The NBA Draft

The Celtics hold the #6 and #17 picks in tonight's NBA draft. Shank talks about the draft... by waxing nostalgic:

SPRINGFIELD — I am standing here in the uppermost Honor Ring of the planetarium-like Basketball Hall of Fame, looking at the images of all the great Celtics and thinking about how they were acquired in the days of Red Auerbach, when the draft was a little less sophisticated than it is today.

Hmmmm. There’s Bill Russell. He was pretty good. Red first heard about Russell from Bill Reinhart, who was Red’s college coach at George Washington. During the 1953-54 NCAA season, Russell’s San Francisco Dons crushed GW in a tournament in Oklahoma City. Russell was only a sophomore, but Auerbach got reports on the kid from Reinhart and his West Coast friends, Pete Newell, Freddy Scolari, and Don Barksdale.