Speaker 1:
Welcome to Taking A Walk, an excursion to converse, connect, and catch up at a cool location with some of the most interesting people you can find.
Dan Shaughnessy
Hi, this is Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe, author of Wish It Lasted Forever, Life With the Larry Bird Celtics, and I’m taking a walk this morning with Buzz Knight here in my Newton, Massachusetts neighborhood.
Buzz
Well, Dan, it’s so great to actually see you guys. I don’t have to use the air quotes. See you on a zoom or something.
Dan
How about that?
Buzz Knight:
Right? Its’ so nice to see you. I haven’t seen you in a long time.
Dan
Well, we had some history here, Buzz. God, you hired me to do some radio a million years ago. I remember, I know I was doing it in ’93, the day Reggie Lewis died, because I was in Nags Head, North Carolina. And I remember calling you, calling the station with the report that I had. And so that’s pretty far back. And then of course, more recently in the old TKK days at the, whatever they call that building now, I don’t know. It’s had multiple incarnations of radio stations. But used to see you in the corridors there as well. But it’s good to see you again, Buzz.
Buzz Knight:
Yeah, we would pass, I think on the traditional air talent bathroom break, right?
Dan
That was definitely happening. And we have a mutual friend of course in Hank Morse who’s been doing, doing radio in town for a million years and everybody loves Hank and anytime you can get together with him, it’s time well spent. He knows everybody.
Buzz Knight:
That’s right. That’s right. Well, it’s so great to see you. And it’s so great to take a walk. Now, before we get into the book, you wrote the book during, we won’t even use the term whatever this last two years was. So you wrote it during that period. Did you ever take a walk here in the neighborhood to kind of unleash your creativity at various moments where you were maybe roadblocked?
Dan
Well, it’s not a lot of blockage for me, but I jog this path we’re on every morning, it’s a mile loop. And we bought this house in 1988 and I don’t know, I just needed to go a mile and I’ve been doing one mile a day since 1983, so that’s almost 40 years. It’s incredibly slow, a slog. The kids walking to school are blasting by me now. But I love this neighborhood for it and it’s my little canyon of heroes back here and it’s just been most of the people in these houses I know or I knew who was there before or children grew up and other people have come and bought houses in the neighborhood, people we knew from other lives. And it’s just been a great landing spot here for, oh my God, since like I said, since 1988, so coming up on 33, 34 years.
Buzz Knight:
Well, it’s beautiful. It really is. So the book is amazing, congratulations. And it represents this period in time that certainly speaks to so many people, speaks to me. I was not living up here during that period. My wife and I lived in Connecticut and we regularly would race up I-84 and come to Celtic games just in. Last minute notice. There was this tremendous record guy, worked for Geffen, he just passed away recently, named Al Perry. Al would call up say, “I got some tickets,” and we’d come up. And we were the fanboy and girl who went to Scotch and Sirloin after. So you paint so many pictures that just come roaring back memory wise. And when I really think of the subtext of it all and other maybe subtitles around the book, because the book title is magnificent. But I also think of, I mean you make mention in the book, I think of glory days.
Dan
Sure.
Buzz Knight:
When I think of that era in your book. I think of it doesn’t get be any better than this. Right? And I guess I think in a little bit about beer drinkers and hell raisers.
Dan
Yeah, we had all of that. And Bill Walton actually named the book because when I interviewed Bill, he just talks about this period so fondly and his quotes just jump off the page. But he said, “When you do this book,” he said, “empty the thesaurus. You can say whatever you want. You cannot overstate how great this was.” He started talking about the toll takers and the Mass Pike and parking lot attendants at the Garden and him having his four boys in Cambridge and just what a thrill it was to be here in that time. And as you referenced, the Celtics were must see TV then and impossible ticket. You did well to score those tickets occasionally to come up because they sold out every game. I think it got to like 660, but kind of started with Larry coming to town, the big turnaround, ’79, ’80. And I came on the beat ’82, ’83. It was his fourth season. And then he was MVP the next three years that I did the beat.
Dan
So I got to see the best basketball ever played and that was sort of one of the motivations for putting this in. I mean, everybody already know who won and who’s in the hall of fame and what the stats are. And there’s no attempt here to replay game by game and the stuff that’s been well told in many other books and volumes. But this was sort of a love letter to an earlier time when the NBA was smaller and you had this rare collection of talent and egos and friendship, attitude. And they really worked well together. And even the practices were joyous. They had an uncanny and unusual security of their own greatness. You didn’t have a lot of internal competition or pettiness or comparing who’s making more, who’s getting more shots. It was really the collective. It’s just a rare thing. You don’t see that a lot in professional sports.
Dan
And these guys are like myself in their mid, late sixties now and becoming grandfathers and qualifying for Medicare and social security and whatnot. And I know I talked to several of them, there’s these lovely passages where McHale will just say, “When I see any of those guys, just visceral response, just lights me up.” And they have these nicknames they share. And I think like any group, whether it’s a sports team or maybe if you’re in the military or certainly your college dorm, just the time in your life when you’re young and everything’s great and everything’s ahead of you. And I think when they see each other, it reminds them of that and it’s a good time.
So this is all in there and just the interactions with each other and my interactions with them. Because I was the wise ass not to be trusted reporter and that lent a certain edge to it, too. So the book’s a lot of fun.
Buzz Knight:
It really is. And did you find yourself thinking about all of that period that, did you realize how special it was when it was happening?
Dan
That’s a really good question, Buzz, and one of the things that’s come out out is, no. And it’s one of the reasons it motivated me to do it because during the early days of the pandemic, when there was no games, no shows and showing a lot of of course The Last Dance everybody watched and then locally, they were showing Celtics classics of the eighties. And I kept seeing my young self sitting at the press table back in the days of when the lowly media was allowed to sit right down next to the bench because they weren’t selling those for thousands of dollars. They hadn’t figured it out yet. And we were still essential to what the enterprise was.
So when I was doing it, I was head down and being a tough guy and reporting and breaking stories and not caring about who liked me or didn’t, and it created some tensions and it wasn’t as much fun. And it was a busy time in life. We were starting a family, like most of the players were starting families. And so you had little kids and moving houses and that came down to my wife way more and she did a great job holding it together because I was just gone so much. But so the answer to your great question is, no. I wish I had watched the basketball a little bit more. And that’s what seeing that videos reminded me of.
And to your other question about walking around, during my morning jog or walking the neighborhood with the dogs or just going out in the driveway and shooting baskets, very much therapeutic about getting older and what it was like at that time when Larry Bird and Robert Parish and DJ and we were all young. And so yeah, I think fondly of it and I’m glad to have the book with it now.
Buzz Knight:
Yeah, well I think about from the perspective of other scenarios in my life. And then of course this period that we’re talking about, that the book’s about, in my life and you really don’t when you’re in the moment certainly appreciate it. And it does teach you at this time in our lives that you do have to find appreciation for what you have and being in the moment. And that’s the essence for me around certainly taking a walk and this podcast because mindfulness and being in the moment is a pretty important thing as well. Now, do you believe there’s any chance whatsoever that that period of time in the NBA could ever be replicated?
Dan
No, sir. And that’s one of the reasons for the book, because and again, it’s evolution. It’s nobody’s fault. I don’t enjoy watching the game now as much as I did then. I don’t think the balls is good. But folks watching in the eighties didn’t think the ball was as good as it was in the fifties, so that evolves. I understand that. But I don’t know, this is, if you just look at the passing and the creativity that they had, it was rare. And I think that not to be replicated and you’re not going to have another Larry Bird come along. There’s some guys. But I don’t know, in that time in Boston, people weren’t on their cell phones all the time and certainly can’t replicate the old Garden, not that you’d want to on the hot days or the cold days. It was really hot in there in the springtime. That was part of the story. We’re sweating all over each other and Karim Abdul Jabbar wearing an oxygen mask on the bench during the finals. And you’re just not going to have that need anymore.
So things evolve and I’ll tell you, I mean the news papers are not important now the way they were. We’re not in no seats anymore. The access has dwindled to almost nothing, which was a big motivator for this book. When they resumed playing at the COVID bubble in Orlando in 2020, anyone who covered had to sign a waiver stipulating they would not approach any athlete or coach if they saw them away from the gym. And that’s where we did our best work, because we literally lived with them. We were like, we didn’t have the fame or the money or the groupies, but we were like on the team. We were in the buses going to practice, no closed practices. We stayed in the same hotels. We flew commercial, same planes. And we just were part of their traveling group. And not everybody liked it, but we got along because you have to learn how to get along.
And it gave us tremendous access and the ability to tell the readers, the fans, what these guys are like. Now that’s not coming. Today’s reporters, they can’t tell you what Jalen Brown or Marcus Smart or Jason Tatum are really like. And we don’t know if they don’t like the coach or why they’re having difficulties or why Brad Stevens had to step away. It’s just nobody’s fault. It’s the way it’s evolved, with the people reporting today do not have the access that we had to tell you.
First few chapters of the book, there’s trouble in dodge with Bill Fitch. He had worn out his welcome and had to go. Well, it doesn’t make anybody a bad guy, but it was very apparent. I’m there when the video machine breaks in Atlanta and they’re dancing around so happy. You don’t have to watch video again. And you could tell the readers, “These guys have kind of had it with the video.” And you guess things would happen. And again, we got to know if Larry would get mad at Michael, wasn’t getting the ball. Larry’d tell you off to the side, “He’s not working to get to his spot tonight.” I mean DJ’d dribble over mid game, tell Bob Ryan to pipe down, he’s being too loud talking about Larry. So it was a very intimate, great proximity, great access, and that’ll never be replicated.
Buzz Knight:
And I had heard the story which you tell in the book about the basketball competition with Larry. But you go into this tremendous detail of it and feels like you’re there. And then the moment, I mean, what a spectacular. Could you ever imagine a guy like you just being in that position?
Well, I was a really good free throw shooter in high school, but I was a bench guy. I didn’t play. I made varsity, but that was it. Never played, but I could make those free throws. And I enjoyed talking and about basketball with Larry because he was so great at it. And he was from a small town and it was just things I could relate to. I wasn’t as poor as him either, but I wasn’t six, nine. I wasn’t a lot of things he was. But we were around the same age and grew up in small towns and loved basketball. So that was okay to talk about. And he liked to take everybody’s money. That was just kind of his thing. He never lost that because he grew up poor and that hunger really helped make him great, I believe.
So you’d walk into the gym, they practiced at a little Greek Orthodox college in Brookline, Helenic College. And nobody could find it. The way the Red wanted it. And nobody bothered him. But you walk into the little gym and wherever he was standing, he’d say, “Shoot for money?” And then that meant wherever he was, if he turned and made it, you owed him a dollar. If he missed it, he owed you a dollar. So a lot of dollars changed hands. Mostly us giving them to him off that. And then one day he was playing with tape on his hand in practice. I challenged if he could do that in the game the next night. Didn’t seem likely. So he went right into his pool hustler overdrive. He’d clearly done this before. He said, “I could tape my whole hand and make more shots than you, Scoop.”
And then he wouldn’t let it go. And he said, “No, we’re going to do this. $5 a throw. A hundred free throws. 10 at a time. Rebound for each other. You want to go first? Or I’ll go first.” I said, “I’ll go first.” He said, “You don’t like the pressure, do you?” “Well, you’re right.” But his hand was taped up like a boxing glove. He had no fingers, no thumb, just balled up. So I knew we’d have to shot put them. We both made like six in the first round, and I’m feeling pretty good. And then around the second, third round, he said, “I got this figured out.” And he did. And I just was not even moving as I rebounded make after make and just swishing through the net. And now I’m choking. I’m going out there seeing $5 bills flying through the air every time I let go. And I tried to get a buy out at midway point, but he wanted extra money for that. So I ended up losing 160. And to this day, if you bump into Larry Bird, you ask him, “How much money did you take off Scoop in 1985?” He’ll say, “I got $160 in my pocket.” He never forgot the number. I kind of admire that.
Buzz Knight:
That’s amazing. Now did you try to contact him for the book?
I tried to contact everybody who was living except for Robert Parrish. Never talked to me. So that was understood. I wasn’t going to try and contact him.
Buzz Knight:
Yeah.
Dan
And Larry, I think was the only one we didn’t get. I had told the publisher, “He’s probably not going to do this.” Because I’m aware, he’s kind of turned off the faucets. He’s done.
Buzz Knight:
Yeah.
Dan
And I knew that Cedric Maxwell couldn’t get him to help with his book. And Bob Ryan and Jackie McMullin, both of whom are in the Hall of Fame, both of did biographies with Larry, partners with him, staying at his house while they did them, they weren’t getting callbacks. So he’s not going to call me back. So I went through all the proper channels and he was certainly aware it was happening, had every opportunity. But frankly, he wouldn’t have amplified it much, anyway. Larry’s not particularly introspective. I’ve so much from him from back in the day, and it’s good private stuff and a lot of it for the first time and you really get to know him. He’s the most dominant voice in the book. Although Cedric Maxwell is probably the funniest and Bill Walton, the most passionate. Michael, I mean we have a lot of good voices in there. And it was fun to get new stuff from some of the guys, 35, 37 years later. Jerry Henderson was, he’s pretty outrageous in it. You’ll see he’s still mad about getting traded and then Len Bias coming in. And Jerry has a epic quote in one of those things. I think it’s a book title chapter, but anyway, yeah, so Larry, I respect that. He gave us his game and that’s enough.
Buzz Knight:
Well there is in the book, too, there’s so much, to your point, there’s conflict that goes on without question.
Dan
Oh sure.
Buzz Knight:
And there’s certainly some anger over some things and still some anger, like you said, to this day. But the book is so much about joy and the joy of collaboration and team and winning and busting chops and just the whole package. Right?
Dan
Well thank you, Buzz. That’s what we were aiming for. And it’s a fun book and it’s a quick book. I’ve had people like they say, “I wish the book lasted forever. It’s too short.” I was trying to make sure it wasn’t too long because people’s attention spans were a little bit sparse now. But I think it came in around 250 pages, whatnot. But yeah, joy’s a good word, fun and joy. And just, oh you like our leaf blowers in the neighborhood? That’s a first, never see any of those in Newton. But so yeah, I think that that’s a good takeaway and that’s the experience that I want people to have because everybody has so much joy watching it, and that’s been a short supply last year or two. So it’s a chance to have a few laughs and it’s nostalgia. It’s a time machine, way back, all that stuff. But there’s a lot to be the gained and learned, and it kind of gives you a warm, fuzzy feel.
Buzz Knight:
Without a question. Well, so last question. So when you got taken off the Celtics beat and then put on the Red Sox beat, the sense I got was that was a bit of a disappointment maybe?
Dan
I had the option, but I’ll tell you …
Buzz Knight:
Nothing against the Red Sox.
Dan
No, but you know, truly as popular as the Celtics were and as much as everybody loves Larry, when you were a reporter for the Boston Globe in the mid eighties, that was a no brainer. I had done five years of major league ball in Baltimore and Washington. And in Boston, it was still the sport that never goes out of season, never goes out of style. The Celtic beat frankly became kind of not as much fun pretty quickly after I left. Bias dies and traded Danny Ainge and Larry retired in ’92 and it went away fast. They didn’t win anything till 2008. But the Sox, I got right on that ’86 team, which was the Bill Buckner year, they almost won the World series. And then I wrote The Curse of Bambino and subsequent baseball books. Got to be there for the great ride of ’03, ’04, biblical greatest story ever told.
Dan
But it’s a different, in the moment it was certainly a step down in terms of how much fun you were having and how much harder baseball was because the guys just aren’t as nice, frankly, or secure. And Bruce Hurst delivers a tremendous couple of pages on that. He’s a pitcher for the Sox, but he was Danny’s friend. He knew all the Celtics. And he’ll tell you, he’ll say, “Yeah, we weren’t like them. We weren’t secure. We were competitive. We harbored bitterness toward each other.” I saw at all, and it was very hard to go from this team of confidence and joy and security to this team of insecurity, bickering, back biting, just not good. But to get on MLB, you had to do it. I was replacing Peter Gamons, a legend. And that’s when I got to start writing books, because you want to write about a book about the Red Sox then, everybody’d say, “Bring it on.” And to this day they still do. So it was a good career move as weird as it sounds, but it was hard to walk away from the greatest team of all time. But I had done my job and I took it on home and left them to win that championship, which they did easily.
Buzz Knight:
Well Dan, congratulations on continuing to do your job, continuing to do great work for the passionate fans of Boston and New England and congratulations on this treasure of a new book.
Dan Shaughnessy
Well thank you, Buzz. It’s been nice walking around the neighborhood with you and I wish you the best of the podcast.
Buzz Knight:
Thank you, Dan.
Speaker 1:
Taking a walk with Buzz Knight, available on the Spotify, iTunes, and wherever podcasts are available.
About The Author
Buzz Knight
Buzz Knight is an established media executive with a long history of content creation and multi-platform distribution.
After a successful career as a Radio Executive, he formed Buzz Knight Media which focuses on strategic guidance and the development of new original content.
