In order to honor the legacies of the leagues’ legends of the past, the NBA has named its yearly awards — and the namesakes include two Boston Celtics greats who made an impact both on and off the court in their namesakes.
In honor of arguably the greatest sixth man the NBA has ever and will ever see, the league stamped “John Havlicek” as the new face of the sixth man award. In his first seven seasons as a professional in his bench role, the Ohio native averaged 19.3 points per game en route to becoming one of the key impact players in winning an astounding six titles in his first seven professional seasons in Boston.
The 16x NBA champion, as both a coach and an executive, earned his name on the highest honor a head coach in the NBA can earn at the end of each season. Red Auerbach may have won just one Coach of the Year award, but the New York native has accumulated the second-best win-loss percentage of any coach on the sideline for 20 or more seasons in the NBA, winning a staggering 66.1 percent of contests. His winning percentage far above the .500 mark in the postseason along with nine titles speak for themselves. Auerbach was a true trailblazer of the game of basketball, and his mind and legacy will forever be remembered at the conclusion of each NBA season from now on.
Boston Celtics legends John Havlicek and Red Auerbach changed the game forever
John Havlicek completely changed the perception of the sixth-man role that the NBA has come to know today. It wasn’t always about making it into the starting five night in and night out, it was about the impact you made on the floor when the time came. Whether it was his immortal moment in the 1965 Eastern Conference championship when Johnny Most uttered arguably the most infamous words in Celtic history, “Havlicek stole the ball”, or helping Boston become the first team to overcome a 3-1 deficit to the 76ers in the 1968 Division series, Hondo truly embraced his role. The eight-time NBA champion tragically passed away at the age of 79 of Parkinson’s disease in 2019, but through this award, nobody is going to forget how influential Hondo was coming off the bench during that stretch of seasons in the 1960s.
The award may not have existed until 1982 when the “Secretary of Defense”, Bobby Jones of the Milwaukee Bucks took home the award, but it is nice to see the league giving the nod to a player that defined what this role meant for so many seasons even before the silverware was brought into the conversation. Boston in fact won three out of the first four sixth-man honors. Kevin McHale earned the honor twice, while Bill Walton took home the silverware in the Celtics’ historic 1985/86 campaign. Since then, no Boston player has been given the nod by the league in this category, but this season could be a new story.
When it comes to the Coach of the Year, despite having a multitude of good contenders over the years, the Boston Celtics have not had their coach receive the award now named after Red Auerbach from the league since Bill Fitch in 1980. Ime Udoka may have led one of the greatest turnarounds in the history of the NBA, and just a few years before, Brad Stevens continuously produced overperforming Boston teams, but neither of them earned the nod. Even Doc Rivers, who captained Boston to a 66-win season in 2008 came up short at the end of the season when it came to the coaching silverware.
The Boston Celtics have contenders for these awards in 2022-23
This season, the Boston Celtics have a contender for both the Sixth Man of the Year and Coach of the Year. Malcolm Brogdon inserted himself into the rotation almost seamlessly, possessing the highest three-point percentage of any “sixth man” around the league this season at 48.39 percent. The former Pacer has netted 16 or more points in 10 games so far this season off the bench. While he was one of the main men for Indiana, Brogdon’s selflessness has been a breath of fresh air for this organization.
Joe Mazzulla may be in his first season as a head coach, but his campaign as the Coach of the Year is as serious as anybody else in the league. Having that ability to take control of the job in the blink of an eye given the situation that Boston found itself in as training camp got underway should not go unnoticed. With both a top-ten offense and defense so far in this campaign, Mazzulla has been one of the league’s most extraordinary stories through two months of the season.
Boston now has three of its organization’s legends etched on awards, behind only the Lakers who have four including the Kobe Bryant All-Star MVP trophy. In a year that has seen so many Celtic greats pass away, it is nice to see the league honoring two of their most monumental figures. Auerbach and Havlicek were bigger than life, and while both of them are up in the Garden rafters, they are now written in history on two of the league’s most prestigious individual awards.