My favorite Celtic as a kid.

Great story about him in this morning's Boston Globe where he retired two years before Bird came along and used to come watch practices from time to time. During his rookie year, Bird was talking with him after practice and said at one point that he wished he played in Havlicek's era since he would have dominated the league. Havlicek responded by asking for a game of one-on-one (he was 40 at this point and had two bum knees and a bad back) and Bird accepted. At one point during what turned out to be a close game, Bird tried a quick cut fake and as Havlicek tried to swat the ball away, he caught Bird in the nuts instead, sending him to the floor doubled over in agony. Havlicek picked up the ball and walked away with Bird still on the floor, saying "Game over - you aren't tough enough to have played in our day."

Havlicek was also drafted by the Cleveland Browns as a receiver and almost made the team even though he hadn't played football since high school. He is still the Celtics all-time leading scorer even though he was the sixth man for the first 7 years of his career during the Russell years. Phenomenal athlete. RIP to one of the greats.

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"You can never win or lose if you don't run the race." - Richard Butler

He was a joy to watch. RIP Hondo.

"Havelick stole the ball! ... Johnny Havelick stole the ball!"

Johnnie Most right? Wasn't that the Phoenix Suns finals 3 overtime game 1976? If it was, I was in the car driving from Boston to Norfolk Va. WBZ (??) was the Celtics radio network. And as I remember was one of the flagship high power AM stations that in the evening if the ionsphere atmospherics were right you could pick up the skywaves as they looped up high and then bounced back off the ground only to bounce back down hundreds of miles away from the transmitters. With difficulty I was able to tune in the game and stay fully alert for the last part of the drive. Memory specifics are fading more than those radio waves that night. Ah, the gravelly voice of Most. KC and Sam Jones with that ever so sweet bank shot from the wing, Dave Cowens- big red? Tom Heinsohn? Satch Saunders? Gar Heard and the kid from Nova? for Phoenix. The first and still best 6th man of the NBA, Hondo. Those were the days. And the old garden. Gosh, thanks for the playback sir.

It was Most. That call was a bit before my time but I grew up a Celtics fan (I'm from Canada) and I just remember hearing it a few times when watching Celtics games on TV. It became a "thing" between my brother and I when watching games. If the announcer said "there's a steal for someone" (or something like that) we would turn to each other and say "someone stole the ball. FirstName someone stole the ball!". Without fail!

It was an iconic call and was the first thing I remembered when I saw that he died.

Sweet. Just googled it. He stole the ball in the 1965 eastern finals against Hal Greer and the Sixers. The game I was thinking of was indeed the NBA 76 finals, game 6 and the 3 OT winner by the Celts. There were more than a few of us non Bostonians who were die hard Celtics fans growing up from Russell and Cousy through to the Larry Bird era. I was stationed in East Boston in 1976 and made it to a couple of games in the old Boston Garden thus cementing my fandom for all things Celtics for a good while.