Farewell to Bob Cousy, 1963

A couple of players were in one corner, autographing basketballs. Auerbach was sitting alone, reading mail. We shook hands, and I said, “What about Cousy?”

“What can you say when you know you’re going to lose the greatest backcourtman who ever lived?” Red said. “Nobody will ever take his place. There’s only one Cousy.”

Bob Cousy: A Frenchman from Long Island, 1953

Today, Cousy is the hottest thing in basketball, a ballhandler who does unbelievable things with a pair of unbelievably big hands with which he manipulates a basketball as if it were a ping-pong ball.