Tom Heinsohn Quotes

• You gotta learn that if you’re gonna take the last shot of the game, it’s either gonna go in, or it’s not gonna go in, and you’re either gonna be the hero or the goat.

  Tom Heinsohn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Gonna, Shot

• What I know is that if you’re going to play half-court, you’d better have the greatest executioners of half-court basketball. If you run, you test the stamina and willpower of the other team. That’s what I learned as a player.

  Tom Heinsohn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Basketball, Test, Team

• Talk radio around Boston is brutal, and I think that’s part of what goes on is that people as they’re driving to and from work start listening to these jerks, and I say jerks, because I don’t think they know what they’re talking about and they’re just serving some things up as controversy so they can sell the show to sponsors.

  Tom Heinsohn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Brutal, Jerks

• Ninety percent of the coaches in the NBA are guards, and there aren’t very many big men people coaching, I happen to be one of them and when I coached, everybody on my team, including the guards, had a hook shot, so that it was their bail out shot.

  Tom Heinsohn

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  Tags in Including, Guards

• My mother bought me a brand new suit for going away to college. We were poor, but she wanted me to have that. It was a powder blue suit with peg pants – you know, skinny at the bottom. I think I made quite an impression with that.

  Tom Heinsohn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Bottom, Brand

• In every game, there’s three teams out there. There’s the two basketball teams and the team of officials. If the two teams are evenly matched, it can come down to number of possessions. If one out-of-bounds call goes the wrong way, that can be the difference.

  Tom Heinsohn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Basketball, Teams

• I think my broadcast partner Mike Gorman said it best. He said there’s a generation of fans who know me as a player and there’s a generation of fans who know me as a coach and now there’s a generation of fans who think I’m Shrek!

  Tom Heinsohn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Mike, Fans

• I enjoy watching competitive people. You watch ’em come and you watch ’em go, and how they try to be the best. How they handle when they’re not. How they handle when they are. How they get along together on the court.

  Tom Heinsohn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Handle, Competitive

• I don’t know what it is about me: I am no Rock Hudson, but I absolutely wow all the little old white-haired ladies. They stop me and talk to me all over the country, on the street, in restaurants, in elevators.

  Tom Heinsohn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Ladies, Street

• About the time you think you are getting to know the moves in this game, someone comes along and does everything but undress you on the basketball floor. Standing there under the basket with your hands cupped – and finding that you don’t have the ball in them – is a great little old leveler.

  Tom Heinsohn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Basketball, Moves

• It was difficult being a neutral broadcaster – in the people’s eyes – because of my association with the Celtics.

  Tom Heinsohn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Broadcaster, Association

• I try to put all I am as a person into what I do. My intelligence, my emotion. I’ve done that in everything.

  Tom Heinsohn

  Topics in Emotion

  Tags in Person, Try

• I play basketball for love and money, and they come in interchangeable order, depending on how things are going when you ask the question.

  Tom Heinsohn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Basketball, Depending

• Chuck Daly was a man and a coach who everyone had great respect for, and to be recognized in his memory is very special.

  Tom Heinsohn

  Topics in Memory

  Tags in Special, Coach

• Anybody that shoots a hook shot, whatever hand, I jump up and cheer because it’s the easiest shot, it’s the best tweener shot.

  Tom Heinsohn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Shot, Hook

• As the wonderful agony begins for 1964-65, I sometimes wonder why I do it. I’ve got an insurance business going on the side, and it is starting to grow nicely. Selling insurance fulfills me, in a way, like basketball. But basketball keeps calling me back. I suppose I’ll play until I can’t keep up with the kids any longer.

  Tom Heinsohn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Insurance, Suppose

Tom Heinsohn (16)

Birth:	26th August, 1934
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Basketball Player

About

Tommy Heinsohn is a retired American professional basketball player. He has been associated with the Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association for six decades as a player, coach and broadcaster. He played for the Celtics from 1956 to 1965, and also coached the team from 1969 to 1978. He is currently the color commentator on the Celtics' television broadcasts on CSN New England.

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