Red Auerbach

Wow, it's been awhile, hasn't it? Sorry about the hiatus. Some of it was Dan not writing much, and some of it was me being lazy. I don't normally read the Celtics page on the Globe website, so I completely missed this column, which is now almost 4 days old. My apologies.

It's actually pretty good. It's a nice tribute, and it trucks along nicely for several paragraphs, until we hit this bit:

In 1984, I brought my young wife and infant daughter to the NBA meetings in Salt Lake City. Red had given me a box of cigars when our daughter was born (probably a company violation to accept them, but hopefully the statute of limitations on graft has expired) and I was anxious to have him take a look at our 6-week-old baby. Red took one look at little Sarah, blew some smoke past my wife's head, and said, "Lady, you got a lot of balls bringing that baby all the way out here. Yes, sir, a lot of balls."

It took a while to explain to my wife that this was Red's highest form of praise.

There he is, injecting himself into the middle of a story again. What's even stranger is that this story is about him injecting himself into the middle of something he shouldn't be, the NBA meetings. "Here's a random segment about how I interrupted Red Auerbach and made him look at my cute baby! Oh, and did you know I'm so special that Red gave me cigars?" I also love his flippant remark about "company violations." Is this the same daughter who got an internship thanks to Daddy doing some leaning on Tom Werner in violation of every existing standard of journalistic ethics?

Modern laws be damned, the Celtics should hand out cigars at the Garden opening night. After the anthem, before the opening tap, turn out the lights and let everybody light up a Hoyo de Monterrey. It'll smell like victory.

This is actually kind of a nice idea for a tribute. I'm merely confused as to what he's referring to when he talks about "modern laws." Laws about smoking indoors? Okay, sure, that's modern. I can buy that. How about the law prohibiting the importation of Hoyo de Monterrey cigars? That has been illegal since September 4, 1961, when Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act instituting a trade embargo against Cuba. Not exactly modern.

All in all, not a bad tribute, though.