out, he would coach it. He had a lot of trouble adjusting, and he real-- I don't think he really liked that. Now when we talk about Mr. Cowens and we think about-- And by the way he did finish his career as a head coach. Not his career, but he did become a head coach at Charlotte after he was done playing.
He did briefly make a comeback for a year with Milwaukee. That didn't really pan out well. He also coached Golden State for a year or two and didn't have much success. But [00:09:00] what made him so popular? It's a great question to me, and I think what you have to understand is here's this 6'9" guy banging with everybody, and he was strong, banging with everybody, this tall redhead.
But the other piece to it is he'd dive on the floor. He would do anything for a win. He's today considered a legend in Boston. Why? Because not only of his great numbers and great ability, he was a, a hard playing guy that epitomized Boston really, because he was a blue collar player who just gave you everything he had.
And if you think about it, you can understand him burning out and sitting out a bunch of games because he just became just tired and worn down from the career. But that was how it ended. Now I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk just a couple things about his, some of his awards. He won two titles.
He won the MVP in the MV-- NBA in '78. He was an eight-time All-Star. I [00:10:00] believe, no, MVP in '73. I was mis-miscr-- misquoted. But he was also All-Defense three times. He was the Rookie of the Year, as I said earlier. Also 50th and 75th anniversary basketball teams chosen, that means 50 guys in the 50-year anniversary and 75.
In the 75th anniversary, he was chosen to those teams. He-- number was retired, number 18, and it's one of the many numbers in Boston Garden that you'll see that had been retired. The other thing was he was a Hall of Famer, of course. So his career and his achievements are legendary. In Boston, he's still a legend when he's up there.
He prefers to leave a q- lead a quiet life, but the impact of him in the '70s for Boston was great. You have to understand one more thing. Russell retires. Auerbach is not considered the [00:11:00] genius he became, who he was. He goes out s- one year, one year, Boston's not real good when Russell retires. The next year, he's got Cowens, and Boston sud- they didn't make the playoffs that year, but suddenly becomes good again with Havlicek and Jo White and Paul Silas and people along that line.
Steve Koberski was on one of the t- on the team. They had some players, and that is Red Auerbach putting it together, and Cowens would be the first. They'd win two championships in the '70s. They'd win three more with Larry Larry Bird in the '80s. So Red Auerbach established himself as a great GM through putting, any not anybody, but most people can win one title.
But what Au-Auerbach did was not only did he win during the Russell years, but with a new group, he won another title, which makes him one of the great GMs. But that's another day and another discussion. [00:12:00] That's it for today. That's my little talk on Dave Cowens. I really suggest you go to YouTube and just watch him play.
Energy and played hard and fun to watch, and he could shoot the ball fairly well, got rebound, just did it all. But thank you and we'll see you again when we see num- when we-- I talk about number five, my number five guy on the Celtics all time. Thank you.
