Obituary KC Jones dies at 88
Bob Cousy
wondered how a player who shot as badly as KC Jones could go on to make a basketball career.
The answer was in the other basket.
Players of his day described Jones as torture.
"It got into your clothes."
"You carried it with you at every step. It crashed on you, it grabbed you, it got in the way."
Bob Ryan
, a legendary Boston sportswriter, called him "a
1.80
Dennis Rodman
."
"I have never seen a better defender than him. Not even close," said his partner and friend
Bill Russell
, who knows something about that.
Together they won two college titles, an Olympic gold and eight NBA rings with the Boston Celtics.
As a coach, Jones would add another four, two as an assistant (one on the Lakers) and two as a head coach.
With Jones, who suffered from Alzheimer's for years, the Celtics lose another pillar of their history.
The
1956
draft
changed the course of basketball.
The Boston Celtics selected Russell,
Tommy Heinsohn
(who died last November) and Jones.
Three legends, three pillars of an unrepeatable dynasty.
But Jones, who was not sure that his thing was basketball, went to the Melbourne Games with Russell and then served two years in the Army.
And there, at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, everything could change.
The meeting with Auerbach
Jones worked as a mailman, a profession he had already contemplated before entering college, paraded with a rifle and played football.
Among his teammates was
John Morrow
, a Los Angeles Rams player, who was so impressed with his manner that he tipped off his team.
The Rams had a new
general manager
,
Pete Rozelle
, who would eventually become a historic NFL leader, and they sent him an invitation to preseason with them when he finished his military service in 1958.
Jones had been a star in high school but hadn't played football in college.
However, he didn't think he was good enough at basketball to make a living in the NBA, so he tried his luck.
Jones played three friendlies as a
defensive back
and had options to join the team, but a leg injury forced him to leave.
One afternoon he called
Red Auerbach
and asked him if he still had a place with the Celtics.
Without telling anyone, he left the Rams preseason to travel to Boston.
Journalist
John Taylor
relates that because KC Jones was shy and relatively small, the Boston press assumed that the Celtics had only chosen him so that Russell would have a friend.
After all, they had been roommates in college and, at least on the shot, it didn't seem like any wonder.
But Auerbach had noticed his lightning-fast hands and his defensive ability.
Eight rings as a player
It serves as a testimony to those Celtics that KC and
Sam Jones
were alternates for Cousy and
Bill Sharman
.
Two legends as a replacement for two others.
"Not that Sharman and KC trained against each other. They were almost bloodbaths. Neither was dirty, but they were very tough."
Jones was a defensive specialist in those Celtics and, since Cousy's retirement in 1963, also the starting point guard.
A hand not as showy as 'Houdini', but one that kept the team's direction.
That year he was part of the first black team in the NBA along with Russell, Sam Jones,
Satch Sanders
and
Willie Nauls
.
What goes unnoticed today, in that segregated United States, was a milestone and almost a challenge.
Jones, like any other black citizen, was used from a young age to read the posters to find out what sources he could drink from, where on the bus he could sit or through which door he could enter to eat.
Heinsohn said that in the 1961 preseason the Celtics traveled to Indiana to play a friendly.
They were the reigning NBA champions and they were even handed the keys to the city.
But when some black team players (Russell and the two Joneses) went to dinner, they were denied service.
The staff was planted at dawn at the mayor's house to return the keys.
The next night they went to Lexington to play a friendly in honor of
Frank Ramsey
, a teammate and former player at the University of Kentucky.
Russell was coming down for breakfast when KC Jones stopped him on the way.
They had been teammates at the University of San Francisco, a relatively progressive team: They had three black starters at a time when few teams had any.
"Where are you going? If they aren't going to serve you. They don't serve black people here."
Russell picked up the phone and asked about the first flight out of town.
The black players refused to play and went home.
Champion with the eternal rival
After retiring KC Jones trained at Brandeis and Harvard universities before receiving the call from his former teammate Bill Sharman: The Los Angeles Lakers, the great rival of the Celtics, had hired him as a coach and wanted him to be their assistant.
Pat Riley says that he had to convince Jerry West to take it because, after losing six finals to the Celtics, he hated anything green.
Especially Jones.
He had never played a final against Sharman, but Jones' defense had riled him up.
But under the command of those two Celts, and despite the retirement of Elgin Baylor in the middle of the course, the Lakers won 33 games in a row and Jerry West's only ring as a player.
KC Jones trained for a season in the ABA with the San Diego Conquistadors before returning to the NBA with the Capital Bullets (now Washington Wizards).
He reached the Finals once in three seasons, but a tough playoff elimination cost him his firing.
That disappointment, he would tell years later, plunged him into one of the darkest moments of his life.
A hole that he wouldn't come out of until the Celtics knocked on his door.
The Celtics of the 80s
After a brief stint with the Milwaukee Bucks as an assistant to
Don Nelson
(another former Boston teammate), Jones returned to the Celtics as an assistant to Satch Sanders,
Dave Cowens
and
Bill Fitch
.
With the latter he won his second ring before leading one of the great teams in history: those Celtics of the eighties with
Larry Bird
,
Kevin McHale
,
Robert Parish
,
Dennis Johnson
,
Danny Ainge
...
If
Pat Riley
was one of the keys that opened the Lakers doors for him, now he would be his nemesis in the rivalry that marked the eighties: the proud greens against the
Los Angeles
showtime
.
In five years as the Celtics' head coach, Jones reached four Finals in a row, and in three of them he met the Lakers.
He won one (1984) and lost two (1985, 1987).
In the other he defeated the Houston Rockets (1986).
A few months before that last ring, he left his philosophy in print: "People want to see a coach with a whip in one hand and a chair in the other, but I don't fit into that mold. I prefer not to embarrass my players in front of 15,000 people just to impress the world. "
KC Jones was the son of the Great Depression.
He was born in 1932 and his family had to move from one city to another chasing bread that was scarce.
KC, by the way, doesn't mean anything.
His father was also called that, and the most plausible explanation is that he was a transcript of
Casey Jones
, a machinist who became famous at the time for saving the lives of many people in a train accident.
Russell's goodbye
However, his father ended up serving in the Navy and the family, which ended up breaking up, moved to San Francisco.
There he began his career in basketball.
There he met Russell, with whom he was part of the legendary Dons, a team that won the college tournament twice and only lost one game in two years.
With him he also won Olympic gold in Melbourne.
Before serving in the Army.
Before I was about to play in the NFL.
Only Auerbach (16) and
Phil Jackson
(13) won more NBA rings than KC Jones (12), not bad for a career that could not start.
"Friends forever," said Russell, who years ago left the best compliment for his partner: "Of all the men I have met in life, KC is the one I wish one of my sons looked like."
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