Red Auerbach Dies at 89

In the late 1970s, as general manager and team president, Auerbach engineered the drafting of Larry Bird, which led to three additional NBA titles for the Celtics in the 1980s. As either coach or executive, Auerbach had a hand in 16 NBA championships in 29 years.

Defining his secret to coaching in a 2004 book co-written with Feinstein, "Let Me Tell You a Story: A Lifetime in the Game," Auerbach said: "Players are people, not horses. You don't handle them. You work with them, you coach them, you teach them, and, maybe most important, you listen to them."

He constantly impressed on his players -- and on his entire sport -- the importance of solid fundamental skills and unselfish team play. Through the force of his personality, and his refusal to countenance losing, Auerbach instilled a strong, indomitable ethos that characterized the Celtics for decades.

"I teach my players not to accept the philosophy that being a sore loser is a bad thing," he said. "Only losers accept losing."

'Look and Act Like Champions'

Arnold Jacob Auerbach was born Sept. 20, 1917, in Brooklyn, N.Y. His nickname was derived from his red hair before he went bald.

As a boy, he worked in his father's dry-cleaning shop, pressing up to 100 pairs of pants a day. But he was drawn to sports early in life.

Auerbach was a tough playground competitor who went on to be captain of his high school basketball team and president of his senior class. He liked to boast that he was a second-team all-Brooklyn player, noting that in his day Brooklyn had more good basketball players than could be found in some entire states.

After one year at Seth Low Junior College in Brooklyn, he transferred to George Washington University in 1937 -- and made Washington his home ever since.

At a stocky 5 feet 10, Auerbach was not a particularly gifted athlete. In his 1985 autobiography "On and Off the Court," he explained how he was able to make the starting lineup at George Washington: "The answer was defense. I was all over them like a blanket, hounding them every step, shutting them off every chance I got. Naturally, they didn't like that, so one thing led to another and before you knew it, fists were flying."

In his senior season at George Washington, he was the team's starting point guard and its leading scorer, averaging 10.6 points a game. He graduated in 1940 with a degree in physical education and a minor in biology and, the following year, received a master's degree in education from George Washington.

But his most valuable education came at the feet of his basketball coach, Bill Reinhart. Auerbach said he learned more about basketball from Reinhart than from anyone else. He studied Reinhart's fast-break offense, his emphasis on defensive play and his way of managing practices.

In 1940 and '41, when Auerbach was in graduate school at GW, he had his first coaching job, leading the basketball team at St. Albans School. From 1941 to 1943, he taught history and hygiene at Theodore Roosevelt High School in Washington and coached the basketball and baseball teams.