Red was a great leader because of the trust and respect he had earned among his players. It had everything to do with listening.

I did something else, too. Sitting there on the bus, I’d close my eyes and try to see each move these players made the same way I had “memorized” Michelangelo and Leonardo. As I saw them move in my mind’s eye, I imagined myself as their shadow or mirror image. Every movement, every subtle gesture they made, I made in reverse, till I knew that I

The Celtics, quite specifically, understood the power of invisibility. Playing for the team was always the plan. You had to be willing to give yourself up—to make yourself invisible—if you wanted success.

You could never defend Kareem by reacting to what he did. If he started his move, it would be too late to do much about it.

I have been flattered when people say I always helped my teammates play taller. What I tried to do was to make the adjustments to ensure they all could play their games better.

My father once told me that anyone who worked for three dollars an hour owed it to himself to put in four dollars’ worth of work so at the end of the day he could look any man in the eye and tell him where to go. My father believed that you could feel a sense of security for giving more than what someone was expecting from you. I took my lead from

INVISIBILITY IS USUALLY not a standard by which anyone measures success, but it is a great power if it is understood and used creatively. It is a subtle power. It resists formulas and definitions, but its rewards are extraordinary.

I must say a word about an obvious tension that exists between reading and doing. To state a rule, to elaborate a lesson, is one thing, but at the end some heavy lifting must be done, and those who want to bring Celtic Pride into their lives, their businesses, must make sure to do it. No one can ease the way for you.

In the thirteen years I played and coached for the Celtics, I never heard the words dynasty or legend spoken by anyone within the organization. The reality is, any team that thinks of itself as a dynasty will never become one. Red used to tell us that what we did last season was important only in terms of what it made our opponents think of us.