How money changed Red Auerbach's game
RED AUERBACH, the legendary coach and general manager of the Boston Celtics, died last week at 89. As a coach, he guided the Celtics to eight straight NBA championships from 1959 to 1966, a feat unmatched in the NBA or any other major professional sports league. When he retired from active coaching in 1966, he was the league's all-time winningest coach. He brought another seven titles to the Celtics as a GM. He made the Celtics' success in the 1980s possible by drafting the great Larry Bird (after five other teams had passed him by) and acquiring Robert Parish and Kevin McHale.
Yet the NBA has changed a great deal over the past 50 years, and it is worth asking whether the traits that made Auerbach great still have a place in the modern game. When he arrived at the Celtics in 1949, the Lakers still played in a city that actually has lakes; the league had franchises in such metropolises as Sheboygan, Waterloo, and Fort Wayne, and the Celtics finished dead last in their division.
Since those days, the economics of the game have changed. In today's environment, even Auerbach would find it more difficult to create a Celtics dynasty.
First of all, the league is more financially stable nowadays. Fifteen of the 17 teams in the NBA in the 1949-50 season either relocated or went bankrupt over the next decade. It was within these years of turmoil that Auerbach pulled off some of his best moves. Auerbach only happened upon his first great player, Bob Cousy, because Cousy's team, the Chicago Stags, folded before the 1950-51 season. The Celtics picked his name out of a hat when the team's players were reallocated.
Auerbach's greatest triumph, however, came in 1956, when he persuaded the owner of the Rochester Royals to pass up drafting Bill Russell. In exchange, Auerbach arranged for Rochester to get the Ice Capades. Bill Russell went on to win 11 titles. Of course, what seems laughable today may have made perfect economic sense in the low-revenue 1950s.
The financial gains that the league has reaped in the subsequent five decades have contributed to an explosion in player salaries. Shaquille O'Neal's $20 million salary last year earned him about $11,500 per minute of playing time -- more than the $9,000 Cousy earned in his first year playing for Auerbach. In an era when the sport's biggest stars enjoy such enormous wealth, motivating players and promoting teamwork is a constant challenge for all coaches and GMs.
Free agency played a crucial role in this change. It's harder to get players to do those important little things that win games but that don't show up on the score sheet. Auerbach's finest talent was getting players to play the roles that the team needed to win. Before free agency, Red could make a convincing case to his players that he personally controlled their future salary and that he was indeed watching those little things. Nowadays, the players with the gaudy statistics are the ones rewarded with the big free-agent contracts.
Even though the NBA has loosened its salary-cap rules, making it easier for a team to re-sign its own players, free agency makes it harder to keep a team of stars together. For example, the Los Angeles Lakers, who won three NBA titles in a row between 2000 and 2002, have lost all but one player, Kobe Bryant, from their last championship team to free agency. Though Bryant is undeniably one of the NBA's great talents, his titles stopped coming without his supporting cast, which included O'Neal and Robert Horry. Free agency brought the Lakers' dynasty to an end after just three seasons.
None of this should take away from Auerbach's accomplishments. Indeed, his talent in identifying the great potential players like Russell or Bird remains a skill that is in great need today. To build a winning team in any era, one needs to be able to tell the difference between a Sam Bowie and a Michael Jordan, and Red had a knack for identifying potential franchise players whom other teams passed on. In any case, it is unlikely that Boston or the rest of the league will see a dynasty like Auerbach's Celtics anytime soon.
Victor Matheson is an economist at Holy Cross. 
