The Breaks of the Game - David Halberstam
In The Game
- A truly great basketball player was not necessarily someone who scored a lot of points; a truly great basketball player was someone of exceptional talent and self-discipline who could make his teammates better. Basketball was a sport where under optimal conditions a great player with considerable ego disciplined himself and became unselfish.
Off The Court
Bobby Gross, angry over the way he had been treated in the past, turned out to be very patient. That was vital. To win in negotiations like this the client had to have both skill and nerves. A lot of kids, aware of how brief their careers were, sensitive to the derogatory public remarks management often made in the heat of negotiations, lacked the nerve. But Gross was very tough.
Auerbach himself had never moved to Boston; his home was in Washington and he kept his wife and family there. Players were thus expected to keep their wives and families somewhere else as well. He did not, they believed, want them buying houses in Boston; in Boston they could rent. That, of course, emphasized the impermanence of their position and the need to play hard in order to retain it.