Frank Ramsey: Seven Titles, One Ring

Frank Ramsey was a Hall of Fame forward on the Boston Celtics in the '50s and '60s, an era when Bill Russell ruled in the paint and the Celtics won 11 NBA titles in 13 years.

Ramsey Inducted

 

May 4, 1982

Frank Ramsey, who during his nine-year playing career with the Boston Celtics became one of the NBA's most celebrated "sixth men," was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame here yesterday.

Ramsey become the fifth Celtic player (the others are Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, Bill Sharman and Ed Macauley) in the Hall. In addition, four nonplaying Celtics are members, Walter Brown, Red Auerbach, Honey Russell and Doggie Julian.

Along with Ramsey, three other former NBA players were enshrined - Willis Reed of the New York Knicks, Slater Martin of the Minneapolis Lakers and St. Louis Hawks, and Hal Greer of the Syracuse Nationals and the Philadelphia 76ers.

Outside the player ranks, coach Clarence (Big House) Gaines of Winston- Salem State; Alva Duer, a valued contributor to amateur basketball, who is known as Mr. NAIA; and the late Everett Case, who coached 19 years at North Carolina State, also were inducted.

The John Bunn Award for outstanding contributions to basketball went to Danny Biasone, who as owner of the Syracuse Nats revolutionized the pro game in 1954 by persuading the other owners to institute the 24-second clock.

Making the presentation to Ramsey was his close friend and former University of Kentucky roommate, Cliff Hagan, once of the St. Louis Hawks and also a Hall of Famer. Ramsey captained the Kentucky team that won the 1954 NCAA championship under coach Adolph Rupp.

"It was Red (Auerbach) who did it, he's the one who was responsible for making me the sixth man," said Ramsey, 50, now in the farming and banking business in Madisonville, Ky. "It just developed that way. I wasn't good enough to start with players like Bill Sharman and Bob Cousy in the backcourt and Tommy Heinsohn up front.

"But I loved my role," Ramsey said. "When our guys got tired, I went in. By just sitting on the bench, I got a chance to see how the flow of the game was going and I knew what to do when Red sent me in."

Catching up with Frank Ramsey

February 2001

For an easygoing country boy from Kentucky, Boston Celtics Hall of Famer Frank Ramsey stirred up quite a ruckus in 1963. The New York Post called him the Flimflammer, NBA president Walter Kennedy sent him a letter of censure, and a Madison Square Garden crowd serenaded him with cries of "Fake!" Ramsey's transgression? He broke the cardinal rule of magicians: Never reveal your secrets. In an SI cover story entitled Smart Moves by a Master of Deception, Ramsey described the subtle elbows, planned flops and "heartwarming drama" he'd employed to fool refs and gain an edge on opponents. "For a couple months after that, the officials let people beat the hell out of me," says Ramsey , 69, who still lives on the farm on which he grew up in Madisonville, Ky.

As the man credited with inventing the role of sixth man on coach Red Auerbach's dominant Boston teams, Ramsey , a 6'3" swingman, provided adhesive defense and before-you-knew-it double-figure offense, averaging 13.4 points while helping the Celtics win seven NBA titles in his nine seasons. Still, it was Ramsey's craftiness around the basket that inspired SI's Frank Deford to travel to Madisonville to interview him in the summer of 1963 (and in the process become the only staffer to grace the cover of the magazine--that's the 6'4" Deford getting schooled in the cover illustration). Ramsey's feel for the game, and the game within the game, led the Celtics to offer him an assistant's job when he retired as a player in '64, with the understanding that he'd eventually succeed Auerbach. Ramsey said no thank you. He was heading home.

Since then Ramsey has been happy as a sow in mud, spending much of his time running the farm, which includes 750 acres of soybeans, corn, wheat and "a little tobakka" and 450 acres of woods, water and pastureland. He's also president of the only bank in Dixon, a dusty little town of 350 down the road from Madisonville where life is so laid back that, as Ramsey told a reporter asking to set up an interview time, "You just go ahead and call anytime. We don't have appointments down here."

These days Ramsey's weekends are for horseback riding and swimming with his six grandchildren, his three grown kids (who all live nearby) and his wife of 47 years, Jean. Although one grandson and four granddaughters (all younger than 10 years old) play basketball, none have emulated Grandpa's hardwood theatrics. "No, not yet," Ramsey says. "All they're trying to do is learn the rules--that and keep from double-dribbling."

No doubt a ref will be ready with a whistle if they do.

Ramsey, Red, and an F-Bomb

I've been known to have a few problems stuttering over my life. One day I was in the dressing room getting ready to play the Lakers in the championship. I asked our trainer, Buddy LeRoux, to work on my finger, which I had jammed earlier in the series. 'Hey, Buddy,' I said, 'do you think you could fuh-fuh-fuh, fi-fi-fix my fuh-fuh-finger?' Red, who was standing nearby, turns around, takes a cigar out of his mouth and says 'whattsa matter, Frankie, you a little nervous today?' Red then put the cigar back between his grinning teeth, as he waited to see if I could muster up a response.

Fuck you, Red.

How'd that come out?

The entire locker room broke up.

--Frank Ramsey