Cousy: His Life, Career, and the Birth of Big-Time Basketball [Hardcover]

Bill Reynolds (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2005

It was an era when the game was played for the love of it, and a fledgling NBA struggled for mainstream attention. Bob Cousy was at the heart of basketball's emergence as premier entertainment, a dynamo whose talent and ingenuity dazzled fans and players. The MVP of the 1957 season and veteran of six NBA championships with the Boston Celtics, his trademark behind-the-back dribble and no-look pass gave us basketball as no one had seen it before -- a one-man revolution that set the stage for Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor, Bill Russell, and others. Here is the fascinating, in-depth story of Cousy's life -- his tenement childhood, his drives and motivations, his little-known personal life, and his record-breaking career -- set against one of the most exciting generations in sports history.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Nicknamed the "Houdini of the Hardwood" by sportswriters during the 1950s, Bob Cousy was basketball's "first genuine superstar," as Providence Journal columnist Reynolds shows in this insightful, well-written biography. Cousy became a Hall of Fame member for originating such NBA staples as the behind-the-back dribble and the no-look pass, but most importantly because his enormous talent made the Boston Celtics the dominant team of the 1960s. Excellent chapters on Cousy's pro career explore his interactions with basketball legends like the gruff Celtics coach Red Auerbach and Bill Russell, the brilliant and enigmatic Celtics center who endured years of racism from many of the same Boston fans who cheered Cousy. Reynolds does a remarkable job illuminating the sport's early days in the 1940s, when three-time All-American Cousy became one of the biggest names in college hoops, and the NBA's first gritty years. But the book's best parts are those in which Reynolds illuminates how Cousy's impoverished 1930s youth in a Manhattan tenement and the constant tension between his parents created in him a drive to succeed that resulted in anxiety attacks, sleepwalking and a "raw, unadulterated, fear" of failure—all of which he hid from the public yet used to motivate himself and to maintain a social consciousness about racism that was unfortunately uncommon for his era.
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From Booklist

Bob Cousy was the NBA's first fan-friendly star. George Mikan was leading the Minneapolis Lakers to championships, but he was a bespectacled behemoth with whom few fans could identify. Cousy, on the other hand, was only six feet tall, and he dazzled fans with his ball handling. Reynolds, a columnist for the Providence Journal, gives the NBA's first marketable star the full-dress biography he deserves. Working from material collected in a series of interviews with Cousy, Reynolds traces the star's early life and shows how he became, first, the Celtics' team leader and, later, how he merged his talents with those of Bill Russell to forge a dynasty. Reynolds also explores Cousy's close but not too close relationship with the baseline Celtic coach and general manager Red Auerbach. Cousy collaborated on a couple of earlier biographies, but this is clearly the definitive one. Reynolds brings a serious biographer's sense of balance to the task, as contrasted with a typical sports biographer's sense of hype. This is wonderful reading, both for old-time fans and new ones who wonder if superstars were always like Shaq and Kobe. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 3rd prt. edition (February 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743254767
• ISBN-13: 978-0743254762
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,268,267 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Early Superstar From the NBA's Beginnings, June 24, 2005

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C. W. Emblom "Bill Emblom" (Ishpeming, Michigan USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cousy: His Life, Career, and the Birth of Big-Time Basketball (Hardcover)

You can be either a casual or even a non-fan of professional basketball and still enjoy Bill Reynolds's book on Bob Cousy. He will take you back to a time in the late 1940's and early 1950's when professional basketball was merely a filler sport between football and baseball. I feel the book is really two stories told in one book, the life of Bob Cousy and the role he played in professional basketball's beginnings and also the birth of the struggling NBA when they played in minor league cities such as Syracuse, New York, and Fort Wayne, Indiana. It is also the story of early NBA superstars from other teams such as George Mikan of the Minneapolis Lakers, Bob Pettit of the St. Louis Hawks, and Oscar Robertson of the Cincinnati Royals. Cousy also tells of his childhood insecurities while growing up in New York City, his decision to attend Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts, after playing only one and one half years of high school basketball, and how he became a Boston Celtic when coach Arnold "Red" Auerbach preferred to have two other players which were chosen in a dispersal draft. The Celtics weren't able to become the NBA champs until they added Bill Russell, a big man to play center. How the Celtics managed to draft Russell with the third pick is an interesting story in itself. NBA fan or not! Boston Celtic fan or not! You will enjoy this book.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Story from Long Ago When the World Was Simpler, March 21, 2005

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John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cousy: His Life, Career, and the Birth of Big-Time Basketball (Hardcover)

With all the hype, with all the publicity from the NBA in the past forty years or so, it's mainly us old types who remember. Especially us old types who lived in Boston. The Celtics were like the Yankees of baseball, the Green Bay Packers of football. And the Celtics were Cousy and Russell.

This book does a supurb job of talking about professional (and college) basketball as it changed in the fifties from a dream to a main line professional sport. He picked the right character to use as the centerpiece of the story. Bob Cousy was everything the sport needed, a superstar player, a solid family man when that was one of the things expected from a professional athelete, unassuming but with a killer instinct to win.

This was a time when at 6' 2" Cousy could be a superstar, and there was never any question of anything like the drug mess that is currently hitting baseball. Perhaps life was simpler then, although there was the fear of the Soviet Union and nuclear war, and Bob Cousy was the perfect man for the time. Wonderful book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A solid biography, September 1, 2005

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Judd Vance - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cousy: His Life, Career, and the Birth of Big-Time Basketball (Hardcover)

Reynolds tells a wonderful story about an interesting person. Initially, the story was supposed to be about the pioneering era of basketball, but he decided since Cousy was such a focal point on this era and professional basketball's climb to greatness, that he would write about Cousy himself. Cousy, a private man, agreed through mutual acquaintances to go along and provided information and interviews.

The story starts with Cousy's young life during the depression in a New York ghetto, and his life in a dysfunctional home. He used basketball as a means of acceptance and eventually as a means to greatness. Ironically, he was cut by his high school team in his freshman and sophomore seasons, which drove him and spurred on his killer instinct. When he made the team, he went on to become the captain of the all-city team.

Then, Reynolds describes how Cousy picked Holy Cross for his college education, and how, contrary to the myth, he did not "lead" Holy Cross to the NCAA Championship his first year. He goes through his spats with his first head coach in college "Doggie Julian", and his great respect for his successor, "Buster" Sheary. He also covers how Cousy wound up on a Boston Celtics team that didn't want him and how legendary Celtics coach Red Auerbach took jabs in the press at Cousy, so that he would know who was in charge, despite the press' love of Cousy.

He goes through the hard years of success without championships and then the great championship run that came after the Celtics drafted Bill Russell. He also covers Cousy's business ventures off of the court and his life after basketball.

What sets this book apart from a simple factoid book of the 1950s was how Reynolds digs past the surface to show how Cousy's upbringing created an irrational fear of failure and an unhealthy competitive streak that Cousy had to learn to deal with throughout his life. Depsite his success, Cousy was in many ways a tortured soul, feeling like he had to do all he could to provide for his family, yet regretting the time he spent away from home and the sleepwalking and nervousness he felt as he went through his career, trying to satisfy his competitive urges.

Why 4 stars? I rate basketball books agaisnt each other. 5 stars is the top 1/5 of books. This is a very good book, and 4 stars is a high compliment.