Earlier this week, former Boston Celtics great Kevin McHale joined ex-teammate Cedric Maxwell — also a legend in Beantown — on Maxwell’s eponymously-named podcast.
As one might imagine, the reminiscing was extensive and jocular, with stories ranging from their intensely competitive practices (“lot of times we were MF’ing each other”) to the deaths of Len Bias and Reggie Lewis, to the growing pains of rookies like Danny Ainge who searched for roles within a team filled with future Hall of Famers. Of course, it wouldn’t be an old-school Boston conversation without reliving the Celtics’ no-holds-barred rivalry with the Lakers throughout the 1980s.
McHale, a power forward who played his entire career in Boston, retired following the 1992-93 season with three championship rings and seven All-Star selections. Since leaving the parquet, he’s been an NBA head coach twice, a general manager, and an analyst for Turner Sports. Maxwell aka “Cornbread” played 607 games as a Celtics small forward and was named the 1980-81 Finals MVP. He’s been the radio color commentator for Celtics games since 1994.
While the two Boston legends mostly stuck to the past, they did find time to discuss the current NBA. McHale even dispensed some sage veteran advice to the current Celtics team who, despite returning from the All-Star break on a four-game winning streak, still have work to do to turn around an otherwise disappointing season.
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‘Good Threes Are Good Threes’
At some point, Maxwell asked McHale what he thought about today’s game compared to their playing days.
“There’s things I like and things I don’t like,” McHale said. “I like the spacing. We played in such a small space. I love the way the court is spread.” But ball movement, or rather the lack thereof, is clearly a pet peeve.
“I really don’t like the way the passing is — like good Lord, I don’t know what you have to do to make a guy throw the ball ahead,” said McHale. “And good Lord do they over-dribble. I mean, the first time they get the ball they back up between their legs and I’m just going, ‘How about playing off the catch?’
McHale also isn’t a fan of what is probably the biggest difference between now and when he and Maxwell played. “Honestly, I think we’ve given way too much [to the notion] that any three is a good three. No. Good threes are good threes. So I see guys who really can’t shoot the ball at 28%. And they’ll take five threes in a game, and I’m thinking ‘Really!?!’”
And don’t get him started on the recent trend of players forcing their way off teams to join a championship contender.
“I don’t like it, honestly. I have nothing wrong with free agency, but to not play hard and go there and just say, ‘Ah this team sucks, I’m only going to give a half-ass effort,’ that kind of stuff, you don’t do that,” said McHale. “There are just some things you can’t go public with.”
McHale specifically pointed to two high-profile examples, James Harden and Kyrie Irving.
On Harden: “James had a good run in Houston,” said McHale, who coached him for three years in H-Town. “But it shouldn’t have ended the way it did and now he’s gonna spend all this time trying to patch up that break up. And it didn’t need to be that way. He just needed to go in there quiet, come out in shape, bust his butt, play great and then move on. And then everybody would say OK.”
On Irving: “Like Kyrie Irving, okay now, he was a Celtic for a while. The way he leaves places…he leaves Boston it’s bad, he leaves Cleveland it’s bad. There’s a way to do it without burning every bridge, there’s a way to do it with coming out and saying ‘Hey man, I’m changing.’ So, I don’t like that aspect of that whole thing — of the super teams.”
McHale Says Current Celts Need to Make Teammates Better
Though McHale’s post-playing career has not directly involved the Celtics, the Minnesota-native is still clearly a fan of his former team. As the conversation wound to a close, Maxwell asked if McHale had anything he wanted to say directly to head coach Brad Stevens or the team.
“Hang in there,” McHale said. “The guys, the players, just make each other better. I just think that if you get a bunch of guys that are committed to making each other better, you make yourself better in doing that. If you have talent, it is going to shine through. If you have talent, you’re going to find a way to get the ball in the hole. But can you make it better for others? Extra passes — just make your teammates better. It’s that special.”
McHale didn’t go into more detail, but the notion that certain Celtics players — specifically superstars Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown — don’t do enough to make their teammates or each other better is nothing new. Mike Gorman, the team’s longtime play-by-play TV announcer, recently sounded off on Tatum and Brown’s 1-on-1 mentality.
“We need these two guys to come back from the All-Star break and stop thinking in individual terms, stop thinking about the numbers that they’re getting, and start looking at the wins and the losses,” Gorman said in late February on 98.5’s Toucher & Rich. “Start looking at how many assists you pile up in the game. Celtics should have between 25-30. Instead, the number is usually around 15-16. This team just needs to be more unselfish and I think they start at the top. And the top right now is Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, and they need to respond.”
And NBA insider Jackie MacMullan made a similar observation as a guest on The Bill Simmons Podcast in early March.
“They don’t make each other better either and that’s the most frustrating part,” said MacMullan after Simmons suggested Tatum and Brown don’t improve their teammates. “And they get along fine together, there’s no rift between them. But they don’t really make each other better yet.”
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Old School Celtics Drop Knowledge, Complaints