They All Boo When Red Sits Down

If, as many social psychologists contend, the invective of a hostile crowd is an expression of a literally murderous impulse, Arnold (Red) Auerbach, the coach of the Boston Celtics, who this month seek their seventh consecutive world professional basketball championship, is the most frequently and diabolically murdered man in America.

Elias Canetti, the Bulgarian-born author, might be describing Auerbach's tormentors when he deals with what he terms "the baiting crowd." Canetti writes in his Crowds and Power: "One important reason for the rapid growth of the baiting crowd is that there is no risk involved...because the crowd have immense superiority on their side. The victim can do nothing to them.... His permitted murder stands for all the murders people have to deny themselves for fear of the penalties for the perpetration. A murder shared with many others, which is not only safe and permitted, but indeed recommended, is irresistible to the great majority of men."

When Auerbach recently appeared on That Regis Philbin Show, a television program, he was visibly taken aback by the warm reception the studio audience accorded him. "How come the people applauded?" he asked Philbin. "It makes me feel uneasy." Away from the Boston Garden, in what Auerbach calls "hostile territory," basketball fans react to his presence in much the same way that sharks respond to even minute quantities of blood in the water. When Auerbach is introduced before a game he is invariably greeted with what has become known as a chorus of boos. Auerbach acknowledges these with a little, feckless wave. "What are you going to do?" he says. "A boo is a boo. Generally, you don't take the time to figure out what kind of a boo it is, whether it's a good-natured boo, for instance. It's a boo and the hell with it." When Auerbach wrathfully rises from the bench, a program rolled tightly in one hand, to take exception to an official's decision, the crowd becomes predictably frenzied, bloodthirsty and, in downtown Philadelphia, violent.

Auerbach never looks at his program. In 1946, when he started coaching professional basketball with the Washington Capitols, he found that after a game his knuckles were swollen from repeatedly pounding his fists, so he began using a program as a sort of pacifier. It has since become as much of a prop as the cigar he lights when he believes victory is assured—a ceremony that also inevitably enrages the fans.

"Years ago," says Auerbach, "when they [apparently the hierarchy of the National Basketball Association] were picking on me for a hundred different things, I tried to think of something to aggravate them. They were abusing me. I lighted a cigar all of a sudden. I got a note: 'It doesn't look good for you to smoke cigars on the bench.' I told them I'd stop when the other coaches stopped smoking cigarettes. By then I liked the idea, and the people from Blackstone wanted me to endorse their cigar. Some of the coaches got aggravated. They thought I was lording it over them. The cigar is a sign of relaxation. The cigarette is a sign of tension. I explained to them that it was an endorsement, that I get money and all the cigars I can smoke. That calmed them down. Why stop a guy from making a buck? However, the fans think this is a major thing."

When the Celtics are losing, there are always half a dozen creeps chanting monotonously: "Hey, Red, where's the cigar, skin head?" One day last month when Auerbach was in Burlington, Vt. to address the Ethan Allen Club, one of its members buttonholed him. "Remember me?" he said. "I'm the guy who took the cigar from your wife and handed it to you four minutes before the end of the sixth playoff game against St. Louis in 1958." Says Auerbach: "The image of this cigar is unbelievable. A guy in Quincy, Mass. won the $1,000 first prize from the Cigar Institute of America for a photograph of me blowing smoke."

In the past 19 years, the last 15 of which he has spent with the Celtics, Auerbach has been the object of more tangible indications of the crowd's displeasure than boos. He has been hit with everything from peanuts (aimed at his bald spot) to right hands to, on the infrequent occasions when he has retaliated, assault actions—what he refers to, almost fondly, as "my suits." Says Auerbach: "A lot of people feel a ticket gives them a license to berate you. A coach should have the right to be unmolested. It's murderous.

"Basketball is a game of high emotion," Auerbach says. "In my house I don't go around yelling, blowing my top, losing my temper. Home is a different world, a different game." Auerbach resents the suggestion that his irascibility is ever feigned. "It's all realistic," he says. "If this is an act, I'd be an actor, I wouldn't be a coach. You pick your spots to this extent: you must control yourself. If you yell all the time, no one listens. Some coaches started to imitate me, but they felt I did it all the time. Not so. They're getting smarter now. They're starting to pace themselves. It's not a technique. It's a reaction. That's why I can't eat before a game. It's a plain, physiological thing. After you eat, you sit down. What happens? You go to sleep. Who are the most dangerous people? Animals. A hungry tiger. Not a starving tiger, a hungry tiger."

Auerbach has fallen asleep on the bench, but not from satiety. Once, in 1949, when he was coaching Tri-Cities, he took Dramamine to avoid getting carsick en route to a game, and later found he was unable to keep his eyes open. "I didn't make any substitutions the whole first half," he recalls vaguely. Auerbach is very big on naps. He has learned that stewardesses are not. "Imagine waking someone out of a sound sleep to ask them if they want a pillow," he says.

Auerbach counts on his naps to keep him going. "I've never taken sleeping pills, vitamins or tranquilizers," he says. "I don't average one aspirin a month. Every once in a while I'll have a doctor check my blood pressure. By the time I walk from the bench to the locker room, I'm normal. People say to me, 'Why don't you go to Florida, relax, lie in the sun, get a little tan?' I can't relax. What do I need a tan for? I look good."